My husband and I teach courses on environmentally conscious leadership. In promoting the course, we often we get questions from people asking why we are teaching people how to recycle. That is the last thing we want to do!

Well, what we mean is -- most people don't realize that recycling is the absolute LAST resort (next to dumping in the landfill)! WHY?

• just because a product has a recycling symbol on it, doesn't mean it can be recycled -- have you tried to recycle Styrofoam packaging in your community? Many communities are choosing not to recycle Styrofoam, and some areas are even banning the use of Styrofoam.


• the recycling process produces environmental toxins, uses natural resources, and takes considerable energy


• often recycling products get 'tainted' by people who throw debris, pet waste, and other non-recyclables in, thus ruining true recyclables which then wind up in the landfills (in excess of 25% in some areas).


• many products only have a certain 'recyclability', for example, copier/printer paper can only be recycled about five times before the fibers break down.

The point is, there are so many easy things we can do when it comes to the everyday products that we use so that a) we are not creating excess waste and b)we are not polluting ourselves and our environments.

What we are learning is that in order to be environmentally conscious leaders, we have to rethink everything we are doing, everything we are buying, all of the choices we are making to reduce the amount of waste (both trash and recycling) we produce.

It’s almost become a game for us. Originally we would challenge ourselves to see how many weeks we could go without putting garbage out on the curb. It wasn’t that the garbage was hiding in the garage creating a stink; it was that we focused on buying products that were recyclable. We went from throwing away up to two bags of garbage a week to one bag every 3-4 weeks. The problem was, though, we began increasing our recycling output! Instead of a half-full blue bin we began to have up to three blue bins a week!

Now we are focusing on reducing our recycling output also. So, when we go shopping we not only look for recyclable containers and packaging, but we try to choose products whose packaging is reusable in some way. For example, my husband loves buying the bulk-sized peanut butter, not just because he enjoys peanut butter, but he uses the containers to store his manly knick knacks i.e. nails, screws, bolts, etc. I love when we buy items in glass jars (salsas, sauces, etc.) because then I can reuse the jars when I doing my end of season canning or to store baby food and leftovers in.

Our latest challenge is creating ‘litterless lunches’. This is a great one for kids too. The goal is to include food, drink and related packaging that doesn’t have to be trashed or recycled. It’s funny, going back to the 70’s before the big disposable consumer movement, we all had thermoses and the ugly green Tupperware containers for our sandwiches. Even the straws in our thermoses were reusable. Now everything is prepackaged, ‘convenient’ and disposable.

It might take a little creativity, shopping in the bulk food stores, and an investment in some Tupperware (or better yet, Corningware) containers, but it can be done. The investment in the reusable containers will have a long term cost-savings and an environmental savings that will be more than worth the money
spent!