It's not always green

My wife thinks that “being green” is nothing more than living life like her grandparents did. Nothing gets wasted. Things get used and reused until there’s nothing left. Recycle, reuse and reduce, right? In the past few years, our county (Fauquier) has gotten very proactive in the recycling game. They actually are trying out some cutting edge programs, like using the methane gas in the landfill to create energy, and recently buying a construction debris separater. This has made me want to try to do more in the recycling arena personally. Effort fuels interest.
I own a weed eater. Actually, I own two or three, but that’s another story. Weed eaters are something that I find to be a good idea gone badly. They have become a disposable thing. You can buy one for less than you can fix one, or so I’ve been told. I have refused to accept this disposable attitude, and have “humpty dumptied” my weed eater back together for four years in a row now. It has nothing to do with the money – it has everything to do with the fact that the motor runs perfectly, but the spool keeps breaking. I hate waste, and for about $20 and an hour of my time, I can mount a new spool on the weed eater, which lasts for about 9 months. I figure this is better than filling the land fill/scrap metal bin with four partially operational weed eaters.
I have a neighbor, Karl. He’s from Buffalo, NY, and his upbringing was absolutely nothing like mine. I grew up in Great Falls, VA in a bit of a privileged upbringing, playing tennis and football and working at the country club. Karl regales me with stories of ice hockey and his time spent working in a meat processing plant. You know, hooves and snouts and all that stuff we prefer not to think about. Somehow, however, we are very similar in that we were taught how to do and fix things by our elders and friends.
Karl is the kind of guy who will create something great out of what appears to be nothing. He made a pantry door from old 2 x 4’s and hinges he stripped off an old garage door. He is an amazing fellow, really. We share a log splitter, and the motor burned up on it. We took an old, unused lawn mower motor and retro-fit the motor to the log splitter. I think it took Karl and me two days time to fix. The question becomes “what is your time worth”. Well, it was a $1000 log splitter, and it is 500 pounds of metal that would be tossed in the scrap metal pile, verses putting a twenty pound mower frame in the pile. When I’m at work, I try to remember I’m very expensive (wink, wink). At home I try to remember I’m not. I’m not saying that I’m so crazy that I’ll straighten out and reuse old nails, like an old friend I once had (Pops). I don’t have that kind of time.
What I am saying is that I think we could solve this recycling problem if we could make things less costly to fix (expertise), or more expensive to buy (better quality), or if we could stop thinking our time is so expensive (worth of time), and just fix it ourselves. I think I will do my part to save the planet one weed eater at a time.