"My profession does a lot of damage," admitted architect James Wines in the sober tones usually reserved for recovery groups. "I want to be part of reversing that, at least philosophically." An audience of several hundred nodded in agreement. The panel discussion last May was organized by New York City’s Grand Tour Design, a program geared toward showcasing exemplary design via tours, exhibits and workshops.
Doing without paper is an untenable solution, even for the most dedicated environmentalist. However, doing without trees as a source of paper pulp may not be. Kenaf, an annual wody plant related to hibiscus, cotton and okra, is rapidly gaining credibility as an alternative paper fiber. an herbaceous crop culticated in Egypt as far back as 4,000 B.C., kenaf remained virtually unknown here until several innovators began experimenting with it in the 1980s.
Another revolution is taking place in Cuba, and this time it’s environmental. "Few underdeveloped countries recycle, but here it’s a matter of national pride," says alternative energy expert Arnaldo Coro, beaming. "We even recycle the aluminum and caps from toothpaste tubes! I can’t say that we are happy," Coro continues, "because things are so hard. But the economic crisis has forced us to conserve our limited resources even more than before."
You may remember the great mailbox debate of 1990. The very first of 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth was to "Stop Junk Mail." We were each chewing up one and one-half trees a year with our daily load of bulk mail, reported the little blue book form the Earth Works Group, and we were all producing almost two million tons of garbage. For what? Why not tell Ed McMahon to keep his $10 million, the underwear sirens at Victoria’s Secret to get dressed, and the panda bear at the World Wildlife Fund to nibble on berries instead of our bleeding hearts? Junk mail wasn’t the most serious crisis in the world, but it was a sign of our consumer culture run amok, a vast paper slick hitting almost every mail slot in the land.
Over the past few months, we have undertaken an unscientific experiment that we would not recommend to others: Opening all of our mail and actually reading it. We could have found worse, like "Opportunities Unlimited" which stole thousands of dollards from senior citizens with fake sweepstakes contests or the "Doris Day Animal League" which spend over 90 percent of its funds on more fundraising, but we also could have found better. And empty mail box, for example. Here are now our favorite junkmeisters:
The magazine newstand business breeds excess like mad. The best newsstands sell only half the copies they display–the rest are waste on arrival. What with proliferating titles, shrinking rack space and outright corruption, there are no easy solutions.
Being a carnivore can be confusing. Few have been able to identify the species of origin of the "mystery meat" served by airlines, and the perennial debate in school cafeterias as to which unmentionable animals parts have made their way into the hot dogs will probably never be settled. But today, there’s a growing array of products available which originate not on the hoof but in the field–soybean and wheat fields, to be precise. Some so succesfully imiate the taste and texture of meat that fast food fans are duped and vegetarians unsettled by the sinewy similarity of these products.
If it is true, as John Wesley preached, that "cleanliness is next to Godliness," the heavenly prospects of us well-laundered Americans should look as bright as our shirt collars–or our gym socks, gardening pants, or any of the earthly garb we toss into our state-of-the-art washing machines and douse with high-powered detergents, chlorine bleaches and rub-on laundry boosters. Indeed, our devotion to cleanliness has bolstered what is now a $4-billion-a-year business in laundry detergent alone.
Let me confess, before anyone complains about the smell of bias rising from this review, that I am indeed one of Rush Limbaugh’s "long-haired maggot-onfested FM-type environmentalist wackos." I’ve been known to birdwatch before breakfast, eat camping food at home and wear a hemp baseball hat to protest chemical cotton. We’re a peaceful bunch, my maggots and I, so we were shocked to open Limbaugh’s monumental bestseller, The Way Things Ought To Be, to read that we want "to roll us back, maybe not the the Stone Age, but at least to the horse-and-buggy era." I’d quote further, but my mastodon is now eating his book.
Allow me to flaunt a few prejudices with the hope that the harsh light of day will temper them. One is the notion that science is a cause of our myriad environmental problems because of its attachment, regardless of the consequences, to the valueless pursuit of technological advance. And scientists themselves? They are contemptuous of the rest of us, they eschew idealism or enthusiasm of any sort, and they reserve judgement on policies that I support because their jaundiced routine of cautious analysis prevents them from seeing the desirability of vigorous action on any front.
