It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and in lieu of posting recipes that feature kale or beer or are Irish in nature, I decided to talk about being “green” in the environmental sense.
I fear that being green has become a trend and that we’ve forgotten why we want to be green in the first place. Is spending a lot of money on reusable bags “green”? What about buying processed food labeled “organic?” Or “green” cleaning products? I would argue that advertising has convinced us that being green costs a lot of green, when that’s not necessarily the case. And so the budget-conscious mom throws up her hands and says “I can’t afford to be green!”
Yet if we step away from the marketing hype, we can see that reusable bags can be made out of old T shirts for practically free; cooking with whole foods instead of processed is actually cheaper; and that homemade cleaning recipes work just as well as the expensive cleaners.
If we take away the cost excuse, what are our reasons for not feeling that we are green enough? I have a friend who has chosen to have an urban garden instead of lawn and purchased two duplexes next door to each other in order to provide a co-housing option in her neighborhood. She makes most of her own food (in fact, she is the one who inspired me to begin my own slow food/local food journey). Purchases locally when possible. Recycles. Does not participate in frivolous consumption. Yet when she recently had a baby, she was made to feel like a green pariah because she was considering using disposable diapers.
All this to say, sometimes guilt or our need for perfection can get in the way of making baby steps; the steps that are so important for our own peace of mind as well as will make an impact in our world.
Do you deal with feelings of inadequacy when it comes to being green? How do you know when what you’re doing is “enough?”
Below is a neat little quiz from SkinnyScoop (I get no monetary gain from it, I just think it’s a neat service to help spark discussion across a larger platform).
This post also shared at Monday Mania
Well put! Not everyone can adopt every green otpion, and if someone is doing what they can reasonably do at the moment, then they are doing their best. Besides, any large effort is most logically appoached in steps — as a person is comfortable with one round of green changes, that person can always re-evaluate and make further changes. It’s kind of like shedding a layer at a time, not ditching every single thing you do all at once. And isn’t sudden radical change going to be harder to stick to anyway?
Ugh, the paper v disposables issue — I don’t think that one will ever be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. I dealt with it 29 years ago and made a choice I could live with (cloth, supplemented with disposables when away from home). Both have environmental costs (energy, products involved in cleaning, etc.) and both have their strong proponents.
You’re very, very right about “green” having become a marketing ploy trumpeted from labels on all kinds of specialty products that could mostly be replaced by a few common (safer) household staples. And the latter choice eliminates so many opportunities for home poisoning, too — personal safety is a great reason to make your own cleaners.
In the end, you make the changes you can as they seem workable, you re-evaluate and realize that you are evolving as a greener operson (an organic process). You know that you’ll never please everyone, but you might serve as a model for someone who sees how you’re plotting your green journey.
great point about the small steps being easier to stick to!
I think you are doing “enough” when you start feeling too stressed about it.
Like all arenas of change in life, once we start obsessing about it, it has become too much.
I echo the above comment about aiming to use simpler products around the home. We personally have purchased almost no cleaning products in the past 8 years . Everything else is cleaned w whatever we have in the home. The thought of bringing unnecessary chemical into my home really disturbs me so this is one area that has been fairly easy for us.
I think it’s a learning process. When we know more, we do more. However, it can be overwhelming as you said. I’ve been reading the Zero Waste Home blog recently to figure out which changes will work for our family now. If I focus on the babysteps and getting all of my family involved it does become easier.
Funny story from this weekend. While we were walking back to our car after playing soccer, my 7 year old pointed out furniture that someone had put out in the trash. He said it was too bad that they weren’t recycling it. He then suggested that I trash pick it. I said that the wood color wouldn’t work for our home. He said, “But, Mom, you could paint it.” LOL
Love it! Amazing how family members can pick up on things so quickly. I love when my husband starts talking to other people about why we get raw milk. Especially since he was so skeptical in the beginning.
I must admit that I simply HATE garbage .. any garbage. Our family produces so little garbage compared to the normal family our size and recycle well over half of the little we do produce, so I guess I should not feel guilty. We also use biodegradable garbage bags, but I still feel I should do more. It has always bothered me to have a garbage truck come by and take away stuff to be buried in the ground. It just seems wrong to me. Everything should in theory be reusable or recyclable in my opinion. Thanks for sharing at Monday Mania this week! 🙂
Once we moved back to farm life being “green” got easier. We have our own milk cow and soon to be milk and meat goats along with meat rabbits, we have chickens, ducks, and geese, and gardens. We used cloth diapers, and still used family cloth, cloth napkins and we have lots of bar towels instead of paper towels. For me its more about the money than being “green”. I can not stand to spend money on something that I will use once and then throw away. Baking soda and acv make up our cleaning arsenal as well as hair care products.
I think what is hard for me is the plastic wrap that comes on the mushrooms or the cheese from the coop. Why can’t they use something else? Or the fact that it takes me about 6 trips to the grocery store to remember to toss the few plastic bags we have in the recycle bin. (We live 45 minutes from the grocery store and do the majority of our shopping through Azure Standards, I go to the store maybe once a month for produce that I can’t get). I wish I had more time in the day to have my own mushroom farm or make my own cheese but I just don’t. I try and be okay with what I am doing now knowing that when my kids are a little older I will have a few extra moments to do those sorts of things.