Trash Talk

Litter, trash, waste, rubbish, garbage: all nouns of an age of when environmental concerns were not at the heightened state they are now. An age when there was little concern for the things we no longer use, or might have a second life use for. 

As we are now very much aware, there is no away to throw to: our planet is visibly full of the stuff we throw out. It’s time to consign the idea of rubbish / garbage to the dustbin of history.

The electric car sector has coined the term ‘second life’ for its re-use of batteries, for their use away from vehicles in battery storage. This demonstrates a use of language to redefine a sector, and a sense of what can be achieved.

We need a new positive lexicon for an age of re-use, recycling and repurpose, to give us a new sense of purpose. So ‘materials bin’ instead of rubbish / garbage bin; ‘re-use truck’, instead of refuse / garbage truck. 

Recommerce is a powerful, positive new term to describe an economy where materials have value, and are part of an ethical cycle in which goods come into our lives and are part of a system in an onwards journey of re-use. It helps to 'rebrand rubbish' as resource, to rethink ‘waste’ (as we now know it) as an asset. Corporates like Unilever are signing up to this as part of their sustainability strategies, partnering up with prominent newcomer Loop, in a new materials re-use initiative from U.S. based TerraCycle.

‘Language is use.’ to quote the linguistic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstain. Let’s use better language in our sustainability speak, as it defines out sense of the world around us, and, therefore, the reality of the world around us.