by Lance Robertson

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, Nov 16, 1999.

Nov. 16 -- SPRINGFIELD, Ore. -- Inside a thin plastic produce bag is the
sum of Brookrod's household trash from the past few days: two strands of
dental floss, a broken rubber band and one of those annoying stickers the
grocery stores slap on fruit.

That's it. No cans, no plastic, no food wrappers, no cartons, no
newspapers, no cereal boxes, no junk mail.

"Of the waste-reduction trio of 'reduce, reuse, recycle,' I emphasize the
reduce and reuse parts so that I have very little to even recycle, never
mind throw away," says Brookrod, a 45-year-old Eugene Public Library
employee.

Very little. Now that's an understatement.

Brookrod, who legally changed his given name several years ago, generated
only about 20 pounds of trash during the past year. And most of that was
paper for recycling.

Compare that with the annual waste generated by the average Lane County
resident: 2,778 pounds.

"It's quite a feat," says Tanya Baker, head of recycling programs for Lane
County.

The Lane County commissioners thought so, too, and recognized Brookrod with
a recycling award this week. He was one of three recipients of annual
awards given to individuals, businesses and others for reducing waste in
Lane County.

Brookrod, who lives in a modest two-bedroom home in central Springfield,
felt honored. But he says he found the award a bit ironic, "since I don't
really recycle that much."

That's because he practices waste-reduction techniques at home and in other
aspects of his life, nearly eliminating all items that could be recycled or
thrown into landfills.

"He's made a lot of decisions not to buy things that already are packaged,"
Baker says. "A lot of the waste we generate these days comes from
packaging, or simply from the desire to buy a new thing before the old
thing wears out."

While Oregonians have made great strides in recycling waste, we keep
producing more stuff every year, according to state and county statistics.

Each Oregonian produces 30 percent more waste than he or she did in 1992.

An adherent of the "voluntary simplicity" movement, Brookrod bucks that
trend. He buys only nonpackaged goods.

Nearly all of his clothing, furniture and other household items are
secondhand or were scavenged after being thrown away. The jeans he wore
Friday, for example, were obtained from a friend and local teacher who goes
Dumpster-diving on weekends.

He also owns no television, computer, car or microwave. He rides the bus or
his bicycle to work. He borrows his neighbors' lawn mower, then mows both
lawns.

"I live my life pretty simply," he says.

Yet he lives alone, comfortably, in the house he bought three years ago on
a quiet street off Mohawk Boulevard.

There's nothing unusual about his home.

The living room and bedrooms are neat and tidy, with the tasteful living
room furniture and piano (all used, of course) nicely arranged. This isn't
some cinder-block-and-board arrangement.

"He isn't some kind of hermit freak," Baker says. "Some people may think
you can't live a normal life and generate almost no waste. But he's shown
you can do it, and he does it without feeling deprived in life."

But how can Brookrod produce so little trash when the rest of us are
filling up our garbage cans every week and hauling bag after bag of cans,
plastic containers, newspapers and the like out to the curb for recycling?

The key is in buying bulk products or those that don't come wrapped or
packaged, he says.

He buys bulk foods, spices, shampoo and other goods, putting them in
reusable containers he's carted to the grocery store. He has his own
garden. Instead of buying paper towels and tissues, he opts for cloth
versions. Even the soap he buys is not packaged.

Brookrod is able to read the newspaper at the library, where he works 24
hours a week, by choice. The only batteries he uses are in his home's smoke
detector.

He tries to flush the toilet only once a day. A sign in his bathroom urges
visitors to think about how flushing will impact the environment. It
begins, "If you poop. ... "

Brookrod also composts all of his food scraps but says he's "pretty careful
not to let stuff go bad" once it is prepared. "Most of it gets eaten." He's
a vegetarian.

He admits, however, that his lifestyle requires him to make trade-offs
frequently. For example, he bought a low-energy, front-loading clothes
washer but dries all of his clothing on racks.

Brookrod grew up in Massachusetts but began to get serious about recycling
and waste reduction soon after moving to Eugene in 1989. He says he slowly
adopted many of the voluntary simplicity and waste-reduction techniques.

He legally changed his name several years ago because he didn't like the
"patriarchal hierarchy" of how names are passed down to the next
generation. The name Brookrod has no special significance, he adds.

"I've always had a concern about the great law of cause and effect," he
says. "How I choose to live and shop affects the health of myself and other
people, as well as the health and well-being of the planet."

In recent years, Brookrod has become a waste-reduction activist, holding
meetings in his home on the simplicity movement and speaking at events such
as the Association of Oregon Recyclers' Conference and the annual
Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon.

Baker says others can learn from Brookrod's example.

"With just a few changes, like buying more bulk items instead of
pre-packaged ones, people can have a dramatic impact on how much waste is
being produced," she says. "Do we really need all the stuff we think we
need?"

Copyright 1999 The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore. Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Business News.