CIRCLES

In this article, I am going to look at ways that circles can help you act in an environmentally-friendly way. This time we are not looking at the circles you can see but those you cannot.

Straight-Line Thinking

The reason for a lot of pollution is the straight-line. (No I have not gone completely batty. Let me explain.) Most humans think in terms of straight-lines. Production lines tend to be built on this idea, starting with the raw material and finishing with the end product. Purchasing is certainly built on this principle. We start off with a new product, use it up or wear it out and ultimately throw it away.....sometimes not even that......sometimes we simply get bored with it and throw it away.

The problem with a straight line is that it has an end. Everything that travels down a straight-line ultimately reaches this end and stays there - unless it turns around at the bottom and does the return journey. Circles are different. Try finding the end of a wedding ring......you cannot.....it goes on and on indefinitely.

Circles

In nature, processes are usually circular. Think of one of these circles. Plants get nutrients from the soil, animals eat plants, predators eat other animals, when these predatory animals die they either provide nutrients for the soil or are eaten by smaller animals and the process continues. Here is a simpler one, a tree takes nutrients from the soil, grows tall, eventually dies and rots back into the soil providing nutrients for a new tree.

Circles do not create pollution as the resources are never collected in one space. They simply travel round and round the circles.

Creating Circles

In order to work with the environment, therefore, we need to create more circles. To do this it is simply a matter of asking "Then what?".

Try this with a bottle of lemonade:

1. I buy a bottle of lemonade in a plastic bottle.
2. "Then what?"
3. I drink the lemonade.
4. "Then what?"
5. Then the bottle gets taken away.
6. "Then what?"
7. Then it gets dumped in a landfill site.
8. "Then what?"
9. Well eventually it will rot down, hopefully, but nothing really happens to it for a few hundred years. As far as "Then what?" you have come to a pretty big "Then nothing
   The copyright of the article CIRCLES in Green Home is owned by Linda Little. Permission to republish CIRCLES in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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