As a wee little boy, my dad would give my brother and I sips of his Pepsi out of the glass bottle.  He would then let us put the bottles back into the cardboard six-packs after he had finished them.  Dad always postulated that his beloved Pepsi tasted so much better when it came out of a glass bottle, as opposed to a can. Years later when we eventually did move on to aluminum cans, Dad made us crush up each and every can by stomping on them and putting them in paper bags.  Then the trip to the recycle center – mountains of cans as high as the ceiling!  My brother Patrick and I couldn’t believe the size of the can-mountains (or the odor, for that matter)!  We would run around the facility like it was the most incredible place. Then Dad would collect his miniscule payday for his few pounds of aluminum and we would be on our way home. 

Dad would also have Pat and I bag up the grass clippings when we mowed the lawn every week, and rake up leaves during autumn. We would collect them in Dad’s wooden-and-wire baskets and transport them to a stinky pile behind the garage, known as the “mulch.”  See, Dad had been a forest ranger in the Upper Peninsula back during the turn-of-the-century, or so Pat and I thought.  At our age, it was nigh impossible to think of my father as a young man at any time.  Even now, it seems odd to think of “the old man” as anything but an old man.

Growing up in the idyllic suburbs of Chicago, everything seemed to revolve around consumerism; the sweet bike my friend got or the newest plastic rifle or the shiniest Trapper Keeper were a good percentage of our world.  But my mother and father did a great job or keeping our wants in line with the needs of the family, and my dad made sure that we understood the world, or rather the earth that we lived on.  He helped us to understand that everything around us was connected to the ground we walked on, and to make sure we gave back.

Today, this translates into my desire to make as little trash as I can and to dispose of it properly.  I know it drives my girlfriend crazy that I re-use paper napkins and squeeze every last drop out of a tube of toothpaste.  I break down every cardboard box anything comes in and I insist that we use cloth bags when we head to Trader Joe’s (to her credit, she was totally on board with that one.  She was less on board when I brought up getting rid of my car and purchasing a scooter or having a worm farm in the house).

So thankfully I work at a place where nobody gives me a hard time for yelling at co-workers who put aluminum cans in the regular trash (drives me crazy!).  In fact, Eva is all for re-purposing and using as little waste as possible.  So when we really started talking about compacting and composting and biodegradable bags, I started to get excited.  Everything and anything we can do does make a difference to this earth.  I know Dad is happy to know I passed that one along.

Next time I will talk a bit more about the things we do here at the Ranch to reduce our waste and recycle as much as we can.

John Leen is Catalyst Ranch’s Operations Manager, A.K. A. Johnny Rotten and Leen Been.  For more info about him, visit our staff page.