Responsibility. For most of us, that word conjures up images of duty and toil. When are you going to grow up and learn some responsibility? Boring routines and obligations: that’s what being a responsible adult is about. No wonder we shy away from the concept.

But is that accurate? Is caring for something so much that you take responsibility for it necessarily an act of drudgery?

Before we can answer those questions, we need to consider that there are different kinds of responsibilities, and some are more rewarding than others. Taking care of a beloved child is one thing; having to clean the garage is another.

An example: I used to own a car, and frankly, I hated it. I might just have a really small tolerance for “stuff” responsibility, but to me, owning a car felt like nothing more than an endless to-do list filled with unimaginably boring tasks: change the oil, deal with the registration, find out what that funny noise is. Blech.

The responsibility of car ownership didn’t appeal to me at all. But give me a friend in need and I am there 100%. The difference? Love. I love my friends (and yes I know that some people love their cars, too). The key is to look at our lives honestly and ask ourselves, how much of what we have to do every day stems from love, versus simply from having too much junk we don’t care about that still requires attention?

Once we know what’s important to us, then taking responsibility for it is only natural. In fact, it’s the ultimate act of love.

Committing oneself—whether to a child, a project, or a partnership—is a leap of faith. When we say, Yes, I will take responsibility for this, we are aligning ourselves with some of humankind’s best qualities: care, attention, and creativity. We are saying, I love this so much that I will ensure it thrives, no matter what. We take a vow to do whatever needs to be done. When we decide we will see it through, we express our grown-up-ness in its highest form.

Now, our culture doesn’t particularly value grown-up-ness. Maturity rarely makes people famous; wisdom doesn’t sell magazines; commitment may or may not be rewarded. But we have come to a point in our history where we need realer, more humane dreams than the ideal held up by society and the media. Overvaluing big houses, shiny cars, and handbags that cost as much as shiny cars has brought our society to the brink of destruction. It’s time for us to go deeper.

To me, the saddest part is that these shiny things don’t make us happy anyway. Past a certain point of having enough of what we need and at least some of what we want in a material sense, more stuff just means more responsibility of the drudge variety. Biggie Smalls had it right when he said, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”

The truth is that we’ve spent our precious lives chasing the wrong goals, and now we are tired and worn down from the weight of achieving them. I say this not to lay blame on anyone—the situation is what it is—but just to acknowledge where we are, so we can find a way out.

So, the question is, how do we turn this around? Is there a way to reframe our thinking so that we chase the right goals—those that truly do contribute to our happiness and the health of the planet? C’mon, you are reading The Sunny Way—of course there is!

It starts by asking, what really makes us happy? One hint: it’s not giant cars and big ole TVs. Studies show that, past that point of having enough (it’s hard to be happy on an empty stomach), the list is pretty simple: Spending time with family and friends; short commutes; freedom to make our own choices; feeling more or less equal with others in our society.

When we shift our goals from money and power to true human happiness, amazing things can happen. In the city of Bogota, Colombia, former mayor Enrique Peñalosa demonstrated this to be true. He made the happiness of his constituents the number one priority of his administration, bringing clean water, pedestrian walkways, and efficient public transportation to hundreds of thousands of people. In doing so, a new sense of self-respect and happiness was sparked in the city. “In everything we did, we tried to increase equality, to maximize integration,” he said. “In this way we are also constructing democracy.”

Peñalosa took responsibility (and a lot of heat!) for making these changes. And he did it out of a sense of love for his city and the people who live there.

What he was able to achieve was impressive, but it is no more than what each of us can do when we fall in love with the future enough to take responsibility for making it happy, vibrant, and magnificent. Doing this doesn’t mean sacrifice, it just means rethinking what we really want. Handbags for health and happiness sounds like a fair trade to me. What do you think?

Originally our first garden workday had been scheduled for April 26, but nature likes to play tricks on us here in Minnesota and snow forced us to reschedule for the next Saturday. Friday brought cold, dreary rain and I was beginning to think that our garden workday would be canceled again. I checked my e-mail before I went to bed, but there was no word. I woke up Saturday morning to a bright and sunny, if chilly early May morning.

I wasn’t sure what to expect on our first workday. I didn’t really know what we would be doing, or how many people would be there, but I figured it would be hard work, so I made us a nice brunch of French toast, fruit and some fantastic bacon from a local sausage shop. Then my dad took the kids out for the morning and Zach and I headed out to the garden.

Lisa, the garden organizer, and Terry, the workday leader, greeted us. We were the first to arrive other than the two of them and we got right down to work. I picked up trash while Zach and Lisa laid plastic down for the paths and Terry hauled woodchips to the paths in the wheelbarrow. Over the next half an hour another 20-30 people showed up ranging from small children to people in their 50s and everyone just dug in and started working. I ended up hauling wheelbarrows of woodchips and Zach shoveled woodchips and later compost. We got a chance to talk to many of our fellow gardeners while we worked, all of whom were interesting, friendly people. It was fun to see so many people pulling together to make the garden a beautiful, functional place.

The result was amazing. In the course of two hours we cleaned up the whole garden, weeded the compost, removed dead stuff from the flowerbed, moved two large compost piles, spread compost on two plots near the street that were in need of some help and created all new paths. It’s incredible what you can do when you pull together.

Last year our plot belonged to the owner of a local restaurant. He mainly used the space to plant herbs. When we checked out our plot I noticed that there were garlic chives already coming back from last year. I picked some to use in scrambled eggs this week. I was ridiculously excited at my tiny first harvest. This far north anything that smacks of spring can set your heart aflutter.

The bad news in my community garden adventure is that most of my tomato seedlings have fallen victim to tragedy. I left them by a window that was accidentally left open on a night that turned quite cold. In the morning I found them all lifeless. The peppers that were planted next to them seem to be OK, though. I’ve decided that this is not the end of the world. I am going to the Friend’s School plant sale next Friday, so I will just have to replace them. Well, some of them anyway.

A while back, I was discussing food with a close friend of my older sister, a teacher and mom whom I’ll call “Kathleen”. Kathleen mentioned liking Rachael Ray, and I expressed the opposite opinion. I am happy to tell anyone who asks that the diabolically perky RR does nothing for cooking as an art form, and that I do not use her cookbooks because she has the temerity to make lasagna out of ravioli.

Kathleen then asked for my opinion on a Kraft Parmesan product that she said came with its own disposable grater, and asked whether I thought that it was a good idea. I said that it would be better to use a real grater, and buy cheese from cows who enjoyed a good quality of life. I was passionate about the subject matter. I did not realize until later that my words might have been, well, a trifle obnoxious.

Our family photo albums contain pictures of me with Kathleen when I was a toddling little thing. Was this any way for me to be treating her? Shouldn’t I encourage her first steps rather than deriding them? My knee-jerk reaction to Rachael Ray and Kraft Parmesan was the same kind of overbearing behavior that I find abrasive in others: the tunnel-vision zeal of the long-time purist. I’m especially galled with myself because I’ve often given up on making changes when I felt I couldn’t compete with the examples of folks more hardcore than myself.

I recall an interview with Alice Waters where she went on and on about how much she loves growing and washing lettuce, and how everybody ought to personally grow and wash lots of lettuce. But I hate washing lettuce. Any one minute that I spend washing lettuce is exactly the same as any other minute that I spend washing lettuce. I wanted to go spitefully eat fast food in front of her. I love the greenmarket, but if I had hours of extra time in my week, I wouldn’t devote them to lettuce. I’d probably read.

What business does Alice Waters have expecting me to wash lettuce all the time? Even though I admire her catalytic role in improving the American palate, in that moment I resented her. People like her dedicate a lot of energy to creating resources that make it easier for a wider range of people to participate in positive societal changes, and they care a lot about what they do. But sometimes, purists trip on the line between advice and lecturing.

Purists may not realize how alienating they can be. When a beginner asks for facts or guidance and the purist tells him that he isn’t doing enough, it can be very discouraging. And this kind of harping isn’t confined to the environmental activity or local foods; purists can alienate the curious in any potentially fulfilling activity that involves a degree of thought or time commitment, including most forms of community, religious, or political participation.

So, after my conversation with Kathleen and the realization that I was not helping, I’m doing my best to remember that I ultimately have a more positive effect when I encourage rather than condescend. When we find ourselves in the role of advice-giver, we would be well-served to remember how it feels to be a beginner. And surely, we are all beginners depending on who we compare ourselves to; there’s always someone more hard-core.

Kathleen, if you’re reading, I’m sorry! I’m really passionate about food, and I allowed it to make me a little blind to the fact that you are rightly taking steps according to your schedule rather than mine. Please forgive me, and allow me to have you over for lasagna sometime to make it up to you.

A couple of nights ago, Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute gave a talk close by in North Adams, Mass. It was entitled “Winning the Oil End-Game,” as is a book he co-authored which is available free for download.

I wasn’t sure what to expect other than hearing some kind of icon of innovative environmental thinking. I am probably a dinosaur to not have heard of him before, but I was astounded by what he shared in his talk. Within the space of an hour and a half, he laid out a comprehensive plan for the US to leave behind its addiction to oil quickly and easily and, in the process, create a cleaner environment and very healthy economic growth.

What was most astounding was that this wasn’t a great plan of possibility—he had figures and proven technologies to back it all up, and in fact is already working with the Pentagon and Walmart and whoever else is willing to embrace his solutions. (Here I swallowed hard at first, more about that further down). “I don’t deal in problems, I deal in solutions,” is one of his favorite mottos, and it wasn’t until after the talk that I realized how very profound and still relatively rare this attitude is in circles concerned with the restructuring of our economy or climate change. Especially for this attitude to not just be positive words, but in perfectly documented ways of action. He presented so many of these, and so many figures, that I won’t even try to repeat them here. You can see a very condensed and quite overwhelming 19 minute clip here.

Walking out of this talk, I realized how deeply (both consciously and unconsciously) our thinking about the future of the planet is rooted in dread and fear, and the sense that there is a very big problem (with us humans anyways). All that actually evaporated listening to him. And that is quite outrageous. He seemed to embody the best of the bright green movement.

Of course what he is proposing is not going to be perfect and no doubt will create its own problems in time as development always does, but it sure looks like a brilliant, do-able and all around uplifting avenue of action. His ending quote (by Marshall McLuhan) was this: Only small secrets need protection; big secrets are protected by the public’s incredulity.

As far as the Pentagon sponsoring his book—it certainly rubbed up against my own ideas of who and what is good and who and what is (very) bad. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me that traditional values like those held in the military, combined with holistic forward thinking as done by the Rocky Mountain Institute, could be just the recipe to get things done. As Spiral Dynamics Wizard Don Beck said when he spoke about the paralysis in our postmodern, pluralistic and individualistic (green meme) culture – if green doesn’t want to change, blue (authoritarian) and yellow (integral thinking) will get together, and form a new green!

And this sense of real potential and progress didn’t at all have the effect of breathing a sigh of relief and wanting to lay back. Rather it made me ask What’s next? and left me wanting to engage much more.

Most of the materials I’ve read or discussions I’ve seen on the topic of kids and commercialism are along the lines of “when I was growing up things were different.” I was tempted to say the same thing, but I don’t think that is entirely true. I think my generation was the beginning of a society that views children as little more than a target market.

We have always had television and while I remember getting cable and the Internet, I was still pretty young when it happened. Kids my age grew up on licensed characters and Nintendo. Two days a week our school hot lunch was served by Taco Bell or Pizza Hut, who also sponsored a reading program at my elementary school. I’ve been the target of advertisers since preschool and it is only getting worse.

Billions of advertising dollars are spent each year shilling everything from junk food to cheap plastic toys to kids who are not old enough to distinguish a lie from the truth. It’s pervasive. Everywhere a child looks there are advertisements, including in many cases at school.

The Center For a New American Dream has had some success in fighting a company that made radio advertisements for school buses. I can see the logic in it. Kids on a school bus are a captive audience with a limited ability to tell fact from fiction. I can just picture some evil-genius advertising executive salivating over that plan. What I can’t conceive of is the Superintendent of Schools who would agree to something so blatantly bad for children.

Can you tell that this bugs me?

The lines between who we are and what we buy have become blurred. We judge others and ourselves on whether or not we have what advertisers tell us we should have. We believe that “if I just had this one more thing” then I’d be happy or cool or beautiful.

I had parents who fought it, at least when we were young. They restricted how much TV we watched and we weren’t allowed to have a Nintendo. My mom was a preschool teacher and she always had some project for us like making wrapping paper out of butcher paper and potato stamps, or making a periscope from a milk carton and some mirrors. My dad took us to every historical site and museum in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin. We were one of the last families at my school to get cable. We were allowed to have “cool” toys like My Little Pony or a Cabbage Patch Kid if my mom saw some creative value in it, but “I want it because everyone else has one” was never a useful argument.

Now that I am a parent I can appreciate how hard this is to fight. Right now my kids are little so I have a lot of control over what they see and do, but that won’t always be true. It’s a scary thing when you realize how much influence other people have over your children.

I have talked a lot with other moms about this issue. Many of us are feeling the same way. There’s a sense of desperation. “What do we do? Hide them under a rock for 18 years and hope for the best? Give in and admit defeat?”

I think the solution has to be two-fold. First, we have to teach our kids how to navigate this culture effectively. As tempting as the hide-them-under-a-rock idea sounds, that kind of isolation isn’t going to prepare them for the real world. The real world will hit them eventually. As a mom, protectiveness comes easily to me, but what I really need to do is to give my kids the tools they need to succeed when I am no longer there to protect them.

I need to teach them to evaluate their purchases against their wants, needs and values. I need to teach them to ask lots of questions. Do I want this because it would really improve my quality of life or do I want it because it is bright and shiny and right in front of me? Will it bring me real enjoyment, or just status? Can I picture myself pulling this out of the closet a year from now and I still interested in it or would I send it to a thrift shop? Am I buying this because I need a little novelty in my life? Could I meet that need by checking a book out from the library, creating a piece of art, or seeking out a new experience instead of a new possession? Can I learn to appreciate the beauty of an object without having to own it?

I need to be honest with them about my own struggles. I am a full-grown woman who knows that advertisers and businesses do not necessarily have my best interests at heart. Still, I sometimes walk into Target, feel my eyes start to glaze over, and suddenly feel that “if I just had this” life would be easier.

I need to help them keep their focus on what is important. There’s something about spending time together as a family, getting outside and playing or spending quiet time alone with a book that naturally makes bling look less appealing. The more you appreciate what really matters to you the more contented you are. The more contented you are the less you are likely to believe that you “have to” have something just because someone tells you that you do.

The second thing concerned parents need to do is to find each other and speak up. There are probably other parents in our communities who feel this way. By speaking up we make it easier for others to speak up, and the more of us there are the more effective we can be. These are our communities and our children. We do not have to accept the status quo.

In another Sunny Way article Megan said that we are “the environment.” We are also “society” and any change in society is going to have to come from us.

Earth Day 2008 started out promisingly enough. I sit on the recycling committee at the giant corporation I work for (of course I do!), and we arranged to get some sweet freebie travel mugs to give to our colleagues, to encourage them to use fewer paper cups in the office.

We set up a table outside the cafeteria and handed out about a thousand of them, and people were jazzed. What a great idea! we heard over and over again. By the time lunch was over, we were almost out of mugs, and patting ourselves on the back.

We also set up a screening of The 11th Hour, which I hadn’t seen at that point. And, flying high from the talk I’d given the previous week which had ended with a truly wonderful conversation, I’d volunteered to facilitate a discussion after the screening. The CEO’s office even kicked in some free soda and popcorn for attendees. We were pumped for another great event.

So ... 5 pm. Screening time. About 15 people showed up, less than half the number that had RSVPed, but that’s to be expected. No biggie. I warmly welcomed everyone and invited them to stay afterwards to talk about the film, then we settled into our seats and the lights went down.

An hour into the film, I was wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into. The first 2/3 of this movie are seriously depressing. How was I going to put a Sunny Way spin on 60 relentless minutes of how screwed we are?

The last 30 minutes throw the viewer a small bone of hope, but seriously? The proportions are all wrong. Leonardo DiCaprio and friends go into a lot of detail on the problems, but just sort of breeze through the solutions, almost as though they are an afterthought.

I suppose I should have been grateful the doom-and-gloom hour came first! Imagine the mood in the room if they’d ended with the falling sky stuff. We would have had to hand out cyanide instead of popcorn.

Anyway. The film ended with a rousing Coldplay tune, the credits rolled, and the lights went up. Discussion time. Things started out innocuously enough: What did you like about this film?

One nice man, the leader of our recycling committee, said he liked the feeling of optimism and possibility at the end. I nodded enthusiastically. Yes, I said. It’s important to stay positive, because who does anything when they feel overwhelmed and depressed? Others in the group murmured their agreement. It’s up to all of us.

At that point, another gentleman jumped in with a torrent of sentences. They should have done a lot more about cars, America was built on the automobile and it was great, at least until unions ruined it. I blinked a few times, then buckled down to talk a bit with him about all that. Pretty soon I was on the history of transportation in the U.S. and he was on how everything comes down to no one disciplining their children anymore.

Twenty minutes or so later, I was not at all sure what was happening, but I knew it was not the positive, proactive conversation I’d been hoping for.

Then, another man got up to leave. He hadn’t said a word, but he stopped by my chair, looked me in the eye, and told me, “I really appreciate you doing this. I have to say, though, I think it’s too late. We don’t have a prayer.”

Stunned, confused, and frustrated, I turned to him and said, “All due respect and everything, sir? That is a cop-out.” His resigned expression didn’t change. He simply shrugged and walked out.

Another guy nodded in agreement with him. So did my union-busting, car-loving, red-blooded American debate partner. I could feel my color rising, so I wrapped things up, thanked everyone for coming, and bolted.

On the subway home, I broke down in tears. How can people be so closed-minded? I wrote wildly in my journal. So deaf to anything other than the sound of their own voices? How are we ever going to get anywhere?

And at that moment, the enormity of the situation rose up before me like a massive concrete wall, so high I couldn’t see the top, so smooth and monolithic I couldn’t see a way to climb it.

Now before you start wondering about my mental health, let me make sure I am clear on this: I am not kidding about what it says at the top of this web page. I am dedicated to this cause with every cell in my body and every thought in my head. This project—creating a context of possibility, encouraging everyone to take part, making responsibility the rule rather than the exception—is the purpose of my life. And it’s not like I think it’s going to be easy. I know the task before us is HUGE.

But we all live in the bubble of our own experience, and my experience is usually filled with people who think a lot like I do. Yours probably is, too. Birds of a feather and all that. Reaching out to a new flock is something most of us don’t do very often. I suppose I shouldn’t expect my first time to be perfect, but I was disappointed in myself all the same. Bitterly disappointed.

Talking with a friend later that night, I got a bit of perspective. Of course we’re going to run into obstacles! Of course people see things differently! That’s why this project is so important—because right now our differences are keeping us from actively working on solutions.

Another truth: these people had stayed at work for 2 hours past quitting time to watch and discuss a movie about the environment. It’s more than possible that the level of their cynicism is exactly equal to the level of their care. Transform that cynicism into action and half our battle is won.

And, finally, on a personal note, recognizing one’s own limitations is the first step in learning how to transcend them. To break through a wall, you kinda have to hit it first. Failure holds more lessons than success.

So, now, several days later, I can see the gifts in this breakdown. My less-than-stellar performance showed me that if I really want to fulfill my mission, I have to grow. We all do. If we want to create something new, we have to let go of what we think we know. That beautiful, elegant future we dream of? It lies outside the borders of the easy and the familiar. It is a brand new place whose gates won’t swing open to us until we learn to see and create in brand new ways.

The question is: Can we lay down everything we think we are sure of and travel to that unknown land together? Are we willing to try and fail and try again?

I am, and I hope you are, too. Stay tuned.

This week I met with Lisa, the woman who runs to community garden this week to get a plot assigned to me. It was a cold and snowy day, so the meeting was brief, but informative.

As we wandered through the garden Lisa explained to me that the land the garden is on was up for sale last year, so they thought it would be their last year at the current location. In the meantime the market for development in that neighborhood has sagged, so it looks like we may be there for a while.

I chose a plot that has possible room for expansion. Lisa said she had 10 people on a waiting list, but a lot of people get on the waiting list and then flake. The plot I chose is next to another empty plot, so if there are more plots than gardeners I can take both of them.

My plot belonged to the owner of one of my favorite restaurants last year. Lisa said he planted a lot of herbs and I may have some of them come back this year. There’s a fence at one end of the plot for climbing plants. I think I’ll leave that there. It makes more sense than buying a new one.

The meeting made this all seem very real to me. Spring is here! I am so excited I could burst.

Lumber for my porch ceiling, something that could operate as a kitchen island, and tile of any kind (broken would be fine) for retiling my fireplace. This was my list upon walking into Construction Junction, the Mecca of re-use in Pittsburgh, and a place I have frequented a handful of times over the nearly 10 years it has been in business. Here are 4 reasons that I am the perfect demographic for Construction Junction:

• I own an old house that is in constant need of repair.
• I like old things (not a fan of the shoddily manufactured, love classic styles, don’t mind some imperfections or signs of wear).
• I like a bargain.
• And I hate the idea of the enormous amount of building materials that get sent to the landfill to take up space, decompose and release methane gas, furthering the global warming problem.

Yet, I have never found anything at Construction Junction, and I’ll tell you why. First, I don’t go there often enough. I know people who go at least once a week, and they are the people whose kitchens I’ll be standing in when I exclaim something like, “Where did you get that incredible tin you’ve redone your ceiling with?”

The answer is always the same. They got it at Construction Junction.

Commitment-Phobe? Stop It!

A word to the re-use curious: it won’t work unless you jump in, get obsessed, and fall in love completely. And the benefits to the environment include reductions in greenhouse gases, reductions in industrial waste and pollution associated with new manufacturing, as well as a reduction in the chemicals typical to new manufacturing. Not to mention the pleasure that comes with something with a history, something that has gained beauty and character with age.

Michael Gable, Executive Director for Construction Junction, measures his success in terms of sales, and by those numbers, Construction Junction is doing about as well as other facilities like it across the nation.

Gable says that Construction Junction puts equal effort into sourcing and marketing. Sourcing involves knowing what people want to buy, finding out where to get it, and then getting it into the facility.

As for marketing, Construction Junction uses advertising, the website, cable TV and the Pennysaver. The media in Pittsburgh has been kind to Construction Junction: lots of good press drives traffic to the store. Letting buyers know what’s in-store, through the 5,000 emails sent every week, also helps.

But what an interview with Gable brings to your attention more than anything else is this idea of commitment. “People have to think about everything they purchase. You need to make the conscious decision to try to buy used first, but then if you decide NOT to buy something used, you can make the decision to purchase something new that’s of good quality and will last, so that when you get tired of it, you can put it out there for reuse.”

The Greenest Building Isn’t Made from Scratch

As for the idea of replacing and upgrading for energy efficiency, Gable tells me what a board member of his likes to say: “The greenest building is the one that’s already been built.”

It definitely sounds good, but anecdotally, I have some really, really old windows, and even though they aren’t decomposing in a landfill, they are leaking out my heat, costing me and the environment a fortune, and forcing me to turn the thermostat to 57 degrees every winter night: brrrr. I’m not thinking they’re all that green.

So, what to do when I’ve got the dough to replace them? Well, I’m not going to find the right windows, in all their various sizes, at Construction Junction. That’s just my guess (I vow to confirm this, eventually), but, it would be a pretty tall order. Could I take out the beautiful old fashioned wavy glass and rebuild windows? Sounds pricey and I’m just not sure the result would be much of a conservation improvement.

Thinking about this makes me a little bitter about all the “green” recommendations I hear about getting rid of old appliances that waste energy to replace them with new ones. What do you do with those appliances they’re telling you to replace? Is it better to give appliances with bad energy ratings to someone else to use? They’ll then own an inefficient appliance, but at least they might not buy crap that won’t last, and it will be a machine they can afford, at $50 (a typical price at Construction Junction), vs. $250 + for an Energy Star machine. There are many individuals of low income who shop at Construction Junction, which is another benefit it provides the community.

And where is the McKinsey and Co. analyst to do the math for me?

Gable clarifies: “If you replace your old windows and some of them are still useable (not rotted or broken), don’t throw them away because they have other uses. There are people who restore old windows and you can make those windows energy efficient by adding storms to them.” (ed: I’ve also seen great art projects made out of old windows. In fact, I have a few hanging in my house.)

All of this reminds us as well, that it would help to be handy. Gable agrees that used things are beautiful, but to build them into your existing home requires a bit of know-how.

As Gable said, “Nobody wants to throw anything (away), it’s just so easy to do it, and that’s what ends up happening.” It’s cheaper and easier to throw it away—and if there’s one thing we’re addicted to as Americans, it’s cheap and easy.

“This is the reason Construction Junction has put together an active salvage program,” said Gable. “We realized we needed to come in and remove items for free. This got more contractors interested in us. They were happy to let us take out things, and we ended up with more materials to offer them in the store.”

Infrastructure for Re-Use or ... Apocalypse? You Decide.

The salvage program was just one step in the effort to create a living, breathing infrastructure to support re-use in Pittsburgh. Eventually, Gable believes, the infrastructure will be there in every state, the way it has come to be a necessity in states like California and Massachusetts, places that have run out of landfill space and created laws out of necessity. In California, 50% of Construction and Demolition (C&D) debris must be diverted from the landfill every year, by law. Massachusetts is enacting a total ban on C&D to landfills.

Lack of landfill space, cost of dumping (tipping fees), better connections between re-use facilities and contractors, more facilities for recycling used construction materials, and you and me, making our commitment—all of this will build the infrastructure necessary to reduce the C&D descent into the great dump of off-gassing.

I feel it, the urge to re-use, so I call my friend Pat, a contractor who is interested in helping me with my kitchen remodeling, should I ever get started. I’ve found some cabinets here at Construction Junction—I want to know if he thinks they’d be a fit for my space. He’s right around the corner at a job site, and he shows up in 10 minutes. “This place is amazing,” he says. But he tells me that the cabinetry isn’t high enough quality, won’t work in my kitchen.

We stroll around Construction Junction. He admires things I wouldn’t have taken a second look at: glass with frosted designs, giant keystones, light fixtures.

I mention to him a theme of Gable’s, the endless stories he hears of perfectly good materials shipped to the landfill. Multiple dumpster loads of 9 foot mahogany doors. Entire apartment buildings’ worth of claw foot tubs. “Oh, yeah,” Pat says. “I tore out a $50,000 kitchen once, and I wasn’t being paid to find a home for it. Brand new, but it had to go, as a matter of the owner’s taste. Both the dump manager and I were mortified, but into the heap it went.”

The vision of these things, valuable things, coveted items, wasted like this—it feels apocalyptic. Not to be hysterical, but then again, maybe we should be. Or, we could just take the plunge. Get committed.

Commitment to Re-Use:

• Break the addiction to cheap and easy; look for possibilities instead
• Get on the mailing lists for re-use facilities
• Visit re-use facilities often: use a list, but keep an open mind too
• Learn to be handy, or make friends with someone who is
• When you want to buy, commit to searching out used materials first
• When you buy new, donate what you’re replacing to a re-use facility
• When you buy new, spend a little more on high quality materials that will last