It???s expensive being green, or is it?
March 5, 2012
I was originally going to call this post “The hippiefication of Kelly” but that was two months ago when the events I’m about to recount occurred. Since then, I’ve come to believe that that would be a bit disrespectful of all of the people working hard to be kind to this planet and the creatures on it, when what I really mean is that I’ve made a lifestyle choice that’s completely different than how I had been conducting myself.
Maybe not completely completely different, but definitely a switch. What happened: I bought into a CSA and joined the co-op.
I had been thinking about both for ages, particularly a CSA (community-supported agriculture, for those of you who are unfamiliar with what the acronym stands for, as I was). Each summer I admired the good-looking produce that my boss would bring for lunch and thought how nice it would be to have non-mass-produced vegetables, particularly tomatoes. Then she would tell me what she paid for her CSA and it was a non-starter.
On and off I had thought that maybe I should at least shop at the co-op. I eat a lot of fresh produce and of course I’d rather it wasn’t genetically modified and/or slathered with xyzticides. More recently, I had been subtly influenced to begin thinking more earnestly about the animals I eat by the Twin Cities’ food truck revolution of the last couple of years. Many of them source only local, happy ingredients, including meat, and that wheedled its way into my brain.
Add to that two final “straws.” A friend of a friend went off to farm school for a year. She’s living on a small, working farm with a group of other like-minded students. They do everything from ground to table, including animal husbandry, harvesting crops and animals, felling trees and constructing, everything. Reading her accounts of how connected she has become to the animals and earth has been no small influence. Thanks, Amber!
Around the same time that Amber went off to farm school, I watched the documentary “Food, Inc.” which should be required viewing for anyone who eats. Anyone who eats. I know that the food industry is just a giant factory, but seeing video and reading statistics made it a whole lot more tangible. Yes, I’m appalled by how the animals are treated, but what was really eye-opening is how evil corn is. Corn. I’m not going to preach here (much). You can look up the movie and watch it for yourself. It was horrifying to learn how the “circle of life” applies to factory farming of both plants<–and–>animals. “Circle of profit” might be more accurate. And the poor animals, being forced to eat things (corn) that they don’t naturally eat.
So all of this finally kicked me in the pants to take the actions of conscience I knew I’d been wanting to. Providentially, my friend Rob S. posted a link to Bossy Acres, the new CSA that he joined. I looked them up and it seemed like it was meant to be. They had half-shares at a price point that I felt I could manage. A week later when I got paid, I trotted over to the Seward Co-op and bought into that, too. I felt good about myself.
Then I shopped for the first time.
I’ll freely admit that it’s been a shock to my wallet paying for organic produce, grass-fed/free-range meat, and regional cheese. If I used more pre-prepared (processed) items, I think it wouldn’t be as great a cost difference. But I eat the fresh stuff. My bills have easily been half-again to twice what I’d pay at the mainstream grocery store. Surprisingly, it doesn’t bother me too much when I think about what I’m supporting and the real cost-benefits to the planet and the creatures we inhabit it with, including our fellow humans.
It???s easy being green
December 14, 2011
I hope I don’t get any preachier than my standard “if each person recycled just one more, or even their first, [insert item here] …” Because it’s true. If you held on to one more empty pop can until you came across the next bright blue receptacle, you would have helped your life’s host, Mother Earth.
There. That’s out of the way.
My own newest shtick to contribute to the well-being of our planet is to, at the office, walk my trash back to the communal waste basket in the kitchen rather than throwing it into the smaller one under my desk.
A couple months ago, a new cleaning company started. I wouldn’t have even noticed, because they do every bit as capable* a job as their predecessors, only they put my waste basket back in a slightly different position. I’m an only child who doesn’t share well. I notice when my things have been messed with.
Pondering the altered location of my waste basket got me to pondering the waste basket itself. If it was in a different spot, then they did something with it.
I don’t usually have much to throw away. My day’s trash is unlikely to be more than a tea wrapper or two and maybe a tissue or two. I have always taken my paradoxically wasteful styrofoam to-go box from lunch back to the kitchen receptacle not because I think it will become smelly, but because in some weird way I don’t think it’s anybody’s business (least of all the cleaning people who likely make substantially less than I) that I spent money on lunch out, and I don’t want to provide evidence for the guessing of what it might have been.
As an aside, if there’s any way I can tell the food place to just wrap it in foil rather than putting it in a whole box, or to skip the enclosing carrier bag, I do. See? There’s another simple way to conserve. But I digress.
I got to wondering if the cleaner who tends my waste basket indiscriminately gathers up the entire plastic garbage bag containing its tea wrapper and tissue and tosses it into the giant other bag on the housekeeping cart, or if he or she recognizes that it is small, unmessy, minor trash and just plucks it out for a quick transfer. They all wear protective gloves these days, so there would never be the possibility of contamination.
Nevertheless, I made the decision not to take the chance. I slightly inconvenience myself to take my tea wrapper back to the kitchen basket in order to remove any chance that my desk bag will be sacrificed for eight square inches of paper. The thought of an eight-gallon plastic bag going into the landfill every day for virtually nothing horrifies me. It should horrify you, too.
If that didn’t sink in, how about the thought of 5 bags per 52 weeks for a total of 260 in a year. The next time you take the trash out, wad up the new bag before you install it. How much landfill space would that take up? Even if it’s for only 1 in 100 people, or 1000, or 10,000. Or even if that eight-gallon bag gets tossed only every other day. It adds up fast. It’s not difficult to actually do.
Okay, I’ve gotten preachy again but you get the idea. Now do something about it. It’s easy being green(er).
*Every bit as capable a job, except for the dead housefly that’s been on the kitchen window sill for weeks. We finally immortalized it.
December 5, 2011
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 