Uncle Duke Rants On

…in which Uncle Duke goes on and on over things no one else cares about.

I’m not sure where I get my obsession with reuse. It is no doubt buried in the combined recesses of my Nature and Nurture. What I do know for sure is that my parents were married in the middle of the Great Depression. Consequently, my father learned to maximize his nickels and dimes pretty good. To my knowledge, he owned a total of about eight pairs of shoes in 80+ years, and he didn’t much mind eating things that weren’t their usual color. My mother patched and let out clothes her whole life. She saved breads bags and margarine tubs and twisty ties till there was no more room under the sink. Our dishtowels were salvaged flour sacks, and our brooms got used to the nubs. I gave them both grief about it, but I guess it got imprinted anyway.

I also heard the stories of people scratching out a living and saw the examples of folks passing on food and goods to families with less. That’s where all of our old clothes and toys went. Hardly anything ever went to waste at our house, and I am nothing if not a child of that house.

The other part of this particular obsession though seems hard wired. “Things” have always had an intrinsic value to me---even man-made stuff. They have mass and substance, and they have been manufactured with huge investments of both time and energy. Take beer cans, for instance. Someone went to a lot of trouble to mine that bauxite in Australia and New Guinea. They then infused tremendous amounts of energy into it to smelt it and transform it, first into aluminum, and then into a colorful, lightweight efficient container. It therefore has value quite apart from the beer itself. The can itself has value in human and mineral terms.

Now, having done all that, why then would we throw away a perfectly good can and go dig up more bauxite. We’ve got millions of tons of processed aluminum already available---on the hoof, as it were. Why expend more energy and resources than we need to? That’s what I think about when I drink beer. I’m not just another guy sitting on a stump here. I’m contemplating the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Energy. I’m thinking about Universal Constants and other important stuff.

I don't get the impression that many others do. The things that are left over after we consume the product don't carry much weight in this culture. And the fact that the cardboard and plastic and Styrofoam packaging comprises about 75% of the product doesn't seem to bother anybody else. As a long-time student of dumpsters and the things that go in them, it makes me absolutely nuts.

But this is as nothing in comparison to the spate of disposable products. First you pitch the packaging and not much later you pitch the product itself. You paid for it, but you’ve got nothing to show for it. And now you’ve got to buy another one. Like disposable razors. They have no heft, no mass. Use it and pitch it. Buy some more. "Single use" items, the Marketing people call them. This is not a World I was consulted on. They didn't even count my ballot.

It is a high crime that we replaced the single most efficient tool invented in this Millennium, the straight razor, with slick little razors with disposable blade heads. There is something wonderfully satisfying about stropping a perfect edge on an old-friend straight razor. It is an act of craftsmanship administered to a fine instrument. There is an art to the angle, a certain deftness of stroke necessary which can not be rushed. The shave is smooth if the edge is true, and the edge is up to you. There is mutual respect there. Don’t tell me it’s just a thing.

And I don’t know why but there is something terribly satisfying about the warm wooden klunk of a shaving brush against the side of a soap mug. It is substantive and deep and resonates in my soul. It is not at all like the gaseous, venomous hiss of a disposable, environmental-time-bomb aerosol can. What are we thinking? Better shave? No. Less mess? No. Cheaper? Hell no! I tell you, it’s hard to be so-o-o right!

And whose idea was it to start making those complimentary ballpoint pens that don’t even come apart? You can’t replace the ink cartridge even if you wanted to. How much extra can it cost to thread the freaking pen body? It is one thing to produce something that people can choose to use inefficiently. That’s perhaps forgivable. It is quite another to produce a thing that is intentionally inefficient and disposable by design. That is premeditated, First Degree stuff there. Crimes against Humanity in the Long Term. Guilty, Your Honor. Ignominy and Shame for a lifetime, I say.

That goes for you too, Disposable Lighter Makers, Ye Manufacturers and Purveyors of Plastic Crap. Hey, Designers and Dispensers of Disposable Junk. I’m talking to YOU!

It is a fine thing to make a tool which functions consistently and well. A Zippo lighter was such a tool. The Lighter for Life. A lighter which lasted through a World Wars, innumerable scouting weekends, interminable family reunions and other armed conflicts,. This was a tool to pocket with pride. This was a tool you could bank on, refill, rebuild, engrave and find with a metal detector. This is not some silly, plastic, freaking flicker that breaks when you sit on it. I’m talking Substance here! Give me a lighter that’ll light my Lucky on my deathbed. Give me a lighter that will go with me to the coffin and light my torch to cross the River Styx. I’m looking for Permanence here!

Apparently I am the only person in America who thinks disposable cameras are a bad idea. Buying cheap cameras that can’t be repaired is bad enough, but cameras expressly designed to use once and pitch is an idea born in a country of incredible excess and bred in a land of environmental arrogance. They are party favors at weddings and bar mitzvahs around the country. Tractor trailers pull into every Wal-Mart in America and days later garbage trucks pick them up somewhere else and haul them away to some giant refuse mountain where they will sit till plastic breaks down---about a gazillion years from now. It’s no wonder I get cranky at weddings. G-r-r-r!

Cameras needn’t cost $1000 and weigh 12 pounds, but some quality of workmanship and materials would be nice. I say, if it breaks I want to take it to someone who can tell me what’s wrong with it and fix it---(“It’s probably just the reflex winding grommet. They run about $50.”)---not someone who’ll stare at me quizzically and say: “So what’s the problem, dude? Just pitch it and buy another one.” I don’t want another one, Cheese Head. I already bought this one! Can you spell l-a-n-d f-i-l-l?

I am already on record on the issue of bottled water. We package our bleeping water! We wrap water in plastic. How stupid is that? And how far behind is bottled air---5-gallon clear, plastic jugs we buy at 7-Eleven, strap on our backs like scuba tanks on bad air days and pitch when we’re done? Hiking trails and campsites from shore to shore are already gleaming with littered Pure-Spring-Fed-Water containers. Am I the only one who sees irony here? “Let the Market decide,” they say. Hoo Hah, the Market be damned, I say. The Market is an Idiot.

I suppose what bothers me is the lack of vision. For an intelligent species, we are remarkably short-sighted. How we got to the top of the food chain and stayed there so long is a mystery to me. Mass production and mass marketing have removed us so far from the product that it just passes through us like body waste and becomes someone else’s problem when we’re done. We’ve become a Nation which consumes with impunity and pitches without guilt. As a rule, I'm in favor of the absolution of guilt; but in this case, I think it is richly deserved and I encourage more of it.

HEY, You! There is a finite amount of stuff on this Planet---energy, resources, space. And there are responsibilities as well as rights associated with them. It only makes sense to maximize. It is a fairly basic dictum to reuse what we can. So figure it out or choke on it!