Rescuing stones

We get our groceries by backpack (except for extremely bulky or heavy items that warrant an occasional car trip), and today on our way back we happened upon these stones put out to the curb.

They were evidently part of some craft project since some had been painted, but they were nice flat stones, perfect for stepping stones (and they were painted on only one side).

The bigger issue, though, is that these were items that could be reused--one often-ignored part of the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle). Onondaga County fortunately has one of the country's best recycling program, but do we adequately reduce or reuse? Recycling requires community effort and investment in recycling facilities, which Onondaga County has done. Reducing and reusing is more of an individual commitment.

Stones are not truly a renewable resource in human time scale--they're "mined" from somewhere after all--so we're glad to have rescued these stones for reuse. You can never have too many stepping stones in the garden beds!

And besides, carting this little pile home in my arms provided an extra amount of "free exercise" that we're always looking for. We consider things such as parking far from our destination, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking to Wegmans as the kinds of activities we build into our daily lives that take minimal time but cumulatively contribute to good health. This unexpected opportunity built some arm muscles and burned some calories!

No more peanut butter jars

After saving our peanut butter jars for a few years, we've finally reached the point where we have to stop. We have a few hundred--more than enough to store our dried fruit for the fall harvest season. (We LOVE peanut butter. It's one of our favorite foods.)

I know we have enough jars--especially since we're nearing the end of the dried fruit we were storing in them, but it's hard to stop.

Sure, we can recycle them (and our county has one of the best recycling operations in the country), but recycling still involves the cost of carting the materials to the facility and the costs of reconstituting the material into new glass. (Of course, the costs are not ours, but for society.) And I doubt that this material can be infinitely recycled. Certainly many things are actually downcycled, not recycled.

These peanut butter jars have worked so well. They're of uniform size and store just the right amount of dried fruit. Each one would last for years, as has the quart-size jar that was sold for lemon juice a few decades ago. We're still using it today as a handy way to refill our water jug.

Why do we build in so much waste into our daily lives? It's clear there's a limit to the amount one person can do in this situation. I guess we could find a place that sells peanut butter in bulk so we wouldn't accumulate any more jars and we'd be able to use the ones we had, but that would entail a car trip basically just for this thing. And I have to admit that the Wegmans organic peanut butter is our absolute favorite peanut butter.  It's just organic peanuts and salt. (The late William F. Buckley was famous for his preference for Wegmans peanut butter.)  I'd hate to have to switch brands, and I don't think we can get this peanut butter in bulk.

I think the issue is bigger than just our peanut butter. Our modern society has come to think it's reasonable to have single-use containers for everything. It's convenient, but at what a cost.