by Michael Smith
The culture in our developed nations appears to be hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels, shopping sprees, suburban sprawl, and beef-centered diets, and consumption per se. People want more and more and seem to care little to whether they can afford it or whether the world can afford it.
Will Americans, or Brits for that matter, ever voluntarily give up their SUVs, McMansions, McDonald's, and lawns?
It seems to be very hard for people to give up our fossil fueled lifestyle and while we still need to have transport, have electricity to run our homes and factories, and heating from a variety of sources, there are ways that we can make savings and improvements.
In World War II Americans simultaneously battled fascism overseas, though very reluctantly to begin with we must add, and waste at home and this was even more so true in Britain.
We all have to change from an economy of waste – and this country has been notorious for waste – to an economy of conservation.
Our elders, their neighbors, and millions of others left cars at home to ride bikes to work, tore up their front yards to plant cabbage, recycled toothpaste tubes and cooking grease, volunteered at daycare centers and such places, shared their houses and dinners with strangers, and conscientiously attempted to reduce unnecessary consumption and waste.
The “Dig for Victory” campaign in both the USA and Britain led to every possible square inch of ground that could grow food to be used for just that. Rose beds and other flower beds gave way to cabbages, leeks, potatoes, carrots and beans.
I must say that, while I don't mind flowers in gardens, and often I envy people for their nice flowers and such, I rather see cabbages, beans and peas, and other vegetables growing in gardens than inedible flowers.
This current economic and financial crisis that the world finds itself may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise and bring us all back to our senses as regards to our wastefulness and bring the spirit of thrift back into society. It may even bring community back into our society.
Local food
With the participation of the Boy Scouts, trade unions, and settlement houses, thousands of ugly, trash-strewn vacant lots in major industrial cities were turned into neighborhood gardens that gave tenement kids the pride of being self-sufficient urban farmers.
This can be done again and in fact in some places it is being done already, in the US and also and especially in Britain. You do not even need to dig the ground. There are enough builder's bags, as they are called, that are thrown out daily all over this country that make great containers for the growing of foods.
World War II also temporarily dethroned the automobile as the icon of the American standard of living. Detroit assembly lines were retooled to build Sherman tanks and B-24 Liberators. And while we do not, necessarily, want to retool the car factories into those that make war machines dethroning the car, at least somewhat, sure would not be a bad idea.
Cycling
During the same war that America's national obsession of the 1890s, the bicycle, made a huge comeback, partly inspired by the highly publicized example of wartime Britain, where bikes transported more than a quarter of the population to work. The British did not, and that has to be said as well, as many cars in private ownership than did the US at that time anyway, but that is not the point really.
Less than two months after Pearl Harbor, a new secret weapon, the “victory bike” – made of nonessential metals, with tires from reclaimed rubber – was revealed on front pages and in newsreels.
The shame is that nowadays people rarely value their bicycles, if they have any, and have also no idea as to repair them, as shows the fact that so many get thrown into the trash simply because a pedal has come off or, stranger still, the bike has a simple puncture.
Zero waste, recycling, green living
One particularly interesting example was the “rational consumption” movement sponsored by the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), which encouraged "buying only for need" and set up consumer information centers that gave advice on family nutrition, food conservation, and appliance repair. The OCD consumer committees challenged the sacred values of mass consumption – the rapid turnover of styles, the tyranny of fashion and advertising, built-in obsolescence, and so on – while promoting a new concept of the housewife as an "economy soldier" who ran her household with the same frugal efficiency that Henry Kaiser ran his shipyards. Waste is something that we cannot afford, neither in the home nor in the workplace, and not because there is a war on but simply because waste is expensive and costs us dearly, and that on more than one level.
The problem of “build-in obsolescence” is also the one that besets us with the computer and especially as to the operating system by Microsoft. Yes, I know, I am back to one of my pet subjects, but the truth is that every time Microsoft seems to bring out a new version of Windows newer hardware is required to run it efficiently. This leads to many an abandoned computer that needs to be recycled but often never gets that chance. There is another option though and that is the use of operating systems that are not as resource hungry as is Windows, from XP up especially, such as those built on the Linux kernel, whether this be Ubuntu or Fedora or some other.
Our elders knew a lot about the reduce, the reuse and even the recycle, but it was thrift that it was called then. They did not know the word “recycle”. They made use of everything as far as possible, and metals, during the war at least, such as tin cans who were all from iron then, went back to be remade into steel, often directly for the war effort. Very little was wasted. In one way or the other everything had more than one use in the home, out of necessity as there was not much to go around and also because they knew that waste could undermine the victory that everyone aimed for.
We need the same attitude again today in our effort to cut waste. We cannot afford to keep going on the way we do by simply chucking everything and burying it in holes in the ground. Aside from the fact that we are rapidly running out of said holes this wastefulness is going to bite us in the butt if we do not turn around now.
The efforts of World War II sure can teach us a lot for that was also a time when bottles went back to be refilled and reused rather than being chucked into a recycling bin to be remade into glass, and even glass jars went back to be cleaned and refilled. Then again, that was also the time when you still bought most of your goods locally and loose, whether it was pulses or nails. It did not come prepackaged in plastic but you went to the store with your own containers, as in the case of loose produce often, or just bought the stuff loose in a paper bag. Can we get back to something like that? I sure hope so.
© M Smith (Veshengro), February 2009
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What our elders can teach us about saving the world
