Permaculture Principles: Produce No Waste

Why would we even want to?

Waste is traditionally defined either as un(der)utilized resources, or unusable byproducts of producing something that's of actual use. In either case, it is forfeited potential. A bit unfortunate, from the user's perspective at least, but not a tragedy, as someone (or some thing) would come in to fill the niche and use it for something.

If the example for the first case is a field left untended, growing a great many weeds, it will still be a good resource for herbal medicines, while at the same time feeding insects, which feed birds, etc. So even if the owner of the field doesn't plant anything on it (wasting its potential), in the end the weeds and insects make sure the space is not wasted. The case is similar with byproducts, for example sawdust from a lumber mill. If you don't gather it up to use it in your composting toilet, it's still going to compost itself, right in place, if you leave it alone. That is how nature works. Not too long ago, it would have been ridiculous even to address this point, because waste as such was virtually unimaginable.

And Today?

More recently this concept started including products at the last stage of their life cycle. Items produced in high sophistication, that were useful for something at some point, but can no longer be used for anything. Today, when reading 'Produce No Waste' one would (or should!) think of the ocean of plastic smothering our actual oceans. A century ago, while waste might have been seen as a problem, nobody would have been able to even picture waste of such a magnitude that is typical for our current global culture.

So avoiding disposables is one big step in the right direction. For those interested in further details, the internet is full of interesting articles, like this one, this one, or this one, where I took the above meme from. But it is neither the whole solution, nor is it what I intended this post to be about. Instead, I'd like to focus on what comes next, or rather, what had always been there: creativity, thriftiness, and resourcefulness.

Inspired by a Fellow Steemian

Yesterday I read an awesome article by @steemed-open about redneck ingenuity, which made me decide to address the Permaculture principle regarding waste. In her post she proudly describes her grandmother's practice of using pieces of old flannel shirts to make quilts, and going barefoot all summer to keep her one pair of shoes from wearing out too soon. But you should check it out yourself!

I had to smile reading it, as it was more than evident that despite the admirable self-confidence such ingenuity results in, many people would associate this kind of attitude toward resources with completely different things: poverty, lack of education, the rejection of industrial society, and further associations this would lead to.

Are we taught to be wasteful?

Wastefulness drives the economy, and those who can afford it are unwittingly coerced into participating in it. One time I was hitchhiking in New Zealand and I got a ride in an old, beat-up truck that was literally held together by duct tape. It ran well, though, without problems, and the driver, a proud mechanic, explained that he would never drive anything else. His truck had no part that hadn't been fixed, switched out, or altered in some way, and all his neighbors and clients knew about it. The fact that under all that pile of rust was a strong, reliable machine, was a testimony to his mechanics skills, and more importantly, it was seen as such. Though he also pointed out that while he lived in Australia the same truck would have been seen as the complete opposite: as a testimony to poverty, and therefor lack of skills, lack of motivation, conjuring up further negative associations.

Two sides of looking at the world

I hope I don't have to explain that what may seem to be a poorly generalized difference between Australia and New Zealand, is in fact supposed to illustrate the difference in attitude towards resources, between – let's call them wasters and users. On the one side is the old way, of valuing raw material as well as final products, the work (time, skills, effort, etc.) that goes into making them, thus the people responsible for creating them. What can be called redneck ingenuity was once seen as mere common sense, and universally valid. In Hungarian, for example, it is commonly referred to as a 'sober peasant sense,' meaning you don't need to be highly educated to understand it, as long as your mind is clear.

The modern wasteful way, on the other hand, makes less sense, but it doesn't have to. It is driven by style, that is, what ideas it makes other people have of you. If you can afford to pour your resources down the drain, or discard them in other ways, it makes you look wealthy and successful. What might have started out as a voluntary keeping-up-with-the-joneses game, soon became a strong cultural trait, and in some cases even integrated into the law. Take the example of drying laundry: In many places laundry lines are illegal, forcing people to invest in tumble dryers, which themselves come at a high energy cost, and will have to be fixed and replaced eventually.

So my point that I'm trying to bring across here is not so much the techniques of saving resources. There are insane amounts of information on these details anyway. Instead, I would like to urge anyone to adopt the old way of looking at things: What can you do with something after it has served its primary function? What comes then? What about the material itself, once all secondary functions have been exhausted? Most importantly, even if we can't think of a use at the moment, there may be something it can be good for. So the best way is to store them, because they are sure to come in handy some day. Can we do this without having to suffer through poverty? I certainly hope so, it just takes the right amount of motivation. Being an ingenious redneck, a sober peasant, or just a responsible user, while openly proud of it, is an important step. Probably just as important, as avoiding disposables.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Pics: 1, 2,

To see my discussions of other Permaculture Principles, take a look at these posts:

Permaculture: A Starting Point