Blog 2- Sarah Pearson

            The Zero Waste Solution book draws on the big picture of waste and attaining zero waste. I particularly liked how the book talked about adding another R to the 3 Rs. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Redesign. I along with many other people trying to attain sustainability believe the producers of products should be responsible for the products they create. All these put together are a great idea for attaining zero waste. We need to make products able to be redesigned. We need to make them able to be separated, safe to process again in a new life, and made better for us. When we redesign, we can improve upon conditions of materials for betterment in the future.  But the first two Rs are reducing and reusing, and those mustn’t be forgotten. They should be the first ones given emphasis, not the last.

            Focusing on the first R, reducing, I thought of my grandma and Cutco. My grandma had 12 kids, and that was expensive, so reusable diapers were what she used. It’s sickening to think of how many diapers are in landfills now. Human excrement is already a waste, but we also add a whole diaper to the mess each time. And 3 years of diapers per kids is just plain wasteful. She reduced her spending and consumption by reusing these diapers again and again. Cutco also reduces people’s need to spend more money on new knives, because they have a lifetime warranty. By reusing the same knife, you save a lot of unnecessary cheap and not durable knives from being thrown away. Cutco allows you to mail them the knives at a low price, and they re-sharpen them or replace them if they have too much wear and tear. Companies need to make more of an effort like Cutco. They save a lot of waste by providing a product that may be expensive at first purchase, but saves money in the long run. If more companies were like Cutco, we could save so much waste.

            Focusing on the second R, reuse, I thought of the company repurposed Materials Inc. This is the only company whose entire product line is made of repurposed materials, and let’s be honest, that’s really awesome and admirable. They give emphasis on the reuse, while many other companies focus on recycling, if that. The company repurposes goods and gives them a second life. The Zero Waste Solution book talked about needing creativity to create a more sustainable goal. Creativity is a large part of their company’s success. For example they use old billboard vinyl to make great tarps, covers and liners in the future. They also use old street sweeper brushes to make great backscratchers for livestock.

            In conclusion, I would like to talk about the crazy, outrageous distribution of wealth in the USA today and correlate it to how the distribution of wealth contributes to the issues we are facing today. I keep thinking about this documentary I saw recently titled “Inequality for All.” This documentary is about how one of the richest countries in the world, USA, has one of the worst distributions of wealth. I continue to think about how many hours we spend at work, many struggling to get by. At one end, you have multimillion dollar industries that solely care about making money- this is at the expense of people, and the environment. Heads of these corporations will do anything to acquire profit. And what do people do with this money? They buy more stuff. More people are exploited while resources are taken away, while the world is hurt. We need to shift the morals of this country to care more about the well being of the common good. Right now we are so individualistic and self-centered, that issues including environmental issues are difficult to achieve. We need to make efforts to change that.

 Kornbluth, J. (2013). Inequality for All. United States.

repurposed Materials. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/

All Cutco products are backed up by The Forever Guarantee. (2015). Retrieved from

http://www.cutco.com/products/the-forever-guarantee.jsp#the-guarantee