Want Not, Waste Not

https://tinyletter.com/grahammoliver/letters/want-not-waste-not

Friends,

The fall semester is in full swing. We just finished Week 5 out of 16, so the first big assignments are rolling in. Earlier I procrastinated writing this newsletter by doing laundry. Now I am procrastinating grading by writing this newsletter. Always have multiple tasks you need to do so you can accomplish one by procrastinating from another — it’s peak efficiency.

The university has put me in different lecture halls this semester, so I’m walking paths I previously had not walked. The nearby food/drink choices are a little worse; the faculty lounges are a little better. My new routine takes me past this shiny black cube in the photo above. It marks the spot where 陳文成/Chen Wen-chen was found dead in 1981. Professor Chen was a graduate of NTU, who moved to the US for his PhD and was later a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He was publicly critical of the totalitarian KMT rule of Taiwan, and was apprehensive about returning to Taiwan, but his mother convinced him. Upon his arrival, he was interrogated by government officials, then he was found dead at NTU the next day. The government asserted Chen had committed suicide. After the KMT’s single-party rule ended, some investigations were launched, but no conclusive evidence was ever found, nor was anyone prosecuted for his death. The memorial above was constructed in 2021, though there have been disagreements since then about what the plaque should say.

Life is starting to feel familiar again after an unusual summer. A little more travel than usual and a lot more visitors to Taiwan than usual. A few newsletters ago I wrote about noticing one product of aging is a certain inflexibility, and I got a closeup look into my own inflexibility this summer. I’ve become overly obsessive with waste. In Taiwan it’s very easy to be minimalist: small apartment, public transportation, no lawn. It’s so easy to buy fewer things when you have literally no space to put them, believe it or not.

In effect, moving to Taiwan pushed the reset button on our shopping habits and possessions. We were armed with both the knowledge of what items are most important to us, while also in a place where every purchase took more work and research since we were unfamiliar with brands, storefronts, and websites. Plus, Taiwanese policies help. Food waste is easier to avoid both because the grocery and market are more convenient (so more frequent but smaller trips resulting in less spoilage) and because eating out is cheaper (and, in theory, communal eating in restaurants should be more efficient). Public trashcans are rare and large chains don’t provide disposable plastic bags, making me more likely to a) weigh every purchase that involves needing to throw something away, like a drink, and b) remember my tote bags. Don’t get me wrong — Taiwan still has a long way to go, especially with the huge amount of waste generated by takeout. But in general, it feels like they’re at least trying. Taipei banned single-use plastic cups from drink shops last year — all of them have to use cardboard now, though there are still plastic lids around. Too often, corporations are only responsible for the costs of creating their goods. Cost of disposal is borne by the consumers, the government, and society, and is largely invisible; thus there is little incentive to improve it. It’s a policy of enforced selfishness, similar to how safety ratings for vehicles measure only how well they protect the people inside of them and not how dangerous they are to other vehicles or pedestrians.

Here, I am also legally entitled to a discount when I bring my own cup to any beverage shop. On the airplane leaving Taiwan, the flight attendant wouldn’t pour water from their pitcher into my thermos.

I avoid waste not just out of an altruistic desire to reduce pollution, but also out of a malicious desire to give corporations less money, and a selfish desire to spend less money. Like vegetarianism, being sensitive about waste is difficult to talk about. You worry about seeming smug, superior. It’s also often rooted in illogic. After all, why does it bother me so much to see people watering their tiny little lawns in suburban Austin’s desert when an estimated 70–80% of Texas’s groundwater is used to irrigate crops? How can I be disappointed in individuals purchasing individually wrapped slices of cheese and plastic bottles of water when a mere twenty companies are responsible for more than 50% of all single-use plastics?

It’s enough to drive one crazy, and it should be.

I’m not advocating abdication of responsibility, but instead a reality check for myself in terms of who to be focused on. After all, I’m still flying across oceans occasionally. I’m still buying plastic wrapped things I don’t have to. I’m still doing plenty for someone else to look down on me.

Further reading:

• University rankings are a controversial subject. I think most people will agree that there’s no way to distill the multi-faceted college experience down to a single number, yet without rankings it becomes very difficult for students and parents to navigate the decision of where to apply. This year the rankings conversation is especially tumultuous, because the most popular assigner of ranks (US News & World Report) changed their metrics a significant amount while more universities continue to drop out of the process entirely. I wrote about it , both summarizing the changes and offering some guiding data points beyond rankings.
• Uncanny Magazine published two really incredible speculative fiction pieces last month. “The Girl with a City Inside of Her” by Jeanette Ng and “Can You Hear Me Now?” by Catherynne M. Valente are both incredibly stirring and remarkably crafted.
• The universe delivers the perfect amount of literary criticism to my doorstep somehow (which is about four articles per year). Loved reading this extensive chronicling of Zadie Smith’s career by Andrea Long Chu, sad to read so many people’s response being “I disagree” (I also disagreed with some of it! But still loved reading it and find broad agreement/disagreement completely uninteresting here.)
• Editor Anne Kosseff-Jones has put together a crowd-sourced spreadsheet of “gentle TV” which I highly approve of, though I won’t make much use of it myself, as I watch TV very slowly (currently working through Izakaya Bottakuri).
• Relatedly, the NYTimes published a list of recipes “to make for someone going through a hard time.” They’re not recipes I would’ve chosen, but I love the idea and vibe.
• Goodreads has its problems, but as a public data source of what people are reading, what is better? Loved this breakdown of the highest rated books from every country .
• Leon Chang exists at the intersection of two of my favorite things: lofi music and video games. His newest album, i spent the whole summer playing video games , echoes not just video game soundtracks but also Studio Ghibli. Start with “Mooncake Festival” .
• And, related to Mooncake Festival/Moon Festival/Mid-Autumn Festival/bunnies on the moon/中秋節, Grace Loh Prasad has a wonderful short mooncake-centric memoir essay at Jellyfish Review .
• Tressie guest hosted The Ezra Klein Show twice last month, and unsurprisingly both interviews are fantastic. The first was with ALA President Emily Drabinski, covering libraries as one of the few equally shared spaces in America and why this draws so much ire. The second was with Dr. Pooja Lakshmin about her book Real Self-Care , which is pushing back against the Instagramification of self-care. Highly recommend you seek them out wherever you listen to podcasts.

At the end of graduate school I started work on an essay I never published, analyzing my own avoidance of meat as not a way to reduce the suffering of animals, nor as a way of reducing the amount of climate destruction I leave in my wake, but instead as a way of exerting some sense of control in a world that often seems so completely out of my control. These small measures of waste-obsession might be a symptom of the same root cause, but hey, there are unhealthier ways of feeling some measure of agency. And, after all, it echoes forward: changing your behavior changes the behavior of those around you, whether it’s what you order at a restaurant or if you take your snazzy tote bag to the market. So go forth, having read this, and prepare your reusable cup before you head out of the house on a trip that might involve buying coffee. Not only will you make the world a tiny bit better, but just as importantly, you’ll make me feel a little less powerless too.

Which is all we can ask for, really. Until next time,

-g

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