Lynn Ruth Miller: Recycled Houses
Lynn Ruth Miller says waste not, want not…
Innovative students in the University of Brighton’s Waste House project have created a house made from more than 20,000 toothbrushes, two tonnes of denim jeans and 4,000 videocassettes, and I think this is the way of the future. The house has a low energy rating and is living proof that there is no such thing as waste; only a lot of marvelous stuff being put in the wrong place.
There is no mention of whether the faucets emit real water instead of recycled wine or discarded soda or if the toilets really flush. But then, why should they? It is, after all, a waste house, and human waste is certainly as valuable as a lot of worn out toothbrushes.
The potential of reusing our trash to build useful products boggles the mind. Clever inventors could fashion a sofa from discarded cotton wipes, hair captured in a brush and belly button fuzz. Our dining tables could so easily be structured with a clever mosaic of toenail cuttings and dented car fenders. The result would not only be unique; it would give karma to the food served on them.
“A little teddy bear would eventually become a lawnmower blade”
We need never dispose of anything ever again. Wastebaskets will be a thing of the past… antiques that will sell for thousands of pounds to those nostalgic souls who insist on recreating the flavour and look of the gluttonous twentieth century.
That plastic tub that held meat from the supermarket could once have been a recycled plaster melded into a broken decanter and reduced to a film using heat from recycled stones rubbed vigorously together by industrious students who care. It would somehow be comforting to know that once its contents had been removed, it still had a brilliant future as cashmere-like filament used to knit a baby blanket, or even a little teddy bear that would eventually become a lawnmower blade.
At last, the conservative element of our society would be justified in labelling the homeless a lazy bunch of unmotivated gits. Anyone with a shred of social consciousness could easily fashion a lovely shelter using recycled shopping carts pounded into waterproof slats and lined with dog hair and used cardboard coffee cups. Why not? The Brighton students did it.
Recycling could well eliminate all our social ills. The NHS could recycle the terminally ill into gurneys to save the healthy, and we would all know that whatever our fate, we will never die. We might end up in a street lamp instead of a two bedroom flat, but at least all of us would know we will always be around. The only segment of society that have anything to lose are the grave diggers. I guess someone has to pay for progress.
“Mother Nature doesn’t throw stuff away.” – William Booth
