Crafting and the three (four?) R’s

Sometime before Christmas my friend Gina showed me an article that just blew my mind. It was all about how recycling is a big corporate conspiracy that's actually ruining the environment. If you don't have time to read the whole thing, I'll sum up what I took away from it:

Of the three R's (as in "reduce, reuse, recycle"), recycling has the least positive impact on the environment because it requires resources and produces waste. It also happens to be the easiest of the R's to adopt, because you don't really have to start doing anything, or stop doing anything. You just throw your trash a different bin, and pull items from a different shelf in the store.

The article posits that corporations have latched onto recycling as a marketing tool to help them sell more stuff: They can offer people a way to feel like they're doing something for environment, but in actuality they're just buying more stuff. So we're using more energy and resources to create (in the end) even more waste. And the companies get richer, while coming off as "environmentally conscious."

Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but, this sounds pretty convincing to me, especially with the statistics the article cites.

So where does crafting fit in with all of this?

Well, when I decided to begin selling my own "recycled" goods, I had to think twice about the morality of it. But, I was quickly able to console myself with the fact that pretty much everything I do falls under what I consider the Fourth R, repurpose.* Here's the basic method behind my crafting: I collect random cool things, take them all apart, and put them back together in a different way, to make even cooler things. For example, I may go to the thrift store and buy a wool sweater with holes in it and an old belt with a stain on it. I unravel the sweater into yarn, knit it into a pouch, and turn it into felt. I then cut the belt on either side of the stain, and sew the two good peices onto either side of the felt pouch. Voila! A purse.

Now this may sound a lot like recycling, but the distinction I draw is this: all the energy comes from me, so there is no pollution, besides my own carbon footprint which is going to exist regardless. Another difference is that, while only some things can be recycled, with enough creativity and effort you can repurpose just about anything! And (like the Native Americans famously did when they killed a buffalo) I try to use every part in some way, with zero waste.

(You could also say the process sounds a bit like reusing, but it's more fun and interesting!)

So, I toil on, in guilt-free anticipation of my Eleventy store opening! (Which may be postponed a few weeks; as it turns out, we're moving next month. I'll keep you posted.)


*Or, maybe "repurpose" is the Fifth R: the article I referred to had its own idea of adding "repair."