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The Earth Month Media Bandwagon

Even magazines like Shape and Domino are featuring sustainable products and encouraging readers to eat organic foods (which is surprising and totally cool), so I might as well throw my own bit of token trendy activism into the mix.

Living in a progressive community, it's easy to assume that you're doing a pretty good job, buying organic cereal and bike commuting and all. Still, looking at my own life, I realize that in the last few years I've gone from crazy rabid radical youth out to rescue the world, to being completely centered on making my own individual life run well, which involves using my money to get through college instead of on organic groceries, and using my time to further my career and physical health instead of volunteering. And I think that's good, because it's important to be able to live your life in a way that satisfies your individual needs and not be a martyr to The Cause, but it's also good to step back every now and then and examine how your life fits in with everything else. Some of my friends are starting to have kids. It makes you think about stuff.

I found a few small extra things I could do that don't cost that much money or brain power. I signed up for one of the sustainable energy options you can get through PGE. When I realized how much energy it takes to run the water heater (my old apartment included hot water in the rent, and now my PGE bill is more than double what it was), I stopped taking quite so many long showers and baths.

I'm also considering trying out some energy-saving flourescent type lightbulbs. Supposedly they are getting better and don't make your house feel like an office anymore. I read about it in Domino. I'll report back.

It isn't feasible for me to do all my shopping at farmers markets and natural foods stores because one, it's expensive, and two, it's annoying, but buying local produce is one of the best things you can do, so my goal is to go to the farmers market once a week and buy one or two things from a local farmer. The food thing is incredibly complex, though. I still feel OK about buying a lot of pesticide-frosted apples from Fred Meyer, because at least they're coming from Washington close by, whereas most of the organic produce at New Seasons these days is flown in from Chile. And it also probably takes a lot less energy to produce a local apple than a processed soy and flax seed organic vegan energy bar from Vermont. I mean I still eat stuff like that too, but I'm just saying, there are ways to be sustainable that circumvent the whole green marketing circus and radical guilt hippie militia.

So, yeah. I'm finding a way to make it work for myself, without it feeling like I'm giving up hella stuff. I'm not going to tell you what to do, because that's annoying. But I just wanted to mention that we have a lot of options now.

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