18 RAIN April 1979 The Conserver Solution, Lawrence Solomon, 1978, $12.50 (hardback) from: Doubleday and Co. 245 Park Avenue New York, NY 10017 An excellent first attempt to layout the basis for conversion of Canada from a consumer society to a conserver society. Good detailed examples of specific Canadian problems and how to deal with them-from dependence on materials export to foreign (that's us) ownership of most of its industry, to the necessity to achieve fundamental changes in advertising law. Many good ideas are simply and cle.arly presented. Some need further development, but all are sure to form the basis for a new and livelier discussion of Canada's future and our own. Recommended. - TB "Assume we didn't have planned obsolescence and everything lasted twice as long, that our goods didn't go out of fashion every year and they didn't wear out as often. Since we'd have to replace everything half as often, we'd be twice as well off. "Consider the individual who purchases a car. If his tolerance is similar to others, the car starts to be more trouble than it's worth after about three years. Let's say he replaces it every three years, and that (trade-ins and all considered) it costs him $5,000 each time. To run it for six years costs him $10,000. Now what if that car could give him trouble-free service for six years? After the first three years, he could use that $5,000 he would have spent for a replacement car to buy an additional car. For the same amount of money, he could own two cars. If he didn't need a second car, or if he didn't want a more modern model, he could use the extra $5,000 to finish his basement or buy a mink coat for his mother-in-law or pad his bank account or take an extended vacation. "The benefit to the individual is clear. The benefit to the overall economy is also clear. If the individual decides to buy a second car with the $5,000, the automobile company will break even. It will have sold him the same two cars. If he decides to spend the money on his basement or his mother-inlaw or a trip, a furrier or a carpenter or a travel agent may benefit instead. If he puts it into the bank, the bank willlcnd it to someone who'll spend it for him. Either way, the economy as a whole will not be suffering. The same amount of money will be circulating, generating jobs and profit's...." * • * * • "Increasingly, our ability to recycle the materials in goods is improving. Soon, virtually all materials will be efficiently recycled by being converted into energy-they won't be wasted at all. "What will be wasted is the labour- someone else's timethat went into creating the original goods. When the labour in those goods is destroyed before its usefulness is gone, the value of that labour has been reduced. It has been devalued, denigrated, degraded. "Whether a professional or a blue-collar worker, no one likes to see his work degraded. A lawyer who draws up an elaborate contract only to have it ripped up when his client changes his mind gets a sinking feeling in his stomach, no matter how generously he's been paid for his work. The factory worker who sees the products he helps put together end up in his neighbour's trash cans feels cheapened by it, despite the theory he may have heard that throwing away goods crcates employment'." ,., * * * * ."Forty percent of North America's (and the w'orld's) supply of copper is recycled from scrap. Forty-five percent of North America's lead is recycled, even though several hundred thousand tons of it gets dissipated in uses such as gas additives. Half of.the continent's iron production is based on recycled material, 20 percent of its aluminum, 25 percent of its rubber, 40 percent of its zinc, and 50 percent of its antimony. There has been only one reason for all this recycling that's taking place-it's cheaper. The used materials are readily available and already processed from the raw stage. There's no need for grown men to go digging holes in the ground looking for minerals when they're already sitting on top, ready to be plucked. The hero in the recycling saga is the junk car. Because it provides great quantities of different materials, it has encouraged people to develop ways of getting them back. About 7.5 million car's are scrapped in North America each year and 80 percent of these are recycled for their metal and material content. In the past three years, more cars have been recycled than have been junked. We've started to mine our old automobile graveyards. The junk car has emerged as the most recyclable and recycled post-consumer product in the history of mankind. Its story deserves to be told. .. , " from Recycling: The State of the Art .1iiI RECYCLING Reduction, Reuse, Recycling: Three R's as a Guide to the Best Use ofOur Finite Resources, developed by the Environmental Education Association of Oregon, 73 pp., $3.00 from: Environmental Education Project Portland State University P.O. Box 751 Portland, OR 97207 The hope of the earth may lie in our children. It is our responsibility to raise their consciousness of the finite resources so they will not be depleted and unavailable for future generations. The Three R's is an educational concept geared to elementary through high school children who are basically uninformed on the issues of reduction, reuse and recycling. The set of 20 lesson plans range from traditional classroom methods to exploratory discovery methods and simulation games. Problems are presented which range from how much paper is used in your classroom and how to reduce this usage, to what effect recycling waste has on energy conservation, resources and economics. It then states the attitudes to be developed in the student, the process, time frame involved, materials needed, follow-up questions and resources and references available. Reduction is the underlying principle which reuse and recycling systems are based on. Three R's offers a valuable tool for teachers to integrate Reduce Reuse Recycling education into thcir curriculum. - Nandie Szabo
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