When you hear about recycling, usually the message has to do with finding valuable, new uses for your trash. But the life of any garbage has been more interesting than just an exciting ending. It's probably had a lot of interesting experiences and has, at one time, been quite valuable to someone.

The life of any household good is full of questions. Before you, as a consumer, know which ones to ask, you may have some trouble choosing the products that are right for both you and the environment.

The question list can get fairly long.

How was the raw material gathered, mined or harvested? Did this process require chemicals or damage the environment in other ways? The same goes for production or manufacturing: what had to be done to turn the raw material into a finished good? How much energy was needed?

Then there are some extra considerations: how far did either the raw material or the manufactured item have to travel to get to your store shelf? Even the exhaust from the transport truck gets figured into the equation. And what about the packaging? How much is there and how was it made?

If you remember our family picnic from a few weeks ago, you'll recall that among a list of common household items could be found the entire range of biodegradability: vegetable waste that will turn into compost and plastics that last forever. When you're choosing products off the shelf, you have to do more than envision what they'll look like in the garbage heap.

The entire life of the product is important. Something that may appear natural, environmentally friendly, or just useful to have around could turn out to have a darker side to its personality.

Take cotton, for example. Billed as a comfy, natural fabric, cotton requires 25 per cent of all insecticides, but only takes up 3 per cent of the world's cropland. Organically grown cottons are becoming available, but there's still not a lot of it around.

The official terminology for the system of examining products for sustainability is a "Life-Cycle Analysis." At the extreme, an LCA can be a fairly technical process when you take into account all aspects of a product's life.

This kind of detailed analysis of a consumer good is something that can't be done with just a quick glance at a label. Generally, this kind of information only gets prepared by consulting firms for manufacturers, and rarely meets the eyes of consumers. When you're standing in a supermarket aisle, its hard to see the whole history of the packages that surround you.

There are things you can do:

» Find out all you can about the products you regularly use; contact the manufacturer for more information when you can't find it. If you're going to be buying something, you should have the right to know about everything you're getting for your money.

» When you can, buy locally produced goods. This supports local business, plus you'll have a better idea of were goods come from and how they're made.

And most importantly, be conscious that an environmental viewpoint isn't just a close focus on what happens at the end. When we recycle, it benefits the whole world; and when we pollute it similarly has negative effects that reach beyond a particular place.

Looking at the life cycles of the products we use can remind us of this global perspective.