Reduce and Reuse

Anyone else remember when there were three R's?

As much as I love recycling, I think--at least in America--it's starting to become a huge distraction from all the other things we should be doing, much the way that people equate 'organic' (whatever the hell that means, according to latest FDA regulations) with 'earth-friendly,' when in fact the Earth doesn't give a fuck about the modifications to its species and would be way better off if foods traveled shorter distances--so, basically, buy local.

But yeah. People feel so good about recycling things that they often forget that there's other stuff they can do. As little as I do with them, I still love websites that tell you how to use old shit lying around your house to make things you'd ordinarily pay lots of money for. We need to bring back manual labor as a skill. And what about that house built out of beer bottles in Arizona (well, somewhere in the southwest) that also runs mostly on solar, etc.? Why aren't all houses today expected to make some effort at alternate energy sources, including green roofs, or at least meet LEED certifications? (Actually, for all I know, they are....)

So, anyway. Buy only what you need, and reuse as much as you can. Being cheap is being green.