In a disposable society, to repair is to rebel

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In this kind of disposable society, in which we happen to live at present, to repair, and to reuse, is to rebel. And this is a rebellion in which everyone, regardless of age and gender can partake.

Reuse is the first part of this rebellion really before we even get to repair but reuse, much like repair, has fallen very much out of vogue in favor of buying new “because the old product is recyclable”. Ouch!

The latest smartphone may have more “bells and whistles” than your old one but have you even made use of the “bells and whistles” on your current one? More than likely not. So what is the point of replacing something that works perfectly well for everything that you need just because there is a new model out or someone you know has the latest model.

But there is so much more to reuse (and repair) that just the above example. It starts very low down on the scale already with say reusing glass jars in which you buy produce. Instead of throwing those into the recycling bin reuse them as storage jars; saves buying recycled glass ones, as I mentioned in previous articles, at a high costs. After all you have paid for those jars in which those pickles or whatever came in. While there will come a time that you will have no other choice to throw some of them into the recycling but until then, well, reuse them.

In addition to reusing pickle jars – generally somewhat larger in size – there are smaller jars that can serve well as drinking vessels. It has now become fashionable for the hipsters to actually use canning jars and such as drinking vessels. Something that once was the domain of the poor.

When it comes to repair there are some things that can be fairly easily repaired and maintained, such as bicycles for instance, especially the older kind without too many gears or none at all. However, being able to fix a flat tire should be in the realm of most. Alas, it would appear that it no longer is and not only do people no bring their bike to get fixed then but some go as far as getting rid off the old one by disposing of it – often not in the right places – and buying new.

People seem to do the same with even expensive kitchen knives that have gotten blunt having no idea as to how to put a good edge back onto them and, alas, the knife grinders that once were about no longer are because people, rather than paying say a third of the cost of a new knife having it sharpened, rather go an buy a new one and tossing the blunt one. Throwing away has become such a convenience for some and the saying that some people have more money than sense must today be slightly rephrased into having – apparently – too much money and absolutely no sense.

On the other hand, alas, today far too many things – the great majority of mass-produced products, in fact – have obsolescence built in so that after a year or a couple they suffer a catastrophic breakdown. And, having been designed to be – more or less – non-repairable (or repair is multiple times the price of new) we have to purchase a new product of the same kind. Shoes and boots, also, are, unless seriously expensive, no longer repairable in any way. Even if you happen to have a boot, for instance, where, as I had, the upper comes away from (and yes this boot had one) the leather midsole most so-called shoe-menders of cobblers are no longer capable of carrying out such a simple repair (because they don't have a machine to do it, as I was told). Actually no machine needed; only two bent needles and some leather-worker thread. Alas, I was unable to get hold of such needles at the time and the boots were disposed off.

Repair, as well as reuse, for that matter, can be learned, and both are a true act rebellion in the capitalist society that most of live in. The latter generally only requires a change of mindset and a little imagination and lateral thinking while the former actually requires the acquisition of some knowledge and skills. But it is not rocket science or brain surgery and with the Internet at our disposal there many good tutorials can be found.

Being able to repair, wherever possible, not just extends the life of the product but also keeps waste out of even the recycling stream and saves raw materials too. Oh, alas, it is not generally good for the economy which is designed on perpetual growth, a growth that can only be maintained if we keep buying new all the time rather than repair.

The crisis with the Covid pandemic, especially the lockdowns, have shown that most of us have only bought what we really needed and that that has almost lead to a collapse of the economy.

Let's do it, let's be rebels.

© 2021 

Wheels of Fortune

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In Paris, cycling seems to be the new normal, as a result, probably of the “pandemic” and Paris appears not to be alone. Cycling has also seen and increase in London and other places.

As legions of cities worldwide scrambled to enforce lockdowns aimed at keeping the spread of Covid-19 (SARS-Cov-2) at bay, citizens across some of the biggest cities in the world encountered a strange sight. Streets that would usually be teeming with noise and fumes fell blissfully silent, replaced by clean air, the rustling of leaves and an often-piercing symphony of birds.

The blaring of car horns in many places has been replaced by the tinkling of bicycle bells (though some bicycles seem to be lacking those or some cyclists have no idea how to use this strange little device on the handlebars).

For a brief moment, the roads belonged to people. Perhaps emboldened by the sheer number of people taking to walking and cycling or, as is more likely, heeding technical guidance issued by the World Health Organization to prioritize walking and cycling for the sake of social distancing, many cities began fast-tracking plans for walking and cycling. Some cities moved at a remarkable pace. Berlin built 14 miles of cycle lanes virtually overnight. Other cities, such as Paris, followed and created cycleways and Paris has already created around 1000 km of protected cycle lanes in the previous years.

Can this last? Residents appear to be generally receptive to the changes while drivers not necessarily are and especially whenever something like this is being tried in Britain the car lobby and drivers will scream discrimination and that cyclists should not have special privileges, often claiming that the so-called “road tax” is only paid by drivers and cyclist thus get special treatment. That cyclists were here before the cars and that roads were initially not built for cars is something they just cannot accept and they also cannot accept that the tax they are paying is not used for road building and repairs but goes into the general tax pot and is a duty they pay for being allowed to actually drive a car and pollute the air.

A reduction of cars in our towns and cities will be good not just for the air but also will reduce noise pollution and especially permit children – unless parents and governments have different ideas – to once again play outside and even along and on the streets without fear of injury and death. That said it also would need cyclists to learn to stick to the rules and not pretend to be partaking in the Tour de France and racing like the maniacs, as they do often, and ignoring road signs and even traffic lights.

On the other hand the much touted electric bikes are, in my opinion, not the answer due to a number of facts. One of them being the initial cost compared to an ordinary bicycle and the other factors are the cost of replacement batteries (when one can get them) and first and foremost the environmental cost of producing the battery.

I have had the experience, although I did not purchase the e-bike but was allowed to retain it after a review and, yes, I was and am happy with it as it is but, and now comes the but, the battery is now almost failing and it is impossible (at least at the moment) to obtain a replacement (also due to the fact that the manufacturer has change the design of the battery now and the MK2 battery differs from that of the one for the MK1 – though the former is not obtainable either should one want to) the cost for a replacement battery is well over £350, which means well over one third of what is the original purchase cost.

Therefore, instead of replacing the battery, I have opted to purchase an “Elephant Bike” instead at around £30 less. The “Elephant Bike” is a refurbished Royal Mail bicycle and on a buy-one-give-one operation from a company called “Cycle for Good”.

If we really want to get people cycling we must crate the infrastructure for them to do that safely and if we want to consider cycling as a true environmental alternative then we must get away from over-promoting the electric bicycle because the battery is the weak point and the production of those batteries, whether for bike or other vehicles is not without a serious environmental impact. Alone the mining of the rare earths and metals required for those batteries make for an environmental problem close to a catastrophe.

It is the more or less old-fashioned bicycle and its use that needs promoting – and this is where even secondhand and refurbished ones come in – in favor of the electric ones. Electric transportation of all kinds is not the answer and when it comes to cycling – and also the use of scooters – we need to return to the human-powered versions rather than the electrical ones.

First and foremost there is no battery to be replaced every couple of years – at a rather high costs – and then the other benefit of the old-fashioned bicycle is the fact that, in general, repair, maintenance and servicing can be carried out by the user or, in the case of a child, by the user's grown-up carer or friend.

© 2021

The so-called green revolution

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The so-called “green revolution” and its effect on farmers and people

When the “green revolution” hit the Punjab in India it all looked great with the shorter wheat than what was common, and not just in India, before that time.

Now, however, it turns out that it has caused and is causing malnutrition because one of the staples of the diet no longer is present, actually an edible weed, namely goosefoot (plants in the Chenopodium genus), and the leaves are used as a kind of spinach in the diet of that area.

The shorter wheat varieties that have come about after the so-called “green revolution” are being outperformed in growth by the goosefoot and farmers are forces, literally, to employ weedkiller against the weed that once formed a staple of the local diet, leading to the loss of said nutritious weed and to malnutrition.

In fact it was the “green revolution” that led to the use and excessive use of weedkillers such as glyphosate whether in the form of Roundup or others and often the use of certain seeds employed in this “green revolution” goes hand-in-hand with the use of such herbicides, now all grouped under the name of “pesticides”.

Well, for some those weeds were anything else by pests. They were necessary foods and the fact is that some of those weeds have a far higher nutritional content than there cultivated cousins.

We have become so obsessed with weeds and their eradication, especially when it comes those much shorter crop varieties today in comparison to some 80 to 100 years ago where, in the end, the crop outperformed the weeds and, to some extent, smothered them. But not before the people were able to make use of much of them.

In addition to the shorter stemmed varieties of wheat and other corn (I am not using the word corn here in the American sense where it equates maize) and weeds outperforming the crop (in the early stages) the use or more and more sophisticated machines for harvesting also made weeds in the field something that needed eradicating. And we are surprised why our soil, water and air is poisoned and even our very foods, with the residues of those toxic substances.

Our modern farming practices and those of the “green revolution” are not conducive to health of the Planet and neither to human health, and that especially not in what used to be called third-world countries and while, say, India, is quite industrialized in some way in other ways and aspects it is still a third-world country and, personally, I see nothing wrong with countries developing slower than we have developed in Britain, the US and elsewhere. That rapid development, be it in farming or otherwise, may not be and have been the best thing ever anyway.

The obsession with so-called weeds and their eradication by farmers has led to serious problems in the ecosystems and that, alas, mostly because we (all) seem to misunderstand what many weeds actually are, namely the ancestors of many of our cultivated crops.

As I have said above there are many so-called weeds that are, nutritionally, much better than the crops that have been cultivated from them and this does not just go for goosefoot (although there does not really seem to be a cultivar of that genus, as far as I can see). Dandelion, though that being a different subject, is one of those weeds that everyone obsesses with as regards to eradication of “weeds”. It is, however, a plant that is extremely beneficial and good to eat and in some countries, France being one of them, it is often deliberately grown in kitchen gardens.

In summing up one could say that the co-called “green revolution” was not very green, as in environmentally beneficial, at all and also in many cases does not really have benefited people either.

© 2021

Make recycling worth it

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

I do mean that literally in making it worth for people to actually collect recyclables as once was the case. Nowadays the recyclables go to the municipalities who then, in turn, sell them on. And, if there is no market for the particular kinds of “recyclables” at some time then the stuff gets sent to the great hole in the ground, aka the landfill.

However, there was a time, and it is not all that long ago and not just in countries such as the German Democratic Republic, often referred to as East Germany. There, however, it was organized much better and that also and especially because raw materials were scarce in that country having little on natural resources. In fact there was a central state business in the GDR, SERO it was called, which purchased those recyclables and for many youngsters this was their pocket money.

Up until not such long ago there was a system in Britain (and many other countries) where there was a deposit on all glass bottles, except wine, and the collecting and returning of such bottles that people had, despite of the deposit money on them, thrown away, was the pocket money earner for many a youngster, myself included. In some countries a return scheme of this kind or similar still exists, or exists again, Germany being one example here, where even on plastic bottles there is a refund available. In the US there have been so-called reverse vending machines for soda bottles in many areas for decades already.

The German Democratic Republic (GDR), on the other hand, went a great deal further and all kinds of recyclables could be resold to the country, for it was the country, the state, who bought them from the collectors, and those included not just glass bottles but also glass jars, newspapers and other waste paper, as well as cardboard, and much more besides. But such schemes can, it would appear, only work in a system other than capitalism.

During the Second World War even in Britain all manner of things were being taken in for recycling, including your jam jars, albeit more often than not without any money coming to the person bringing them, After all it was for the “war effort”. But it shows that there is a way to make recycling – and especially the collecting of recyclables – worthwhile for the ordinary person if someone would be willing to pay say 20p per glass bottle or jar.

But, despite all the talk, the political will do do something like that, in other words to return to what we had once already, just is not there and all manner of excuses are being found by government.

© 2021