Generally I consume New York Times material with vigor, but an editorial that ran over the weekend left me on the wrong side of miffed. To be clear, it wasn’t the article as much as the headline. And my response was largely driven by the fact that I think it misses the mark in terms of the overall message.
But before I get into that, let me start by saying that I’m pretty far from being a “good” environmentalist. Growing up, my parents generally practiced “sustainability” in theory around our house, but it was driven more by economics rather than explicit care for the earth. I’m pretty sure my dad [may have] dumped old motor oil behind the garage after he’d recycled it several times.
The switch flipped somewhere around my first year of college. I was taking one of those horrible compulsory entry-level science classes they make you take in liberal arts, and the biology professor started talking about global warming. Coming from a public school in a small town, curriculum debates during that time often focused on whether or not to teach creationism in the classroom rather than the science of global warming, so I ate up my professor’s instruction like a kid with spoon and a bowl of cookie dough.
Am I environmentalist? Sure, I care about the future of our planet and what’s happening to destroy it at the moment. But am I doing everything I can to stop that? Absolutely not. And to keep it real, I think that’s one of the biggest turnoffs for people—the self righteousness that can come with environmentalism. The “hey, look at me, I’m saving the world” shit. Shoot, you don’t have to look any further than my driveway to see my gas guzzling SUV to see I’ve got a ways (as in from here to Russia, and not from Alaska) to go.
Like a lot of people, I have taken steps to reduce our home’s footprint where it’s convenient. Read: not a major PITA. And efforts in this area are far from extensive—we recycle, use grocery bags, compost and eat vegetarian as often as possible, sparing a big fat juicy burger on holidays where that big old American flag is waving. Yet I have a feeling that the average Californian would scoff at our efforts to date.
But that’s just it. It’s something. We’re not striving for perfection (or a zero-waste goal), but I figure something—or some things— are better than nothing. After reading Edward Hume’s Garbology late last year, my eyes opened a bit wider as to what those ”some things” might be. Although it was written five years ago, Hume does a great job of painting the broad strokes and revealing the background for the broader trash picture. He digs into the landfill issues and details the Great Pacific Garbage patch (that place where all plastic goes live before breaking down into fish food).
Garbology taught me that the plastic bag issue isn’t so much about the bags taking up space in our local landfills, but the bags that get swept up in the wind on the way to the landfill, ensnaring animals and littering the environment in their flight. It’s about the fossil fuels it takes to create the bags and the fact that they are single-use plastics in many households. Garbology helped me better understand the issue with single-use plastics (I’m looking at you, Ziplocks) and made me want to learn more about how we could do a better job of eliminating them from our home.
Which brings me back to the editorial from over the weekend. Clickbait or not, the title “Life Without Plastic is Possible. It’s Just Very Hard” doesn’t encourage the reader to reduce their plastic footprint—it’s a turnoff. For the large majority of people, plastic free isn’t a reasonable goal—limited time, resources and funds can all be barriers. But reducing plastic use? That is something I can get behind.
So, here’s my alternative. “Life with a Little Less Plastic: Let’s Do This.”
We haven’t gotten out of the driveway on our journey to leave this place a little better off for our kids, but we’re trying. And it’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog, but for those who want to do better when it comes to reducing the amount of single-use plastic used, hopefully we can find a few ideas together over the next few posts.
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