Recycling is one Midwestern habit from which few have strayed. Those who did are coming back to their roots, and for reasons beyond the frugality that established the practice. We now add the “green advantage” when reusing products, or choosing not to use something if there isn’t a need.
Most people in Northeast Iowa recognize the importance of reducing what is in our landfills in order to protect our families, livestock, and fields from contamination. We understand how food gets to our tables, and the cycle that brought it there - nothing originated on the shelves of the M & M Family Market and Catering.
The Upper Iowa River Watershed (UIRW) is an area of “steep and rugged landscape”, a cover for the karst topography unique to our region. In a report from the Northeast Iowa RC&D, The Upper Iowa River Watershed Project states, “Karst topography is defined by land that is underlain by soluble bedrock, such as limestone, and characterized by depressions in the ground, or sinkholes, caves, and underground drainage. Because water can enter the subsurface easily through conduits and fractures in the soluble limestone bedrock, karst aquifers are highly susceptible to contamination.”
This description in the report sounds familiar to us: “Karst topography features in the watershed include; springs, streams that disappear into bedrock fissures, sinkholes, caves, and steep, highly erodible hillsides. These features facilitate direct mixing of surface and ground water. Karst experts typically measure the development of karst by the number of sinkholes, springs and known caves. The UIRW has thousands of sinkholes, hundreds of springs and dozens of known caves.”
Two sentences from a study released through the U.S. Geological Survey called Karst Topography – Teacher’s Guide and Paper Model explain it well. “Although karst processes sculpt beautiful landscapes, karst systems are very vulnerable to ground water pollution due to the relatively rapid rate of water flow and the lack of a natural filtration system. This puts local drinking water supplies at risk of being contaminated.”
Heck, we’ve known for quite awhile that our beautiful landscape is largely shaped by the dissolving action of water on carbonate bedrock, meaning our limestone bluffs are a mixed blessing. What we put into sinkholes and landfills, the chemicals we put onto our fields, and concentrated animal waste aren’t filtered naturally here. We run a greater risk of getting undesirable and harmful stuff in the water we drink.
The watershed data merely supports age-old practices. What it boiled down to in our household was The Great Depression. The Barn and The Peg would look with wide-eyed horror at the things my generation put curbside on garbage day.
“We went through the Depression, and we had to do without. We know better than to waste anything!”
The Peg purchased two sleeves of Styrofoam cups back in the early Sixties. She thought they would be handy to take on our summer vacations, long camping marathons that allowed a family of seven to economically tour the Upper 48. Handy, yet she washed and reused those white 8-ounce vessels, and still had at least a fourth of the original purchase when she moved into retirement living in 1996. Her offspring would commiserate, saying,
“She went through the Depression, you know.”
The Barn added a bathroom for my sister and me around the cement-block shower stall in the basement of 415 Quincy Avenue, Ottumwa, Iowa. He defined the “unfitted” look I later mimicked in my 2000 A.D. kitchen renovation. The two sinks, salvaged from who-knows-where, were both white, but the similarities ended there. He used odds ’n ends lumber to create a beautiful, enormous wall of cabinets, and painted the concrete walls and floor of the entire 150-square-foot space with a speckled pink, turquoise, and white waterproof finish, reminiscent of terrazzo. It was a labor of love and recycled good stuff. Our reaction?
“He went through the Depression, you know.”
The Peg designed and made the most imaginative clothes for my sisters and me, from what her Home Ec students at Charles D. Evans Junior High would toss into the trash. I possess one of those signature outfits, which she kept for some silly reason. The fabric was still good, so perhaps she planned to use it for something else. “Waste not, want not,” was her motto, and she repeated it …frequently.
“The Depression, you know.”
The Peg didn't like it when I left things unfinished. It's not that she nagged, but having been through the Depression, she didn't take investments in materials lightly. When, in my thirties, I finished and framed an embroidered linen sampler I began for her ten years earlier, she blurted out, “I didn't think I'd ever see this!”, enunciating a fear that I had squandered my purchase. I’m not positive there is a connection between her response and the state of the economy during her formative years, but a common justification of Baby Boomers when we don't understand our parents' behaviors is,
“They went through the Depression, you know.”
I teach people to quilt using reclaimed and recycled fabric. Like The Barn and The Peg, I relish the challenge of making something beautiful and useful from what had once been rubbish. Hubba and I know very few people who don’t recycle now, and know plenty who think throwing away perfectly good stuff makes no sense.
Our abilities to be creative, and pride in our beautiful Northeast Iowa landscapes have connected generations, spawned art and inventively useful items, and joined political debaters in common goals of healthy and inspired living. People elsewhere may not appreciate the multi-faceted advantages to recycling, but we do here. By the time others catch up to our innovations, we’ll be the masters of it. It seems we’re on the cutting edge of a movement, already there before it was a movement.
Oh, yeah. We’re hot.
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns February 2006
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