Recycling & composting woes

If you’ve ever cared a little bit about the planet, you’re likely recycling part of what you buy. And if you’re like me a couple of years ago, you’ve probably wondered why people would go zero-waste when you can easily recycle! Easily? Not really. Notwithstanding only 9% of all plastic is actually recycled (and the reason why Asia is responsible for most of it ending up in the ocean is because we send it there in the first place), I’m sure you’ve stood, like me, in front of the recycling bins with an item in your hand, which you’re pretty unsure whether it can be recycled or not, and if so, in which bin it should go.

Furthermore, plastic isn’t actually recycled but downcycled, unlike glass and metals which can truly be recycled. What about paper / cardboard? While they are also downcycled since at each recycling round the fibers giving it its structure shorten, the final product can at least be composted, unlike plastic which decomposes very, very, VERY slowly, except in some conditions, like in oceans, where it leaches microplastics (like BPA) which are detrimental to the health of marine life and ultimately ours.

There are many reasons why Recycle is at the bottom of the list, not the top

You get it, it’s better to get metal or glass containers, or even better not to purchase something. But let’s be realistic here, while I would hope for everyone to adopt a zero-waste, low-impact lifestyle, it’s not gonna happen any time soon. Meanwhile, people like my parents, who do not really want to change their lifestyle, will recycle if presented with the opportunity (but not compost, arghh).

So, what can you do with minimum effort?

• avoid single-use plastics. There are more than you think. We’ve heard about the straws, but also single-serving wrappers, coffee cups, etc.
• buy in bulk. And I don’t really mean at the bulk shop, though you can do that too if it’s convenient for you. In my current situation, it’s really not, so I buy large quantities. For exemple, I buy rice in 10kg bags, it lasts for a while. I buy nuts by 3kg bags (they do go rancid after a while). And so forth and so on. While technically not “zero-waste” in the sense that there is packaging involved, there would also be packaging involved at the bulk store but you just don’t see it nor bring it home.
• recycle and compost using your city’s recycling / composting bins (or at home, if you have the space – it’s not that hard). Even in college you can compost! Pro-tip: if you don’t want it to smell while waiting for the collection time, you can freeze your food scraps: no odor guaranteed!

While it seems obvious why you should recycle, I have to admit it wasn’t obvious why I should compost. I genuinely thought organic matter would simply “compost” in the landfill. In fact, in landfill conditions, organic matter does not compost. If you don’t want to go through the article, basically, the way that organic matter decomposes in the landfill produces a huge amount of methane, one of the worst global warming gasses.

Ok, so now about the practical details of recycling and composting. Depending on where you live, there are likely different rules for recycling, so please check with your own city what the rules are. For exemple, in France we had some advertisements about not wasting water by washing the recycling – I tried to find it back but didn’t manage. Here (NYC) on the contrary, it is recommended to rince recyclables very well before putting them in the recycling bins. RECYCLING IS CONFUSING.

Let’s play a game. I give you an item, you tell me where it should go. Ready?

• Paper towels

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Compost! Yep, this is the end of life of paper products. Putting them in the recycling will lower the quality of the recycled end-product, even if they are not soiled (which if they aren’t, why are you throwing them out anyways???).

 

• Envelopes / cardboard boxes with plastic window

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Here, paper recycling. And no need to remove the window.

 

• Supermarket receipt

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Landfill. Receipts are BPA-lined and should not be recycled as they will contaminate the rest of the paper stream 😦

 

• Ice-cream containers like Haagen-Dasz

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As anything which is mixed materials, this cannot be recycled and should go to the landfill. 😦 😦 😦 (I love those).

 

• Plastic bags

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Here, they can be recycled but not mixed in the comingled (curbside) recycling. Only hard plastics are recycled in the curbside recycling in NYC. National grocery retailers (such as Kroger, Safeway, Target and Walmart) and many smaller retailers offer bag recycling collections in their stores. I collect them and then bring them to Rite Aid when I have accumulated a few.

 

• Coffee cups

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Landfill! Yes, this is once again a case of mixed materials (the paper is lined with plastic on the inside of the cup) and so they cannot be recycled.

 

Alright, I still want to link this how to recycle in NYC guide in case you have more questions. It should be possible to find a similar guide relative to where you live at your respective sanitation department. If you’re curious about how bad it is to put the wrong item in a recycling bin, well here are your answers. Now, have you ever pondered where an item should go? What was it and did you find out the answer? Leave a comment and let me (and others) know! Only now, after six months of living in NYC, do I feel at ease with the recycling system. Composting might also be an issue very soon, as we used to bring it to a weekly collection point at a nearby subway station, which is now closed for renovation, so they moved the collection point too far for us to bring. We are currently bringing it to Brooklyn Grange, but I’m not sure what we’ll do when they close for the winter.

 

 

Serendipity

Have you ever wondered if your yoga teachers talk to each other at the beginning of the week and decide to work on a specific topic? That’s what I thought for a while as it regularly happened that my teachers had the same focus in class in the same week.

Once I become a teacher myself, and taught at the same studio, I realized this was very obviously not the case. So how did it happen that the teachers were somehow still focusing on the same teaching point at the same moment?

I still don’t really have an explanation for this, apart from it just happens. Of course, in Iyengar yoga there is a four week cycle, with the first week for standing poses, second for forward extensions, third for backbends and last week restorative. However there are so many poses, ways to link them, and possible teaching points, that this barely limits the teaching options. If you’re wondering why this rotation exists by the way, it is to ensure that students coming only once a week work on all types of poses evenly.

Yesterday was an amazing exemple of this serendipity at work. Last Wednesday I was practicing at home, working on some ways to introduce shoulderstand (Salamba Sarvangasana) to a student with a shoulder issue. I ended up in a Halasana with my shoulders high up on a bolster, and the pose kind of screamed for me to try and do Chakrasana.

If you don’t know what Chakrasana looks like, it’s a backwards roll from Halasana to downward facing dog. The only time I had previously been taught this at length (and somewhat managed to do it) was during a workshop with Garth McLean. But I hadn’t worked on this in months, and in the meantime had some neck issues any time I was holding long shoulderstands, so I was also unwilling to practice anything that looks like you’re possibly gonna break your neck.

Anyhow, I managed and was pretty happy about it, but this was highly propped up, and I was really wondering how I would transition from that to the floor (or at least much closer to the floor).

Well, yesterday, as I went to Lara Warren’s level 4 class, she announced that the focus of the class would be… you guessed it, Chakrasana! I don’t want to get into the details of the class, but by the end of it I had understood something in the lifting of the trapezius muscle in Halasana, and I didn’t feel stuck in that transition anymore. I need to work on this a bit more, but I managed to do Chakrasana on the floor for the first time, without feeling my neck at all.

Really interesting how it just happened to be that class’s topic, when I had just started working in it, and had not done so in a very long time. Maybe it’s an untold benefit of being an Iyengar yoga teacher noone tells you about, a manifestation of “when the student is ready, the guru will appear”!