Recent WishCycling

Let's talk a little bit about how our minds work, what we remember, what we favor and wishful thinking

The good — Recency bias is great to understand AND not so good if it’s a mystery

The not so good can be great! — Wishcycling: throwing silly stuff in the recycle bin

Stick with me. For those unfortunate souls who live in a city that is OBSESSED with recycling this post isn’t a pile-on. Hopefully just sensible and a little funny!

This is the best Superbowl ever!

Another Superbowl is in the books. The game was fun. The NFL considers the event SO IMPORTANT, enumerating the games with roman numerals has become the tradition. Wow. The most recent game had lots of action and plenty of scoring and came down to the wire. There was even some heroics as the star quarterback, Patrick Mahomes overcame an injury, limping in pain but overcoming all at the end. The commercials were fun and I especially liked the Ram ED Truck commercial. Was it the best Superbowl ever? It probably depends upon WHEN you ask more than anything else. So what is that all about? We have ourselves a simple case of recency bias!

Let’s Play a Game!

just a list of words, have fun!!!

So here is a list of 20 words. Look at them for two minutes and try to remember them in order. Write them down in order (of course don’t look, this is not a reading test!). If you are into games of this sort, try again later today or tomorrow and see how many you remember in order. Let’s talk about it in the comments. How did you do? While we lack a detailed understanding of the exact mechanisms of how our minds work, things like primacy bias and recency bias are factors in how we manage tasks like this. Since this post is now in your browser history, there isn’t much value in memorizing this list but learning about ourselves is ALWAYS FUN. If anyone remembers all 20 you are a freak of nature!!!

Some Observations

• The last steak or burger you ate has a better chance than it likely deserves to be “the best or worst one ever”!

• Movies you saw this year are more likely than not to be a big favorite yet will fade into our memory. I wonder if avid readers who use GoodReads look back at their reviews and wonder WTH was I thinking?

• The more recent a President or Prime Minister, the more likely you are to consider them the best ever. Not so much ten or twenty years later.

• If this were just about football and burgers, I would chalk it up as the worst post ever. We don’t get to decide this differently because we think we know better. This is how we are built. Our minds just work this way.

• There are a lot of consequences more serious than what we thought of the last Marvel movie the day we saw it. Since this just happens and we don’t control it (our minds do), it is worth having an awareness about if we care about bias, perhaps the “unconscious” bias some of us claim does not exist.

• One of the best elements of the US Court system is the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Letting the defense speak last is consistent with the creed. I hope that is why we do it!!!

In less than a month the Academy Awards will honor “the best” movies, actors, actresses, producers, and all sorts of other elements of the craft of making movies. I am unlikely to watch but will check the results the next day. Perhaps the hints from the awards will drive me toward what to stream a year from now as I am scrolling on Netflix. What do we hang on to? What is just a fleeting glimpse of what our senses are currently feeding us? I don’t know.

What I believe is our minds, our consciousness, our thought generator, and presenter in our heads is likely a product of our primary ways of seeing the world, our senses. What we see, hear smell, taste, and feel each can trigger an ephemeral weak connection to thought. I would imagine, just like in our kitchen, the ones we welcome get stored in a convenient drawer, while the breadmaker can safely be squirreled away in a hard-to-reach place. The more distant the storage, the more likely that one day we will do a cleanup and even pass the breadmaker to someone else. We might also realize our musings on movies in 2023 were all wet if we remember them at all. That doesn’t mean we will completely forget the breadmaker. Instead, our memory of it and its significance will fade.

In those memories of the pandemic, when our world was MUCH SMALLER and what could stimulate our senses was more often between our four walls, it is no wonder many people started making bread. It was primal to smell and touch the dough and hear the crunch as we sliced a fresh loaf. It looked different since we didn’t remove a clasp and grab slices from a plastic bag. It was sensory, it was primal. While we did not partake, and bake our bread, I would imagine those that did have durable memories of what it was like.

Not So Good — Are You a Wishcycler?

I’m not sure when I first heard the expression wish-cycling but it was one of those random things that re-entered my mind when I wrote this. Many of the problems in our society appear intractable. However, with more critical examination, solutions are not as impossible as we imagine.

Wishcyclers throw stuff into the recycle they “hope” can be recycled. Those silly $6 cups of coffee from the “cool place” where the inside of the cup is coated with plastic? Yep, you are a wishcycler. That pizza box you picked up and turned a little quickly on the way home, securing some topping in a greasy mess to the box? Yep, that is wishcycling. Recycling is work. It’s optional. If you wish to bother, just go to your municipality and determine what they can deal with. Even the most faraway place has a website. The information is pretty easy to access. I would wager your community even has a refrigerator magnet with the details. I do not think the magnet is recyclable. Every community is different and the time commitment is <60 seconds to know what to do. It is one of those small extra burdens of living in the modern world. “Miscycled” stuff means someone has to sort it, judge whether it is recyclable and remove it. Depending on whether it contaminates stuff around it means other stuff must be removed from the stream. Think about half a jar of marinara without a lid. What did I learn in 60 seconds? After you rinse a bottle, put the cap back on and then recycle TO PREVENT CONTAMINATION — EVERYONE can do that!

I watched a short video recently about a municipality focused on changing the garbage experience. They focused on composting as a means to create better dirt for the agricultural community which surrounds them. The incentive was to offer FREE GARBAGE service based upon the level of material properly sorted into the recycling and compost stream. As a mostly plant-based eater, it has been shocking to see a large reduction in total garbage when you stop buying packaged and frozen food and buy a larger percentage of whole foods. Until we sold our home of thirty years, I was amazed by the reduction in garbage I saw when I focused on eating whole foods. I was throwing the coffee grounds and all the peelings of vegetables and fruits to compost. Not buying many packaged goods meant even more reduction.

I would wager across my panoply of subscribers an urge toward sarcasm and snarky comments is brewing. What is the reality? In the United States, it is estimated that UP TO 40% of all food is disposed of as waste! I am not immune as we all know what happens when we slice an avocado a couple of days later than peak. Sure I waste some food but I have been surprised how much the lifetime of fresh vegetables and fruits can be extended by SIMPLY KNOWING how to store them. This isn’t a crazed recycler talking. It is a frugal (cheap) person who figures if I buy three cucumbers, I may as well eat them instead of throwing them away! The idea of throwing 2 of every 5 tomatoes away sounds ridiculous. Not ridiculous, just average. A simple way to be an outlier I guess.

In the nearly four years since I adopted plant-based eating, I cannot get over how much we control how long something lasts! I think in my desire to eat in this new fashion, there was a tendency to not eat everything before it went bad. Nowadays, that almost NEVER happens. Our dog happens to LOVE CUCUMBERS. I like the dog but not well enough to shop for cucumbers 3X a week. For those of you that used to read a daily newspaper consider this your Heloise tip of the week.

1. When you buy cucumbers you of course buy the ones as firm as possible.

2. When you get home, WRAP the cucumbers in plastic wrap tightly.

3. Put the cucumbers either in a separate container or the crisper in the refrigerator.

4. Unless you go away on vacation for ten days, the cucumbers will be crisp when you unwrap and use them.

So now, step back and IMAGINE if (1) 40% of food is wasted (2) nearly ALL of it is compostable (3) the soil in large parts of the world is extremely deficient in quality (4) our approach is to supplement soil quality by tilling it, adding chemical fertilizers and generous use of chemical pesticides. If everyone managed to just throw their food waste into a composter stream, that simple act would improve the quality of the land and lead in many cases to a reduction in the cost of garbage service. 40% food waste is one of the most depressing numbers I can think of when you consider the suffering and food insecurity existing in our country. So even if you don’t give a darn about the environment, you can save money. Most intractable problems often have a simple solution. While it might seem silly at the outset, here is a video about garbage collection in San Francisco. A video about this topic was recently shared with me and I just thought why didn’t I think of that??? You pay for service based on the BIN SIZE. If you choose and use larger compost and recycle bins and a SMALLER garbage bin, YOU PAY LESS. That seems so straightforward and sensible, I wish it were adopted elsewhere.

One thing is for sure. I do not consider my readers average by any stretch. If you are when it comes to what you throw away, today is about reducing what you throw away by more than half. It is easy. It is half the trips to the garbage can or the chute and can become a habit in about four weeks.

The 40% food waste is stuck in my head like an earworm. Tending to the quality of the soil of our world seems easy if we are so foolish as to not even eat almost half of what we raise. Here is an oldish post titled Dirt. I was reminded of this by my exploration of a class recently.

Dirt

In keeping with my new format and philosophy I am wrapping up now! About eight minutes but still gotta do the poll and the music. However, I will return to this topic, but when I do, it will be tied to the tragedy of the commons. Instead of worrying about why people don’t recycle, imagine a modest change in approach:

• When a company provides a product, they are positioned to collect the profit.

• What if a requirement were added to products wherein the manufacturer retains responsibility for the eventual disposal of the product? This mostly means bonding (insuring) the cost of remediation in case of bad behavior.

• This is simply aligning the restitution of a given product to the manufacturer. Imagine if we decided that AA batteries shouldn’t end up in a landfill. Trying to convince the buyers to do it is a lost cause and an unreasonable imposition DESIGNED to fail. Requiring the manufacturer to COVER THE COST of the recycling via insurance insulates us, regular folks, from fixing the problem (and paying for it!) long after the manufacturer has taken the money and ridden off into the sunset. The tragedy of the commons at work. Insurance and bonding have worked for centuries. Perhaps it is time to dust it off again.

The Poll & Music

As a tribute to recency bias, what the heck is going on with the things we never forget?