You want to be green, right? You want a checklist of all the things to do and buy and then you can sit back and finally relax. Sorry, kids, it is simply not that easy. Being green means work. It means being on the lookout. It means making meaningful choices and doing it over and over again. The answers are simply not black and white. Green is a gray area.
First off, I have read articles of people who live off the grid. Some raise sheep and make their own cloth, compost their own feces and never drive a car. Good for them. Deep in my heart, a part of me wants to be them. Part of me wants to throw off the shackles of modern life and spend the remainder of my days meditating in an ashram until I die and my body is left out to be pecked apart by the birds of the mountains. It ain’t gonna happen. Since you are reading this, it means that you are living here in the modern world as well. Unless you are generating your own electricity by stationary bicycle, you may be able to get something our of this.
What does being sustainable really mean? Ask 10 people and you are likely to get ten different answers. I have developed my own working definition that fits me and my life. Sustainability, to me, means making the best possible choices for both me and the rest of the planet, based on the information that I have available at the time. This means that I try to do the right things.
I try to drive less and walk more. We could sell the car. Many people live without them. We live in Cleveland, though and I have to get around. I cannot run our business or even really get as much done in life without one. However, we drive a fuel efficient car. We try to walk more and shop locally. We combine trips and try to carpool when we can. I also bought us bikes, and hope to bike more. Being aware of the amount of gas we use is important and allows us to make decisions about when and where we will go. While not driving at all is the greenest thing, that is not going to happen. Buying a hybrid would be green, but using an old car that is still functioning and getting over 30 mpg and not having to build a new car just for us is even greener, in my opinion. When the car no longer gets decent gas mileage, or starts to fall apart, then we can make that decision.
I eat a lot less meat. I buy cage free eggs that are not fed hormones. Everybody eats. Everybody poops. Everybody. So when I buy my food, I try to buy items that are locally grown. I try to support stores that have local produce. I spend the extra buck on cage free, hormone free eggs, because it is something that I believe in and I stand by that no matter where I shop. I eat less meat and look for grass fed beef, because grass fed cows give off less methane and contribute less to global warming. I always buy TP with recycled content, and 100% unless it is not available.
I choose the most eco friendly products that I can. I try to buy products with the least packaging. Organic cotton items are often out of my price range, but I get them when I can. Vinyl has issues, so I try to avoid it. Plastics are a necessary evil in life today, but I look for the recycle symbol on things and given the choice, I buy the better option. Or sometimes I do not buy at all…
I shop less and I weigh my options when I spend my dollars. When we put in a new floor, I wanted an eco friendly product like bamboo. But is bamboo really that eco friendly when it has to come all the way from China? I shop at Wal Mart because of the things they are doing to green their stores and their supply chains, but I am always aware of past labor violations. I also am aware that so much of their product selection is cheap and will fall apart in a week. Instead, I would rather buy from a less eco friendly retailer and buy something that will not need to be replaced soon. I also think about the things that I buy and ask myself if I can get it used. The greenest items are the ones that are never produced at all.
So there are no easy answers, no one size fits all. You have your life and have to make the choices that you need to to live it. But there are always options and you have to make the best ones for you. Is it better to buy a greener product made by a company with human rights abuses? Or a product that is bad for the environment that that has no animal testing? Do you support local farmers who use pesticides, or a corporate farm that grows organic, in Mexico? Dig deep and spend your money wisely, and as you do, you will find that there are good and bad in most of the choices that you make. Choose the greenest answer and it won;t always be black and white, but sorta gray.
Tags: conservation, environment, Go Green, Green and Sustainable Design, Green Policies
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions you are right about that, but I ask you, How green is Wal-Mart really? In any town that has had a Wal-Mart longer than 15 years you are bound to find an old Wal-Mart somewhere in town. Here in my town it’s part of every day language when giving directions. They built a big development on one side of town and when the tax abatement was up they decided they were leaving town……..unless they would be granted another tax abatement for another location on the other side of town. It was granted and there sat the biggest eye soar in our town’s history for 8 years until the county finally purchased the property, putting the county 4 million dollars in debt.
I despise Wal-Mart for what they do small businesses and small business people. They carry nothing local, everything is shipped in from hundreds of miles away. They have done nothing but prey on our little town, never giving back and has wasted 5 acres of farm land that never needed developed and 5 acres of wet lands that didn’t need developed, all the while not even considering purchasing the first big blunder from our town during the “TG&Y” era, another plaza that has been vacant for the last 20 years……because of the Wal-Mart.
So while I can agree that they use daylight for light instead of running lights during the day and other small portions of green design in their new buildings, I can’t agree that they are green. They leave vast wastelands they created of empty decaying real estate that moved there for them and were left in the dust when the tax advantage ran out.
Sorry, it’s a bit of a raw nerve with me.
The rest of the post was wonderful and gives me some ideas of how to start being a little more earth conscious myself, beyond recycling and conserving water.
That is too bad, Pete. This is the kind of thinking that the new leadership of Wal mart is trying to undo. I agree that i HATE empty big box retail. I am furious with the city for allowing Walgreens to build a new store a block away from their old store which now sits empty. We lost the grocery chain TOPS and many of their stores are big empty shells. One was bought by Giant Eagle, who built a beautiful new store and closed the old TOPS and their other smaller neighborhood store. What can even use that size of a shell, anyhow? It is especially sad when a store that goes empty is the anchor of a development or plaza. That is just more corporate greed and America’s love affair with having the newest and shiniest. I thank you for bringing up the real estate issue, as I am working on a bigger post about Wal Mart. They have had a poor track record for a long time, and they are working hard to change their core values and their image along with it. However, when you have the types of severe abuses on the books like Wal Mart has had, that is a tough hill to climb! I don’t blame you for being outraged by what Wal Mart has done in your community. On the flip side, they are doing a lot with recycling, they are working to save energy, they are starting recycling programs and even treating water in areas that have little or not infrastructure. I am not blind to the fact they are doing it for profitability, but the more we get big retailers on board, the better. This post is taking some time to write, as the Wal Mart story is a complicated one, and I am trying to present an unbiased factual story.
I commend you for even attempting to show the greener side of Wal-Mart, and you’re right, even big corporations deserve second chances.
I sometimes get so blinded by the past , but I should be watching for the changes trying to be made by these companies and try to let go of the problems from the past. I need to refocus on the good they are trying to do today, not what they did yesterday because I know I’ve changed, who am I to say they can’t change too.
Try the following:
http://astore.amazon.com/gt09a-20
Great initiative !!!
Jane M.