When Using is Also Consuming

If you’ve ever looked into recycling, you’ll learn that a lot of resources are consumed to make something used transform into being like-new again. Dig a bit further and you’ll learn that in most cases “like-new” is in fact a lower quality version of whatever it originally was.

There’s a fine line at play between “using” and “using up” which is subtly embedded in the normal “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra; reduce first, reuse if you can’t, and only when you’ve exhausted all other options is recycling your last best option.

This subtle difference is an important way we can see the world differently. People often focus on the idea of renewable versus nonrenewable resources. If we can simply plant more trees or make plastic from corn, we’ve made progress in the renewable-or-not view of the world.

From the reduce-consumption point of view, we’ve maybe made progress; but it’s less clear. How much energy did it take to grow those trees or process that plastic? Even if that energy came from renewable sources, we’ve again used up trees, corn, and energy that could have been consumed for some other purpose.

There are some uses which do not involve consuming the thing. Similarly, most things you get second-hand otherwise were destined for a landfill. I personally think of that first use as consuming the resources and the reuse as pretty close to no effect.

There are also a variety of things people don’t typically think of as consumption. When you hire someone to do a job, there’s a lot of using-up which is implicit in that choice. Each person only has so many hours in their lives, and they just spent some of them on whatever it was you paid them to do.

This last point is one I think of frequently as I choose how to spend my own limited resources. There are so many things I’d like to be doing, and so I try to choose the right portfolio of actions (including down time, family time, etc).

What choices do you make to manage how you consume your resources? Most of all, how do you choose how to spend your limited hours in the day?

End bar: If you have not watched the TV show “The Good Place” I highly recommend it. My favorite scene is in season 3 on the topic of just how complicated any action is in the ripple effects throughout the world.