 to Davis Media. Welcome to another episode of In the Studio. My guests are Larry Fisher, eco-hero, Jim Hill, senior recycling specialist to talk about the reuse revolution. Well it is no secret that the United States is a land of consumerism and for many the infamous land of waste. A few years ago I met a student from Nigeria here in Davis. He had just come into the country and the conversation of first experiences or first impressions came up. So I asked him if he had had a first impression of the United States and his answer totally astounded me. He looked at me, he paused and then seriously said the size of your waste and the size of your trash cans. Wow! So what are we going to do to minimize the amount of trash we generate? Jim, you've been a recycling specialist professionally for many years and you've also been dealing with recycling. What did you recycle and where? Well I'm happy to say I'm actually retired now but yes for many years I started with the California's bottle build program and in California as in some states you pay a deposit to get your bottles back and from there I branched out into many different aspects of recycling and reuse and so I've done a lot of research. I've been involved in the sustainable materials research unit in Cal Recycle and a lot of policy work on some of the the 30,000 foot level sorts of things that we can do as a society to to make our system more sustainable from the materials and energy. So you are one of the best people to be here? Well I hope so. Yeah so um yeah reuse in particular is something that often gets sort of short shrift and you hear the mantra reduce recycle or excuse me reduce reuse recycle see there I forgot. People focus mostly on recycling which is which is a good thing we do need to recycle more materials but reuse actually can save more energy more materials than recycling. It's harder to measure which is probably one reason we don't give it as as much attention. Yes well I I understand that recycling is very expensive in terms of energy and manpower or person power and so reusing is more cost effective wouldn't you agree to that? That's generally the case and and of course when when we use terms like more expensive that you always have to say well compared to what? Yes. And so from a broader standpoint recycling uses much less energy typically than making making things out of virgin materials reuse can often use even less energy than recycling. Case in point for many years in California we had a voluntary bottle system for refillable bottles. Yes. And as a kid I would go up and down the beach we used to call it bottle hunting. Yes. And we'd go hunt for bottles and take them to the grocery store and return them that was all a reuse system. Yes. They would take the the glass bottles back and wash them use them again and use them locally typically. Now that whole system has changed dramatically since I was a kid. Yeah and it's a pity because it was also an incentive to earn a little money. It is. Yes. Still an incentive in California but the system has shifted more towards recycling. I see. Which is I'm glad you make the distinction between the two because a lot of people including me have a little trouble understanding. Right. So that's very nice. Let me just move to Larry and Larry you are as I said the cool Davis hero eco hero and Buster Recycler and you are very well known in Davis for your efforts and your contribution. So thank you for what you do for the community. Now you've had a very adventurous life and you lived in very poor country one of them being I believe Yucatan. Yes. And that I believe gave you a different perspective on what people are using and wasting. So when you came back you you came up with very artistic and creative ideas on how to create something different transform something that was to be thrown away into something more than you could use. Why are you doing this? I ask myself that every day. Well I do it with a big picture is the climate change and that we are the 5 percent of the world's population using 25 percent of the world's resources and so I'm trying to look for a way that in our culture and our way of high usage of material goods to not be the low usage of the third world in developing countries that I witnessed when I was living overseas but to have us do our part following the Paris climate conference that basically said we all have to work locally to reduce our carbon footprint so that's where I begin. What I'm particularly interested in what you do is that you use your artistic talent to recreate something that was trash and that becomes a very artistic very reusable object and to illustrate that perhaps we can show I think you brought two or three images of what you've created so let's see if we can here we go so what is this? Well I personally don't consider this one of my most artistic pieces. Doesn't matter, it looks very handsome to me. So my concept is Torima and it's the first two letters of totally recycled materials so I start with something and I see it that it's occurring in the natural environment or in the recycled environment at materials recovery and so this is a bunk bed frame put horizontally. Was or is? It was, it is no longer, it is now a workbench. I see, yes. It's a pity we don't have a before and after. I should have that but I was told I only had a few slides. Good answer. So steel corner pieces were put in the corner of this bunk bed frame recycle four by four posts are put in for the legs and the door is a from Hibbert Lumber locally here they give me all these free free solid cord doors so this can be taken down taken in your car somewhere you can put up your workshop and then put on workshops for people or just our tools or arts or something like that. Yes, for the second one yes that's very it's just a coffee table yes yes and this is without the glass this I made some years ago and this is leaf springs these are the curved springs that are underneath the cars and I just kind of cleverly welded them together because I like the beautiful form that they created when they're welded together in this form and the top part is bed frames and then we'll put glass on the top so it's local materials saved from going over to China to end up in some smelter to be used locally and the hope with these products that I'm showing you is that someday we can have an assembly line cottage industry where we don't ship this stuff outside of our country and then have it come back looking very much like a coffee table from overseas well this is oh this is beautiful what is it oh this is the the intermediate stage I worked with the five engineering seniors last year and we I proposed an all recycle materials chicken coop and all the door opening and closing and the misting system to keep them cool that added on to this once it was finished was was all recycled materials and mostly recycled materials but I insisted that the students take a look and see how to make an all automated chicken coop and to to change their way of thinking that we have local sources here and that as engine future engineers they need to go into those new sources so that's this was the well you know it's very impressive it's very pleasing to look at and very useful so and I I dare to say that you probably enjoyed it a lot to create these new things yes very very creative endeavor and I'm so impressed with people that can do CAD drawings on top of laptops and show me what they've envisioned and flip it around the students that I worked with are just amazing I'm so impressed with and you are a teacher and you teach students here locally yes yeah on campus I've done three seminars on campus where we took broken tool heads garden tool heads and we refitted them with TV antennas and conduit and whatnot not that I think that people with UC Davis degrees are going to make tools I wanted them to see a new way of looking at the world of recycle it's very very interesting what you're saying and I hope that someday as you mentioned we'll have a cottage industry here in Davis made of and I think you would be the best person to to spearhead that so yeah it is very impressive it makes me you know my granddaughter who's only eight she watches my froggy stuff in at YouTube and it's the same concept they take little pieces of things and then they make something else with it sorry I digress but I'm glad to get to the younger people because they have to carry the weight of the carbon footprint and what's happening in the world and if I could jump in just a minute what Larry's doing is is a great example of a new way of thinking that is taking the world by storm in many ways yes reuse is a big part of that more recycling and in the past we had what some analysts call a take make waste economy a lean make waste take make waste it's a linear economy where we extract things out of the ground we make something we use it up and we throw it in the ground again now there's much talk the latest buzzword is called a circular economy yes and in fact in Europe and parts of Asia these are these notions are being enshrined in law and so it's a little slow income in the United States but Larry's on the forefront I think of how you can do that locally and it has global implications well this is very interesting we there was let me quickly go to another point which I think is key because 15 minutes go fast and I wanted to start with Jim very quickly now there is a dilemma with this recycling reusing and conserving energy is consumerism many people say is leads to prosperity in other words companies produce people buy and companies make money and give it to people who buy more so how do you how do you balance the the consumerism versus the conserving energy and materials yes do you know if the industry has an answer you sure there's lots of lots of people working on this issue and it is an excellent question we're so used to think thinking that growth is the answer and in fact there's much research that suggests that if we can make things in a different way we can still have prosperity one statistic from actually it's very old study is one analyst or groups looked at tonnage of material and they looked at 15 000 tons of material going to the landfill translated into about one job at the landfill the same materials going into a reuse and recycling economy produced nine jobs oh fabulous and so that's just one one example but there's much much more interest in this sort of circular notion nowadays with the drivers of climate change pollution in the ocean toxicity in the materials we use all these things are pushing to use materials and energy better yeah it's fascinating I'm I'm afraid I must stop you there I just want to mention because we're out of time I just want to mention that Terry has Larry has a website torima torma.org and I think it's going to display here and if it isn't just find it it's very very useful well gentlemen I'm afraid we're out of time thank you so much for what you do for the community and and for your contribution and for being here and thank you all for watching now you can see you can stream this episode again on our website at dctv.davismedia.org and while you're there you can check out some of our other programs we have very interesting topics and outstanding guests thank you for watching I'm Lynn Weaver see you next time