Waste not

Back in the 1990s, many in the U.S. awoke to the fabulous benefits of recycling. Recycling helps divert materials from our landfills and incinerators, and conserves valuable resources like water and energy because making products (like paper, cans, and glass) from recycled material uses a fraction of the resources compared to making them from virgin materials. But in our enthusiasm to embrace recycling, we must not forget about other, equal — and sometimes even greater — impacts before the end-of-life or disposal stage. So let’s start with the fundamentals.

The fundamentals — where things come from

Remember from school those pesky “Laws of Thermodynamics”? Well, maybe not. But here’s a refresher: Essentially they referred to the fact that everything comes from somewhere, everything goes somewhere, and along the way energy is lost. This may all sound like geeky science stuff, but it’s very important in understanding environmental impact.

It means that to truly understand the environmental impact of a product or service, you need to look at how the product was made over its entire life; that is, from its “birth” with harvesting raw materials (like lumber, minerals, or oil) through its use as a product, and to its “grave” with disposal — or, ideally, recycled back into the birth of a new product, often referred to as “cradle to cradle.”

Consider World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) example of the water footprint of a latte. You might think that a latte uses about 12 ounces of water. But that’s just the water in the cup. If you look at the water that went into making the latte, from cradle to grave, the picture is quite different. Water was used in every step of the process to bring that drink to you, including growing the coffee beans, making the cup, hydrating the cows that produced the milk in the latte, and so on. Once you add it up, a lot of water goes into a latte!

The same kind of life cycle thinking can be applied to a Stonyfield Farm cup. Think about waste. Yes, waste is created when you are done with the package — and we’re working very hard on that problem! But if you think of the amount of waste created by you, the end user throwing away the container, it’s a tiny fraction of the waste created in the entire life of the package.

By Stonyfield Farm creating less packaging, such as by light-weighting, we are eliminating waste not only at the end of life but all the way through the entire life of the package.

The best thing YOU can do for the environment is to USE LESS STUFF.

Life cycle thinking is fundamental to understanding our environmental impact and how we can lighten our load on the earth!

** Take this quiz to test your knowledge of where stuff comes from.

** Take a look at the underside of our production and consumption habits with “The Story of Stuff,” which links a large number of social and environmental issues.

Learn more about what you can do.

Recycle your yogurt cups through Preserve Gimme 5.