The Real “3 Rs” Re-visited

The 3 Rs:  Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.  I’ve been thinking about that triple letter lately.  Humour me by allowing me to wander backwards a few steps:

Somewhere along the line I think many people have forgotten about the first two ‘R’s:  society seems to have quickly skipped over Reducing and Re-using and sped right into Recycling!   My oldest son Robin recently led me to a video on the truth about Recycling called  ‘Gone Tomorrow:  The Hidden Life of Garbage’ @

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5934530156227758850#.  

 A real eye-opener!!  Everybody is into recycling and that’s great.  Where my sister Betty lives in British Columbia, people TAKE their bottles and cans to depots where they are given money back, all while they are out and about anyway – a ‘Pay-as-You-Throw’ system, so to speak.  Here in Ontario, many communities have contracted curb-side recycling  pick up……at a tremendous cost to the taxpayer and the environment we were committed to ‘respect’.  These huge garbage trucks utilize a non-renewable oil resource to drive all over the place to pick up the recycled bottles and cans every single week, spewing diesel fumes, polluting our air; then take these items to a recycling center to be sorted (Many items are thrown into the garbage anyway as they don’t meet the accepted recycling categories of a #2,3,4,or 6 -or whatever the municipality has deemed).  An interesting 20 minute video that you should check out is the Story of Stuff @

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/ .

 Personally, I recycle/compost  everything possible and have a small bag of “packaging” garbage each week (for our family of 3), which I feel is still too much and intend to cut down on.  But I realize that I can improve even more . 

It seems to me that lately it is becoming increasingly popular to re-use things.  I believe in British Columbia I noticed that they called it “retro”……it’s good to know that what’s old has become new again:  I’m back in style!  Thrift shops have sprung up all over the place, providing a place for people to to let someone else re-use an item if they are finished with it and make a few bucks.  And even better is Freecycle where you can GIVE away an unused item or find something you need

www.freecycle.org .  Other re-using modes include www.kijiji.ca  or  www.usedottawa.com (or whatever community you live in), and even Ebay.  And I can’t help but mention MY favourite:  garage sales!  As long as I only spend a few dollars on gas driving around (in my efficient ’92 Honda),  it’s a fun time, too.   But seriously, we seem to live in a disposable society – people buy and buy then throw it away when they get tired of it or it breaks….  or have a yard sale.

First and foremost, we need to Reduce our consumption.  Along with purchases, comes all that packaging.  Everyone can take little steps to reduce the amount of packaging our products come in by making a conscious effort when we shop:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1O1RAe/www.good.is/post/tips-on-how-to-reduce-food-packaging-waste/

But we can simply reduce the amount of stuff we buy! 

The new buzz word is ‘Precycling’ or smart-shopping in the first place.  Precycling involves making buying choices that support responsible products and packaging.  It’s another way to reduce your garbage by not purchasing it in the first place!

I’ve stopped picking up the weekly paper with all those flyers.  It really bothered me to think about all the trees that were destroyed just for my reading and recycling pleasure.  I now just go online to read the local paper and check out any flyers.  Many years ago I stopped subscribing to my favourite magazines in a effort to reduce paper and the accumulation of years worth of magazines that I never throw out.  But I suppose it’s a good thing too because now my adult children can read my ‘vintage’  Harrowsmith or Organic Gardening Magazines.  And I can simply read my favourite, Mother Earth News, at my daughter Kristi’s place, since she subscribes.  I admit that I do love paper copies of books usually bought at the local book fair rather than read anything online as I have 8 full bookshelves to prove it.     As a mother, I used cloth diapers for all 7 babies and mainly ‘handed-down’ clothing:  my children experienced the 3Rs right from the beginning!  I made my own ‘baby food’  from foods we were eating at mealtimes anyway, avoiding babyfood jars and boxes (even though I coveted those small little jars from others).  During the ice storm of ’98, I became acutely aware of the value of water and it’s recyclable qualities for flushing the toilet!

There are literally thousands of books and videos about the 3 R’s.  I’ve set some goals for myself  for 2012 and will strive every day to learn even more and achieve them….

REDUCE first.  RE-USE second. And last RECYCLE.

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

My Technology ‘Timeline’

I am amazed at the development of technology.  Let me walk you through my journey of how technology has affected my life…..

I was born in the early ’50s when ‘technology’ was in it’s infancy.  By technology, I’m referring to TVs, phones, computers, various hand held communication devices, and things I don’t even know about.  I remember our first television set quite clearly:  a 12″ screen mounted on top of a similar size speaker  and all encased by a wooden box.  I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada so we got the feeds from Buffalo, New York’s CBS, NBC, and ABC networks as well as CBC in Canada (the only ones at the time) picked up by our antenna mounted on the roof of our house.  I watched favourites like the “Wonderful World of Disney” , “Lassie”, and “Hockey Night in Canada” in glorious black and white, often flecked with interference ‘snow’.

1950s TV

Back in the day, we played outside mostly and really didn’t watch TV alot.  The VCR player, DVD player, and Blue Ray had not been invented yet so you watched the programming that the TV stations broadcasted.  Our telephone was ‘retro’ too:  a large dial with  a tethered, separate, heavy handset you listened and spoke into, which sat on its own ‘telephone table’.   And the only ‘computers’ then were involved with Outer Space exploration.

We witnessed history on those little boxes during  days on end of continuous TV coverage of the 1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy assassination.  For the first time in history, the world witnessed a live shooting on television when JFK’s alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shockingly gunned down right before our eyes.  Television brought history to life….and death.

The first time I saw a colour Television was in the mid-sixties.  WOW, I was so amazed at all those shades of green!  We got our first colour TV about 1967 – a huge wood floor model taking up about 6 square feet.  There was no remote so you actually had to get up to change the channel.  Captain Kirk looked so handsome in colour……  I remember watching the first moon landing by Neil Armstrong, live, as it happened in the middle of the night, all by myself, staring at the stars and the moon in amazement.

I recall seeing my first computer in 1973:  it took up an entire room in my university , the size of my house!  It was so noisy, windy, and all those ‘discs’ moved at such dizzying speed I thought I was going to be sick or have some kind of seizure!!

I sailed through the ’70s, technologically frozen, too busy with post-secondary education and then new babies I guess.  By the early ’80s, we purchased our first VCR:  we chose ‘VHS’ (Video Home System) rather than ‘Beta’, by sheer luck, as Beta never really caught on and fell by the wayside.  It came with a remote control, tethered to the VCR with a cord and it was a real circus trying not to trip over this cord.

Telephones were still corded and ‘mobile phones’ were still only available/affordable for the elite or government.  There was only one home telephone/land-line provider:  Bell and they ‘rented’ you the phone for a monthly fee.  You couldn’t just go to a store and buy a phone !!!  We got our first “portable” a.k.a. cordless home telephone in the early ’90s – it was a very large phone about the size of a kleenex box with a long 12” metal aerial sticking out of the top.  You had to stay within eyesight of the charging base as reception dwindled from other rooms in the house.  And the aerials were always getting broken off too.  Nowadays, we have several cordless home telephones and I haven’t lost one of these yet (well….there’s still another cordless phone in my garden….somewhere).  In the mid ’90s we got our first ‘mobile phone’ – this unit plugged into the cigarette lighter of a vehicle and was truly mobile as it could only be used IN a car because it was corded to the phone touch-pad.  Chris had to make a 12″x12″  wooden box for it to fit in!  Time usage was about 75 cents a minute/or part plus and an exorbitant monthly ‘connection’ fee AND cell towers were few and far between, so this phone was used for emergencies only!

Technology in general was accelerating at incredible speeds by the late 1990s. Vinyl music albums were replaced by cassette tapes in the ’70s, then CDs to be played on portable CD players with headphones – a teen was really cool if they walked around with a CD player (the size of a plate) and headphones listening to their favourite artist!  These days, you don’t even notice iPods or Mp3s tucked away as people of all ages listen away.   Personally, I like my vinyl albums and still have my original Woodstock, Beatles, and Led Zeppelin among others.   However it’s difficult to find replacement needles for the record player so whenever I see one at a garage sale, I often buy it just for the diamond needle.   Instead of movies produced on VHS tapes, they became available on slim DVDs.  This advancement was a  big bonus for the industry as they could re-issue the same old movies and music all over again on a new format!  By the late ’90s we had 2 TVs in our house!  However it was in the mid-2000s before we bought into the DVD market and added a DVD player to our home.  Today, I cannot find a new replacement VCR to buy but have found several on Freecycle – I still have shelves and shelves full of VHS movies that my grandchildren now watch like alot of the classic Disney movies and the ‘Land Before Time’ dinosaur movies.

About a dozen years or so ago, we took the plunge and bought a Star Choice -now Shaw- satellite dish and receiver.  I resisted for several years because all I saw for satellite TV were those huge satellite dishes bigger than the size of a patio umbrella!  No way was I going to look at THAT at my house!  Then my husband told me about these small dishes that mounted on your roof -unbelievable!  So reluctantly I agreed to his purchase of the new satellite system to replace our antenna reception.   It really was amazing to watch TV that had no ‘snowy’ reception with these aging eyes or have the signal drop inconveniently!  My original childhood 12″ TV screen has now evolved to a 47″ LCD flat screen TV thanks to a Christmas gift from my son Taylor.   It’s funny now because after all these years, I’m planning on cancelling my Shaw satellite TV in favour of free over-the-air antenna digital high-definition TV and computer internet TV programming (that can be hooked up to the new TV).  We even have years and years worth of movies on a little USB stick that we insert into the TV to watch movies!  Incredulous!

In the late ’90s, we bought our first computer:  a desktop IBM costing several thousand dollars.  My oldest son Robin set me up with an email address and wrote everything down on a paper about starting it up.  Then next day I did everything he wrote on that paper but to my frustration, it didn’t work.  I phoned him up and we went over everything while I had him on the phone……then he said something which wasn’t in my instructions  “…..now press enter” – Whoa!  “you never said to press ‘enter’!!”  LOL – and so now I was off to the cyber-races!  That computer was replaced in 2005 with another desktop and had a home in our kitchen.  At that time, a  telephone dial-up connection was the only thing available which meant that every time someone was on the computer (like every day between 4-9 pm) nobody could make or receive a telephone call!  Today we have wireless high speed broadband, but you’d think that since we are so close to the nations capital, we would have more options like cable or dsl but it seems we are still in a ‘black hole’…..    Now we all have laptops and most evenings you can find us sitting together in the livingroom talking and watching TV……while ‘surfing’ the ‘net’!

Even Kitten likes to 'surf'

Cell phones…..I always thought I was abit techy because I had a cell phone.  The last time we bought new cell phones about 6 years ago, we had a heck of a time finding one that just made phone calls!  All those ‘new’ phones took pictures and videos and we just wanted to make a phone call if we needed to!  I still use that cell phone today and it has served me well -I usually only use about 10-15 minutes a month.  I debated whether to go with a pay-as-you-go until I contacted my phone provider and told them I wanted to cancel my phone – suddenly they had an alternate monthly plan for $15 (instead of the $30 I had been paying) that would suit my needs.  I’m afraid I’ve missed the boat when it comes to cell phone technology:  I wouldn’t know how to use an iPhone and I think it would be too much for me to learn right now:  internet, telephone, television all in one!  And I won’t even begin to discuss the new “iPads”…..it boggles my mind!  Maybe in the future, I’ll need a brain stimulation lesson …….   But, I must admit that I have no desire to keep up with the latest techy fashion:  iPhones, iPads, iPods, Netbooks, Notebooks, E-books, Blackberrys or whatever,  so that I can “Tweet”, “Watch”, “StumbleUpon”,  or “Like” everything out there in cyberland!

So here are the financial statistics:

1950’s Television = Free    vs.   2012 Shaw Direct Digital Satellite TV = $75+

1970’s Telephone = < $10   vs.   2012 Telephone, Landline + Cellphone = $48

2000 Internet =  Free $ dial-up via University FreeNet  vs. 2012 High Speed Broadband = $75+

I agree with my son Marty’s belief that knowledge should be free for the sharing.  Thus internet and television should be free.  So maybe someday that ideal will be realized ……until then, I’ll just keep “liking”, emailing, “commenting”, “surfing” and blogging away.

My ‘Vintage’ Car

I drive a 20 year old car.  My 1992 Honda Civic has over 335,000 kilometers on it and I love it.  The engine purrs like a kitten……well, except for earlier this week when it balked and ‘ran rough’ when idling.  I knew it was trying to tell me something, so I’d better listen!   It turns out that it was just the spark plugs and wires that I had neglected to change in the last 4 years/75,000 kms…..

There’s something to be said for driving an ‘elderly’ vehicle.  My car doesn’t have a dvd player, cd player, mp3 player (although we now have an adapter which plugs into the cigarette lighter to play Nellie’s iPod), power windows, air conditioning…….well, I think you get it.  When we first got this car in 2008, my teenage kids were amazed that they could open the windows themselves without the car being on!!  WOW, human-powered windows!  There’s so much space inside it’s amazing!  It’s technically a “wagon”, so when I fold down the back seats I can fit a ton of stuff inside.  Once, at a garage sale, I managed to fit in a chest, 3 arrow back chairs, a kids bicycle, and some other odds and ends, to the amazement of all.  I always have an old sheet in the back just in case I see something I need to bring home, like my muffler that fell off in the field while searching for our Christmas tree.  And I can fit in 5 adults and even our Husky dog, cooler, and assorted ‘camping equipment’ for our annual family camp-out at my daughter Kristi’s homestead in Westport……in one trip!  There are lots of windows to see out of and no real ‘blind spots’.

My car.......new

My old reliable car has been good to us…..it’s gotten Marty and Jeanette back into the city when they came for most  Sunday dinners in 2010 before they left for India….   I’ve learned again to navigate roads during freezing rain and snow after  I found some good, gently used for-4-months, snow tires on Kijiji….  it reliably starts to pick-up kids from school….. she takes  (former owner) Della and I on our ‘gal-pal’ day outings  …… And it’s SO easy to park – I usually exclaim “I love this car” every time I squeeze into a parking spot.  Compared to parking our old ’94 minivan or Chris’ 4×4 truck WITH snowplow, this compact little Honda is a breeze!

I like to keep my driving local -within a 2 hours drive to home.  If I need to go further, like to my sister Faye’s in Hamilton, I just take the train or ride along with Kristi when she goes to Toronto for a business trip.  I get terrific mileage -usually 500 kms to a tank of gas costing $35-40.00ish.

I appreciate how stiff something/someone older can be after sitting for awhile, so these days I plug in the poor old car for 3 hours or so before starting it,  when overnight temps are going down below -20C.   And when I do drive, I gently accelerate up to speed rather than stepping-on-it/peddle-to-the-metal.   Slow and easy…..just like me.  We’re a perfect fit!

Every summer, I like to sand down the rust spots as best as possible and use some Tremclad rust paint to touch up the spots.  It looks okay………..from a distance, with very little rust.  Underneath it looks great, considering the fact that for the first 16 years, the underside was oil-sprayed.

Once last summer, I pulled up at a stoplight,  beside a brand new Honda convertible – the driver looked at me and I looked at him – we smiled at each other when we recognized we were each driving a Honda – then he said “nice car” and not sarcastically either -I responded “nearly 20 years old and runs like a charm” and he commented that he hoped his will last that long.   I like to think that my car is just ‘broke-in’ at 335k and that I can still get a few more miles out of it if I treat it fairly and with respect.    I know the day will come when I have to say good-bye and send it to the auto recyclers, but for now I’ll just keep on rollin’.