We live in an age when awareness about our world increases every year and quizzes regarding our carbon footprints abound.
For example, I did one evaluation that told me that if everyone used up as many resources as I do, we’d need some four or five planets. Talk about a guilt trip.
So I began web-crawling for ways within my power to reduce my carbon footprint. Ways like changing my diet, my clothing, the things I buy and not ways like how to build my house. I have no money for that.
It started off really sensibly, I thought. I discovered alternative diets besides the already known ones of organic food, vegetarianism and veganism: local eating, slow food and raw food to name a few. I also discovered that it’s time-consuming, that some diets may have a few negative effects unless watched carefully, and that maybe local eating doesn’t consume less energy than food produced on the other side of the world. One example given is that meat produced in New Zealand and then transported to the UK is still more energy-efficient than meat produced in the UK, so local eating would have to be on the grounds of a healthier lifestyle, fresher food, or supporting the local community. Reasons like those.
Supporting the local community is also the only reason I’ve found so far to support local clothes designers, particularly when you don’t know if they use locally-produced materials (and even if that’s any use). By the way, organic clothing. Does it sound digestible to you? It did to me at first! Someone obviously never heard of it before. Some clicking around eventually led to…
Vegan skincare and makeup, or homemade natural recipes! This sounds like such a feminine issue. I have to say, it feels rather bad to rage against skincare products (because I was perfectly fine without them and had the unfortunate habit of swelling whenever I did use them) and finally give in when moving apparently becomes too stressful and the body protests against it, only to discover a few months later that Anything Not Organic and All-Natural is Evil to the Environment Too.
After reading and reading and reading, I have come to three conclusions:
1. It is very hard to balance living an “environmentally-friendly” lifestyle (the effectiveness of which is questionable) on a limited budget. I mean, if buying organic food means one eats less, what is the short-term decision going to be?
2. There is a time cost involved. I’m having issues making time to exercise regularly, forget making homemade facials and cleansers and moisturisers every three days or whatever. I also have neither time nor competence to grow my own food as my tendency is to kill plants the more I want them to live.
3. I am a hypocrite. “Paradox” would be a prettier way of putting it, but I’ll settle with “hypocrite.” This is the main conclusion, by the way. It explains why I won’t buy cosmetic products tested on animals, but won’t stop eating meat. It explains why I’m going to try buying food from farmers’ markets and organic stores and random things from Safeway and T&T. It explains why I’m going to try harder on changing some arguably minor things while refusing to give up major things like flying around the world at least twice a year. I can try and try and try, but at some point, I’m going to give up and rely on other people supposedly in the know to grow my food, build my shelter and make my clothes.
Well that was a roundabout post. Hopefully you are now just as unclear about how to live sustainably as you were before you began reading, only with more random facts in your head.
Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t go back to Stone Age lifestyles. I do have a fascination about cavepeople, hence taking Archaeology last year. But that doesn’t sound quite right, somehow, and besides, I think there are too many people these days.
