Picture yourself on the bank of a pristine woodland stream, pebbles at your feet, breathing fresh, spring air and relishing nature’s glory. The suns floods through an opening in the evergreens, warming you to your core. Man, it’s good to be alive!

From the corner of your eye you notice something small moving closer. Upstream you see a plastic cup floating toward you. You bend to retrieve it, but then see frozen pizza boxes, yogurt containers, soda cans, and more trash bobbing around the bend. Plunging into the stream, you extract the ever-increasing debris. But, like Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory, you can’t keep up! There’s just too much.

This is our waste stream. So much of what we discard starts as an upstream problem, but we’re trying to fix it with downstream solutions. Instead of trying to pull the trash out of the stream, we need to not put it in the stream in the first place.

Modern society developed by following a mostly linear path of taking resources from the earth, making products from them, and wasting resources in both the products’ creation and final disposal. It can be called ”take-make-waste.” Natural systems, on the other hand, use the waste of one thing as a resource or food for the next. We need to behave more like these natural systems, creating zero waste.

According to the EPA, in 2006, U.S. residents, businesses, and institutions produced more than 251 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste — about 4.6 pounds per person per day. Of that, 32.5 percent is recycled or composted, 12.5 percent is burned, and the remaining 55 percent is disposed of in landfills.

While systems for trash disposal are important, they help us detach from the source of the problem. Even recycling programs, beneficial in reusing resources and diverting some materials from landfills, are a downstream approach with negatives of their own.

A better way is reducing waste upstream — significantly lessening our consumption of goods and resources. Here’s some of what we can do:

  • Create and buy biodegradable products or those whose components can be broken down for reuse;
  • Seek toxin-free products and packaging;
  • Call customer service to complain to companies using non-recyclable or too much packaging, and tell them you will no longer buy their products;
  • Buy fewer or no packaged products;
  • Don’t buy single-serving sizes; buy large sizes to reduce packaging;
  • Buy from the bulk section, using reusable bags;
  • Wash and reuse plastic zip bags or use landfill-safe unbleached waxed paper sandwich bags (Willy Street Coop);
  • Use reusable shopping bags;
  • Take a container for restaurant leftovers;
  • Use reusable water bottles;
  • Use reusable mugs at the coffee shop or office;
  • Compost kitchen waste (16% of waste in the Dane County landfill is food waste) and yard waste;
  • Leave short grass clippings on the lawn (a natural source of nitrogen);
  • Purchase durable, long-lasting goods instead of easily-broken or throw-away ones;
  • Use handkerchiefs instead of paper tissue;
  • Donate clothing and household items to Goodwill, Easter Seals, St. Vinny’s and other charities. Buy from them, as well.
  • Give away or trade items through sites such as the Monona section of www.neighbornation.net and www.madisonstuffexchange.com.
  • Use worn-out clothes as cleaning rags. Don’t use paper towels.
  • Return clothes hangers to the cleaners for reuse.
  • Recycle Styrofoam. Home Concepts at 2134 W. Beltline Hwy. recycles it. (271-4663)
  • Stop unwanted mail — go to www.optoutprescreen.com to opt out of credit and insurance offers, to www.dmachoice.org/MPS/mps_consumer_description.php to opt out of direct mail, or simply call the 800-number of individual companies.
  • • The Big Picture — separate want from need. Only purchase what you really need to live.

Share your ideas for waste reduction with us. We’ll print them in a future column.