A few days ago, at the Target check-out line, I quickly pulled out my trusty re-usable shopping bag to prevent the default plastic bag extravaganza. I’m used to having to force this unfamiliar object on check-out clerks, whose years of training have led to automatic waste. I’m certainly no paragon of environmental virtue, but I try to adopt reasonable measures to cut my own engrained throughtlessness. Anyway, this time I was delighted to hear the woman working the register say, “Oh good… we’re all trying to remember now, right?” And I thought, “Are we?! Fantastic!”

This was one of the best “we” identifications I’ve experienced lately, and brought home some of the subtle (and admittedly belated) evidence I’ve started to see of a nascent populist environmental conscience in which “we” are reasonable and responsible, economically savvy, even patriotic in attempts to revise assumptions that a central American value is the right to waste. But more importantly, we’re having the conversations.

Apparently this “we” is still a collection of individuals, however, rather than a collective drive that would include the astonishing waste that continues at higher levels, from the nonsensical plastic-bagging of backpacks checking on planes to the electric mayhem of Times-Squarish neon advertising that illuminates deserted downtown Columbus. Today I saw the the local gas station has installed TVs on every pump, as if we all need to waste electricity for the minute we’re (wastefully) pumping gas… including, again, when there’s no audience. But I digress from my morning optimism.

The morning was made even brighter by this article in today’s NYT about Michelle Obama’s new vegetable garden on the White House lawn:

“My hope,” the first lady said in an interview in her East Wing office, “is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”

from the vegetable garden (by Shelley & Dave, flickr)

All this positive energy, in the midst of national anger and despair over where waste (of cultural, political, environmental “capital”) has led the country, has renewed a rhetorical vigor that I haven’t experienced since my younger days, when I handed my mink-wearing aunt a Peta “Fur is Dead” coffee mug, conscientiously objected to disection, and dreamed of saving the whales with Greenpeace. At some point, I stopped “preaching” and pushing my ideas on others, assuming that a non-judgmental modeling would be more effective than overt pressure, that composting, biking, and reasonably restricting my use of chemicals was a personal choice.

These days, though, I find myself thinking more about the simple and obvious lessons we could all be sharing just by talking about these choices, by enjoying the kind of productive dialogue that, at its best, rhetoric can be and promote.

So I was out in Denver recently to revisit the Peter-Pan lifestyle that I used to lead not all that long ago.  While pulling out of the Whole Foods (which used to be a Wild Oats) I noticed perhaps one of the most effective (public) rhetorical maneuvers that I’ve seen in a long time.

Envision if you will walking up to these two containers:

As I walk up with a plastic bottle, I look for the recycling option, which is not only there, but has a nice list of what’s acceptable and what’s not.  I was thrilled with the fact that an effort was being made to not only sort but educate at the same time, knowing that recycling literacy is pitiful — even among those that self-identify as “green.”  (Click here to see what Columbus accepts, which is a pretty standard list.)

But I was even more THRILLED when I saw this label on the other can:

What an effective way to redirect someone’s thought-path to consequences that aren’t otherwise considered in throwing away something into a “trash” bin.  Even though it’s a move done by Whole Foods (a company whose ethical principles sometimes walk the line), it’s an excellent example of micro-politics: the making of everyday occurrences into conscious political acts.

And here’s the best part: this is easily transferable into an activist project that anyone can participate in.  Stickers, stencils, or a simple crossed out “trash” with a penned in “landfill” in its spot will redirect otherwise mindless acts of devastation.

Perhaps someone should take the time to create a “landfill sticker depot” where you can get landfill stickers sent to you so that you can do some redirecting whenever you find the chance.  A similar thing happened with the “Fuck” project.  If you want to get some immature kicks, the book, “Fuck this Book” is relentlessly funny.  Some sample shots below.  Enjoy.

But seriously, thoughts on trashy rhetorics?