Cutting consumption is greenest path.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Julie Daniel For The Register-Guard

It's time to do more with less. Today is America Recycles Day. While Oregonians deserves a hearty round of applause - we boast the highest recycling rate in the nation - we must face up to the fact that we've been concentrating on the wrong side of the conservation equation. Our "waste lines" have expanded at a coronary-causing pace, despite our recycling fervor.

Take the total amount of waste we toss, divide it by population, and you get one and a half tons of waste per person, per year - a 43 percent increase since 1993.

Recycling doesn't prevent us from creating waste; it's a very effective, and necessary, way to deal with resources we've already used. We really like filling our super-sized recycling roll-carts, but our focus on overflowing recycling bins has diverted our attention from the real problem - wasteful consumption. It's time to dispel the widespread public perception that as long as we recycle, we're on track to earn our environmental citizenship badges.

Recycling is not the holy grail of resource conservation. Think of it as a standard prerequisite for good citizenship, akin to politely waiting our turn in a queue. It's not something that earns us an environmental gold star. If we want bragging rights, we need to think beyond recycling and prevent waste.

It's important to understand the difference between preventing waste and recycling it. Recycling is what you do after you already have waste. Preventing it means you don't make it in the first place.

Preventing waste is not just about keeping stuff out of the landfill. It's about the health and well-being of the planet we all depend on. It's about global warming. Every environmental ill we face - from climate change to degraded ecosystems, from the decline of coral reefs to escalating rates of environmentally linked health problems such as breast cancer and asthma - has, as a root cause, galloping consumption of resources.

Wasteful consumption has an enormous hidden environmental cost that goes largely unrecognized because the biggest environmental impacts happen upstream, during the production of goods, not downstream, when we decide to get rid them. It's the energy and resources it takes to extract or harvest raw materials, to refine them, transport them, manufacture them into the things we buy; then package, market and distribute them where big environmental price is paid.

By focusing our efforts on the downstream impact - how we deal with trash that we've already made - we are ignoring the far greater problem: the pollution, energy use and greenhouse gas production that occurs upstream. When it comes to environmental benefit, an ounce of waste prevention is worth a pound of recycling.

The "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra has been repeated since the 1970s, but a focus on the last "R" - recycling - has been the norm among conservation educators. It's no wonder. The very idea that we curb consumption is seen as un-American. On the other hand, making the case for recycling is a pretty easy sell. You just put your discards in one bin rather than another.

Of course we must all continue to recycle, but we should challenge ourselves to find ways to do more with less. Instead of worrying about whether you can recycle something, think about whether there's a simple alternative to using it in the first place.

When in doubt, think durable, not disposable - use cloth, not paper, napkins; use washable rags instead of paper towels. Take your own bags for groceries. Carry your own water bottle and coffee cup. Rent, borrow and lend tools and equipment. Buy high-quality goods that can be repaired or upgraded. Buy used. Teach your children that a piece of paper has two sides.

We're approaching the holidays, a time when rampant consumerism traditionally kicks into high gear. Why not go for waste-free celebrations? There's no need to sacrifice fun; give gifts of experiences or services rather than things - tickets to the theater or a concert, a day at the spa. Find me the woman who wouldn't appreciate a relaxing massage while someone else cleans the house! Give a child a membership to the Science Factory or Nearby Nature. Give that budding teen-aged rock star guitar lessons. Experiences, memories and new skills last a lot longer than quickly broken toys.

Recycling works because many people do it. We each put a few pounds of stuff in a bin and collectively, it adds up to thousands of tons. Waste prevention works the same way. If we all cut down on the number of wasteful products we buy, we can have a real impact on the pace of global warming. One thousand of us using our own grocery bags would save the environmental cost of manufacturing 260,000 bags a year. If all 130,000 households in Lane County took their own, we're talking 34 million.

Honor America Recycles Day by pledging to go beyond recycling. The welfare of our children and our children's children may depend on it.

Julie Daniel is director of BRING Recycling. This essay is adapted from an address she delivered to the City Club of Eugene on Oct. 26.