Throwing peanut butter jars in the trash

Why I have been known to do this, and other thoughts on hope & action for change

Sep 16, 2024

Hello Imagining Change readers,
Yes, you are getting my deepest admissions of imperfection this month. I have, indeed, thrown peanut butter jars in the trash instead of washing them out to recycle. On occasion. After they were already mouldy inside from sitting by the sink for too long “soaking” in preparation for washing. You already know this if you’ve read my book Tending Tomorrow, but if not…now you know.
This month we’re talking about balancing individual and systemic action, what hope has got to do with action, and why it doesn’t matter if the hoped-for outcome seems likely or not.
Thank you to everyone who is leaving reviews on Goodreads, Amazon and elsewhere. If you haven’t yet, would you consider taking five minutes right now to leave some stars and a couple sentences about what you thought of Tending Tomorrow? Reviews from readers like you are critical for helping books connect with future readers, and grow in reach. Here’s a guide to how to leave a review on Goodreads.
On the theme of food, Michael Turman wrote this review, probably my all-time favourite one!
“This is like a hearty potluck dish. I liked Leah Reesor-Keller’s stories, the questions and the combining of many different areas of interest. I’d describe her writing as moist with good flavours, not overly sweet, and dense with local, personal and world ingredients. “
Thank you for being on this journey with me, imagining and acting for change that leads to people and the planet flourishing together!
-Leah RK

So much beauty turning golden in September.

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I wrote a lot of words in Tending Tomorrow. Like around 45,000 or so. But the words people seem to remember most after reading the book are from this quote:

“On my worst days I chuck empty peanut butter jars into the trash instead of doing the sticky work of washing them out for recycling.”

It’s like my admission of this personal act of environmental disregard opens the confessional door to conversations that start, “I care about the climate, but….”

The magnitude of it all can feel overwhelming and push us to despair and its cousin apathy. Linking hope to action can also be problematic - is feeling hopeful of a good outcome a requirement for taking action? It can’t be - if so, we’d never be able to face down the odds and work for change anyway.

Back in June, I had a great conversation with host Ken Ogasawara from the MCC Undercurrents podcast where we talked about exactly this challenge. Below is an excerpt from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Ken:…You acknowledge that sometimes on your worst days, you're like, just, "What is the point of my scraping out this peanut butter jar? Why do I do these small acts, right? Do I plant this native species in the corner of my yard? Why do I bike here?" In the face of the overwhelming odds that are stacked against us with the fossil fuel industry and our complete reliance on cheap energy. But if I'm remembering correctly, you shared those stories as encouragement to say, those small acts matter.

Leah: We know that individual acts alone can't change the trajectory that we're on. I sometimes think of the older folks in my family and community who have been carrying cloth grocery bags to the store for decades. That has not changed the fact that we have this giant floating mass of plastic in the ocean, but it's a commitment that this kind of change is possible and we can do it. What we see now, what's common in our community where you and I live in Ontario and Canada is restrictions on use of plastic bags by stores. There is the expectation now that you should bring your own bags to the grocery store, and that's a normal thing to do.

So, sometimes the counter-cultural acts of saying, "We can live this way, this could be normal" combined with the structural systemic changes to do that at scale can make things happen. I know there's also some municipalities and some people who are advocating for municipalities to sue fossil fuel companies for the impacts of climate change on their communities. That is a fight that seems so unimaginable. How will we get fossil fuel companies, these large transnational corporations to in any way be accountable for their actions or work to change? How could individuals be able to make that happen? Yet we are seeing examples of where people are working against the odds to do something. If you don't take any action, no change is possible.

Ken: I just want to quote this one line that you referenced before we move on from the renewing our hope section. It's from writers Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, they say, "We don't need to believe that things will work out in the end." Well, expand on that, maybe just a few words around why you included that.

Leah: When I look at that quote, and this is a quote from longtime activists, people who have worked for a long time, especially in the prison abolition movement in the US, how oftentimes the odds, what we're struggling for, it seems like it might not be possible, but that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting for.

When I look at an example from here in Ontario, not too long ago, our provincial government and land developers were involved in all kinds of shady deals to strip environmental protections from land, a lot of which is farmland, so that it could be turned into large home developments. That is something that seemed inevitable that they would just have the power to do that and that they would just do that. But many, many, many, many people spoke out all across the province, different walks of life of people who said, "No, you can't do that. This is wrong. As citizens, we voted that this land, the Green Belt Land is important to us and we do not want to open that up, and we do not want to open it up to enrich the pockets of a few at the cost of a future for so many of us in terms of the importance of protecting this water, of protecting this land to grow food." For people who started this activism, independent grassroots journalists played really significant roles in making access to information requests and keeping the story going and getting it in the news.

It got to the point where the government had to backtrack and had to change plans that they had made even after they had passed some laws to open up these lands. I would say that would be an example of a struggle where it was important to show up and say, "No, this is not how it should go." Even when it seemed at the time there was no chance that would have any positive outcome.

…

Ken: Change is possible. I heard another person say that the world that we are envisioning is not fiction or an impossibility. It already exists in places. We just need to have the courage to be inspired by those ideas, apply them to our own contexts.

You can listen to the whole podcast episode here. How do you balance this in your life? How do you manage your energy between personal lifestyle actions and advocacy for government and policy changes that can make the biggest difference?

Imagining Change

Throwing peanut butter jars in the trash

Why I have been known to do this, and other thoughts on hope & action for change

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