Virescent

While we were kicking around New York a couple weeks ago, my young man and I met up with a couple of his friends at Red Bamboo, a vegetarian retaurant in Greenwich Village.  This was not our idea.  Our dining-out ideas more typically involve meat buffets, or at least cheeseburgers the size of my face.  Let’s just say that we’ve never chosen a restaurant for their salad bar, so the idea of an entirely vegetarian meal was daunting.

At home though, I typically eat vegetarian.  It’s just too hard for a budding environmentalist to choose meat at the grocery without a serious guilt trip.  Back in January, Mark Bittman wrote a piece for the NYT summarizing the different environmental and societal impacts of meat production: we get to worry about methane from the animals, carbon from transportation, huge amounts of grain for feed, inhumane treatment (not that I want them to get back rubs or anything, but I’d settle for content and healthy), animal waste in the water supply- woo!  Enough to make me skip the red meat entirely. I just fret in front of the selection of regular/hormone free/totally organic free range birds.  Normally I get exasperated by my own indecision after a few minutes and just head over to the frozen cheese ravioli.  Voila, I’m a vegetarian for a few days.

Red Bamboo is a vegetarian restaurant specializing in fake meat.  I find this to be strange.  Our friend explained that lots of practicing herbivores began life in meat-eating families. They make a conscious decision to switch over to the planty side, but still feel the need to structure a meal around a slab of protein, just like Mom.  Also, he likes their soy buffalo wings (still not real buffalo!).  Makes sense to me, and the wings weren’t bad.  Tasted like chicken, mostly, and had a not-unpleasing ground texture.  (The “chicken” parmagiane was pretty good, also, but avoid the “beef” stew.)

Meat’s on my mind, because a new study by a pair at Carnegie Mellon has calculated the various environmental costs of shipping food internationally, categorized by the type of food consumed.  Turns out it makes more environmental sense to subsist on apples imported from New Zealand than eat beef from next door.  From the study abstract, published by the American Chemical Society:

Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

Hunh.  Sounds like I’m doing pretty well at the grocery.  And maybe I’ll spring for that free range chicken next week. 

There are more reasons to buy local, or grow your own stuff, than just “maybe fewer emissions”, though.  Supporting small farmers, broadening the food supply, saving money…

Final Thought: I will eat less meat, especially red meat.  But only because of the environmental impacts.  How long will it take for sustainable beef to be readily available?  Does anybody know of any?  I would like cheeseburgers again.

Yesterday afternoon, I moved my plants to larger containers. It wasn’t pretty. Roots were torn, plants were lost, dirty words were said, tiny, heartbreaking plant screams were screamed.

To my plants: I am so sorry, you guys. I was young and naive when I planted you a month ago, and my mistakes have lead to a great ripping of roots and the loss of some of your fellows. They were brave sprouts. You are stronger for having known them, mostly since I’m going to spread you all with their composted remains.

I planted my seeds in pots, too close together, so it was impossible to move them to new containers without damaging everybody’s root structures. I couldn’t get a few of the glories back in the ground. They’re my first casualties. I know now to start seeds in individual containers- I’m already saving TP tubes, I hear they work well. For this year’s crop, though, it was too late.

This morning, though, the survivors all looked green and perky. So far, it seems that everybody who got back in dirt is recovering. I hope they believe that today is so nice and sunny out because I wanted to make up for the ravages of yesterday. Also, I planted the chives (with plenty of room to spare), and I’ve got a few sweet peas emerging. So I feel a bit less guilty. Only a bit.

I put up an album. It’s not too horrifying, but I was too busy trying to not hurt the plants too much to get pictures of the worst of it.

Then I went to the thrift store. I had a legitimate purchase today- I needed homes for the seeds I bought yesterday. Mission Accomplished. First though, the other stuff.

Picture Frame, $2, 8.5×11ish- it’s a gold and cream deco-like design painted on the underside of the glass.  I actually got this last week but neglected to put it up. Blue Star Shirt, $1. Colorful stripy camp shirt, $4. Blue tuxedo-style blouse, $4. Skirt with great fabric and horrific shape, $4.  Honey-colored sweater, $5, with a nice thick collar and cuffs, off-center zipper, moss-stitch front texture…ooh I like it.

I feel, after a few of these posts, that I should justify the amount I shop at thrift sales, and the amount I buy when I’m there.  Acquiring too much stuff being all unsustainable and whatnot.  I grew up hating shopping for clothes, so I never owned enough that I liked, or enough useful items, to make it through a week without feeling gross or awkward in my clothing.  That is very unsustainable.  So I’ve donated most of it, and now I’m having a great time getting things I actually like.  Thrifting has replaced about 90% of the “real shopping” needed to replace wearables.

This might all taper off when I have enough for warm weather.  Or when my tiny closet explodes.  But for now, I’m not feeling guilty about having “too much” stuff to wear.  And all that other stuff that’s not wearable, but just cool?  It’s at least all useful.  Though if I buy more fabric scraps, my sewing pile will explode.

Anyway, the alleged reason for the visit:

My new planters, obtained for under $20 together.  None of them have drainage holes, so how do I deal with that?  Someone mentioned gravel in the bottom to aid soil drainage?

I’ve got 4 pots of seeds started, and I’m nervous. I got packs of lavender, chives, and morning glories at Target (I was there, they were there, I wanted to plant things, it made sense at the time), soaked them overnight in water, and planted them the next day. It’s been two days, and nothing. I planted them Monday night. I ran down Tuesday morning like it was Christmas, and I was five. Nothing. How long does it take these things, anyway?

I’m nervous because I want to know if they’re alive, and I want to know if I did it right. I soaked them, then put them in dirt. Was it too wet? Not enough dirt? The wrong kind of dirt? Are they draining? Do they need to drain? Are they too close together? I just want some green fuzz to pop up so I can stop wondering already. Growing stuff is supposed to be like magic- dirt, water, sun, tiny seed, then boom, a green pepper. It’s apparently slow magic.

I have one little guy growing in the pots already, actually. He’s the child of my kalanchoe, which I’ve had for two years- the longest I’ve kept anything alive. Apparently it managed to reproduce this winter when it was in the window next to the empty pot, so neat. I guess this should be some sort of lesson for me in the inexplicable and powerful life forces of plants, but I just want to see my lavender work.

Actually, it’s been dark and dreary the last few days. Maybe they just want some bright sunshine? Maybe they’ll come up tomorrow. It should be sunny then.

I’m impatient because I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m also impatient because I doubt my ability to keep things alive. Deep down, I know how many plants I’ve killed. I imagine the poor things cowering underneath their dirt covers, terrified of the day when they wake up to my clumsy care.

Plants, everywhere, know this: I mean you no harm. I’m trying. I’m getting better. I promise not to overwater you, and to look up your preferred sun to shade ratios. I promise to make you compost and research how to make you happy and strong, by asking wiser gardeners and googling things. I promise to prune you. Just come up, and we’ll be cool, ok? Please?

At least the pot of latent lavender looks nice on my repainted green plate.

There’s been a lot of ecotalk on the scourge of plastics, and that’s generally fine by me. I made my own shopping bag, I have ranted about excess plastic packaging, I’m hip. Yo.

But last week, while sick and moving, I spent an afternoon being very grateful for my drugs and my bubble wrap (I’m betting the drugs had a bit to do with all that deep contemplation). My pills were packaged in plastic, and bubble wrap is, of course, plastic, and these are wonderful things. Actually, lots of wonderful things are plastic. Plastics are durable and can be made so much stronger and lighter than most natural materials, and they’re fantastically easy to manufacture into almost anything. Plastics have made incredible engineering advances possible. Plus they’re cheap enough so that goods ordinary people could only dream of a few decades ago are readily available to the masses. These time-saving devices  allow people to raise their standards of living at no cost to resources like wood and ore. Without them, modern medicine wouldn’t exist (and they’d even have to package all those natural supplements in something else). Plastics are awesome.

So why do we hate them? They’re made of chemicals. They’re overused. Their lovely inexpensive qualities take care of that. Stuff we most noticeably don’t need is made of plastic- again, it’s the cheapest way to hand out toys with every faux-food meal, or flimsy bags with every purchase. And once they’re made, they’re here forever. Recycling them is difficult and tends to degrade their properties, and on their own they won’t break down for centuries. And when they’re not stuck in landfill properly, adorable things choke on them, or they blow around tackily. But most of that is because we use plastics poorly, not because plastics are bad.

Maybe part of it is that plastics are decidedly “unnatural”. There’s no “handmade” plastic anything- they reek of machines and mass production and technocracy. Homesteaders can swap butter recipes, but not plastic recipes. The Economist’s green.view column a few weeks ago was on how us hippie folk think that all things unnatural are bad. I thought the column was singularly poorly thought out for such a respectable publication (tone was derisive and bitter, examples chosen were blatantly skewed), but is that it? Is our visceral reaction to plastic the result of our yearnings for an ideal of naturalness?

I think it has more to do with the abuse of plastics by man, and not the plastics themselves. I’m an engineer, after all, and I like science and technology, and I appreciate that we can make it work for us, or we can abuse it. It’s just a lot easier to crusade against the definite “plastics” than against everybody’s thousand bad plastic habits- that makes ecopeople seem so judgemental and self-righteous, after all.

I’ve struggled with my plastic use in the past.  All those piles of guilt stuffed in rustling baggies. I’m still going to avoid foam plates and grocery bags (unless I need trash liners) and use aluminum foil instead of sandwich baggies- but I’ll rejoice in my plastic tupperware (or reused cream cheese tubs to prevent food and other waste!) and useful medicine containers and new, affordable latex mattress. Plastics can be part of a sustainable lifestyle, as long as we use them wisely and well.

So now that I care about packaging, source of my food, taste, and nutritional content, I need to take a handler with me to the grocery store. Sometimes it’s not so bad. Fruits and vegetables- organic? If no, how about just not gross-looking? Check. Eggs, organic/cage-free, check. Milk (after a brief “organic in nonrecycleable or regular in recyclable carton?” dilemma), check. OJ, biggest jug with largest pulp content. Check. Bread. Anything non-tasteless and Organic? No (rain curses upon the large bakery distributors). Anything non-tasteless? Check. Chicken without added water or hormones? Maybe.

So, my diet is unvaried, but at least by sticking to those items, I can shop within my ethical choices and with some expediency. I usually spend about two minutes in the cookie aisle salivating, but reminding myself wistfully that they never taste as good as I imagine, I’ll eat them too fast if I buy them, I haven’t been to the gym in a while, and on and on. Drool, drool. The last argument I come to, and the one that suffices for me where no others will, is I feel guilty throwing the 2-3 layers of packaging away afterwards, and thus taint any joy in their consumption. Frankly, if it stops me buying sub-par cookies, I will continue to nurse my irrational packaging guilt.

Shopping for anything else has become frustrating, though. Last weekend, I attempted to make a quick run to the grocery to pick up a few drinks and snacks for a gathering. Chips and coke, in and out. Once there, though, I spent a half hour in the aisle, calculating. What’s more efficient- coke in 2L bottles, or coke in cans? Bottle caps aren’t recyclable, plastic isn’t efficiently recycled, whereas cardboard and aluminum cans are fully recyclable. Which one costs less? Which one is packed most efficiently to minimize shipping costs? I turned away from the coke and to the chips. I was in Shopper’s, and they don’t carry any organic chips. Some are “natural” or “all-natural” but that doesn’t mean anything. What tastes good and is not boring and not expensive and not completely unhealthy and has the least packaging and is maybe a little environmentally friendly? Argh, nothing, so pick up some bags of various pretzels and and one bag of corn chips that look a little less processed, and sulkily return to the coke. I picked up a couple of bottles, on the assumption that they contain less product, and I’d have less left over.

I lost a lot of time, and ended up with 6 products chosen on no basis other than exasperation. In a different grocery store, this scenario might have played out better- Giant has a selection of organic corn chips that taste pretty good, and Harris Teeter, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s generally have all those yuppie organic snack things too. But still.

What to do? Shop somewhere else for snack foods, first off. Change my definition of snacks, and serve more fruit/veggies and fewer chips at parties. And a 60-second rule on chip selection- “If no organic/recyclable packaging chips are seen within 60 seconds, just grab something. They’re just chips.“

As for the coke, I regretted my bottle decision. As my gentleman friend pointed out, we have a little less leftover coke, sure, but since it’s all in the same bottle, we now have flat leftover coke. Cans from here on out- decision made.

International aid charities have set up donation campaigns around Christmas, encouraging people to buy each other livestock or aid for the developing world, instead of say, socks or fruitcakes. At the Oxfam America Unwrapped site, you can donate boats, water trucks, mosquito nets, crocodiles (yes, really), money to start a business, and all sorts of other tools and services for people in developing countries, and save your relatives and the environment from unwanted and wasteful consumption. UK-based education and film-making charity WORLDwrite blames all that for Africa’s disappointing, “demeaning” Christmas haul. Reuters AlertNet and the BBC both reported on WORLDwrite head Ceri Dingle’s objections:

“Nobody’s offering washing machines. I’ve traveled all over the developing world, and people not only know what we have, they want what we have. Helping to make that possible is what development is all about.”

Yes, Ww and Ms. Dingle are upset that we’re not shipping washing machines to Africa. Don’t bother getting worked up at her, Oxfam’s stated the obvious for you:

“To insist on offering washing machines and other white goods luxury items to communities that have neither a plug socket nor a water supply shows complete lack of understanding of the communities we work with…Fifteen litres of water is required for one half-load of washing - the same basic amount that we are trying to achieve for one person per day to survive.”

The Ww slogan is “Ferraris for everyone”, meaning that they think we should help people develop by giving them all the things that rich, developed nations have, now. Put the reliable electric lines, power plants, plumbing, stable monetary system, available jobs, and big box stores on a boat, ship them across the ocean, plop them all down next to rural villages, and everyone will be happy! Before I get carried away into ranting, I’m going to cite a few decent points Ww makes, or at least links to their site (I had to dig for them, but at least I found a tiny basis to all this washing machine nonsense).

In one insightful section of a poorly-reasoned article on Oxfam’s program, one author points out that red tape mandated by the charity conflicts with actual use of the gifts- the need for accountability to the donors and general public causes Oxfam to implement burdensome monitoring procedures. Also, the procedures they use for determining what each community wants (chickens? hoes?) might not be as transparent to the community as they think. Reuters, the BBC, and this article all detail different opinions on this topic, with Oxfam always saying they work with people in the community directly to determine need. Me, I’m glad Oxfam knows what they’re giving and what it’s doing for people, but maybe they could ease up a bit too.

Another decent bit emerges from a completely anecdotal piece on how the Western world idealizes subsistence farming. The author points out that there may be organizations who, for the sake of low environmental impact, emphasize traditional, low yield farming techniques that keep everybody hungry and well, subsisting. Ok, sure, there are a few crazy environmental-type people who might make this mistake, but those people are a) crazy, and b) easily convinced with photographs of starving children that they’re wrong. Besides, not all low-impact farming is low-yield, and there’s no reason these groups can’t advocate good, long-term farming practices based on developed nations’ experience- so let’s champion that. Oxfam is blamed for perpetuating subsistence, since it offers hand tools for farmers, but not tractors. The author doesn’t acknowledge that tractors require fuel and skilled maintenance, neither of which are common in subsistence communities.

So, that’s a couple of things to consider when you buy that passel of baby chicks for your little cousin. Don’t worry about it too hard, but try to pick something entertaining and that won’t cause Ww to whine more. The Reuter’s article I cited above has a great list of non-Oxfam charities with gifts for all seasons- land mine defusing, teeshirts (shirt’s for you, donation’s for Africa), and other stuff (check out the crocodile).

Ww might have some good points, but they’re hidden in all their terrible, useless ideas. Next year, let’s test them: let them buy the farmers a Ferrari, and I’ll send some goats, and we’ll see which gift is more useful after three months. No matter how long you leave two Ferraris in a garage alone, they’ll never create a third Ferrari. And you can dismantle a broken car and sell it for parts, but you can sell a goat for parts (milk! cheese!) without dismantling it at all.

I keep promising tree pictures, and then letting you down. I’m sorry. A combination of Indiana, two violent colds, and final exams are going to prevent the tree from being fully dressed for at least another week. We did put up the LED lights, though, so I could at least have something besides a naked tree to look at, but that’s actually caused me a dilemma.

The LED light strings are a very bright, blue-white light. It’s very sterile, and completely unlike the cheery yellowy glow from the regular strands of lights I have used on trees and in classier dorm-room decorating all my life. By the by- the BBC has a helpful story on what LED lights are and some of their promising applications, and they mention this problem of cold, blue-based light. Now, I’ve heard the same complaint about CFLs- they don’t give off the quality of light people are used to from regular tungsten bulbs, I hate the way they look, wah. I used to think these people were whiny. It’s the future! Get a decent lampshade! The white translucent shades and the vaguely yellow tinge of my walls make my CFL glow pretty homey, actually. Lighting designers are working on this, slightly reluctantly. Apparently the bigshot design people love incandescent bulbs- their shape, their glow, their iconic status- and hate the way CFLs shine.  But more and more are playing with ways to make the compact fluorescents appealing (hey guys:  try Ikea lampshades and “apartment complex off-white” walls).  Plus, since they don’t get as hot as incandescents, the designers can put materials closer to the bulb and not worry about combustion.  So that’s exciting for them, right?  Moving into a brave new well-lit world?  Anyway, LEDs are supposed to solve all this because their light comes in lots of colors, depending on the chemicals used (see the BBC article).  My problem now is, they use blue for almost everything, including “white”, and I hate the way they look.  Wah!

I like my gold and red tree decorations, and the old lights made it look so nice.  The LEDs will make it look awful.  Granted, they’d look great with silver ornaments, and blue decorations (Hanukkah people, LEDs are perfect for you!).  And if you mix lots of colors on your tree, then LEDs work fine.  All the stuff I have is red and gold, though.  I don’t want to buy a new set of ornaments just to make my lights look not sad.   Maybe they sell non blue-tinged white LEDs?

So now the guilt sets in.  Use LEDs on the tree and suck up that they’re stupid-looking, or use the older lights and suck up some extra power? I won’t have to buy any new sets of lights- I still have them from last year, and they’re not too tangled.  And there are plenty of other places I can put my LEDs- on the balcony, or the bookshelves, or in my garland.

This is going to take some time to mull over.  Fortunately, I haven’t got time to decorate the tree now, anyway.

After collecting my plastics for a week, I find myself feeling a little appalled and very guilty- the hallmark of a budding ecoworrier. Here is my bagful. In it are three general categories of plastic bits. The first is food related: baggies for vegetables, a bread bag, a seal from my spinach dip, frozen food packaging, and styrofoam takeout containers. The second is cleaner and un-food related: wrapping from my cutting mat and new knife, shrink wrap from sundries, and price stickers. The third is plastic caps from bottles and a peanut butter jar. The only thing I feel positive about this plastic week is my record in refusing plastic carrying bags. I collected only 2, both with the takeout containers (from delicious little counters, but so much styrofoam! Can I bring my own food container to restaurants?) since the service was quick enough that I couldn’t object to the bag before another customer was being served: I need more refusal practice. A new larger, stronger tote bag aided this lack of grocery/shopping bags.

So, what to do with this sack of guilt? The dirty and sticky plastic I will have to toss. The clean plastics are a different thing. I can’t think of a sure way to recycle them. None have recycling marks, and none look like anything that Alexandria (or anywhere else nearby, fellow guerilla recyclers) recycles. The bread bags, grocery bags, and some of the shrink wrap is strong but pliable enough to be turned into yarn, which is good, since I can use yarn. The vegetable bags might be yarnable, but they aren’t very strong, so I’ll have to be especially careful with them. The rest of the clean plastics, and the remnants of the yarn plastic, come to a smaller but significant pile, and I’m going to experiment with them. My hypothesis is, I can use them for floor pillow and seat cushion stuffing: shred them into long and thin pieces, and maybe they’ll have enough loft together to sit on. I’ll report back on the tests and results of this scientific endeavor.

I’d also like to reduce my rate of plastic acquisition- I only need so many pillows. But given the number of useful objects that come wrapped in plastic for hygiene reasons, this is going to be difficult. And here the guilt needs to settle in and transform to a reasonable attempt at change: I will never, without leading an uncomfortable and awkward life, be completely free of plastic wraps. That will not be my goal. I will aim to reuse almost all of it that I must purchase, however, and investigate ways to buy foods in recyclable packaging- breads in paper, vegetables in a reusable sack (perhaps at a farmer’s market?), and avoid to every extent possible the unnecessary plastic wrapping.

The guilt says: How dare you! Totally eschewing plastic is more important than you being comfortable and able to participate fully in life! I say back, the total avoidance of plastic will require me to stop participating in my design and drafting classes (the materials are specific and often shrink wrapped) and require me to drive all about to find edible unwrapped items. Plastics can accomplish great things- notably the dissemination of many cheeses- and sparing use and careful reuse balance a healthy life. So there, guilt.

I’ll declare it official. I rode in today, did not injure myself in the slightest, and figured out what all those gears are for: now, I am a person with a bike. My nice Biking Person even fully secured my crate, so I’m in business! Specifically, the business of riding my bike around for no money. I’ll keep it up- and declare a new (goal for the month) now. I’m going to work on cutting down on plastics: getting and using my own grocery bags, examining food packaging, finding recycling options, perhaps even committing some crafts- whatever I can think of (or YOU can think of. Tell me! I’ll do it!) to not have to throw away plastic stuff this month. I use the term “month” loosely, of course. I am aiming for “life” here- but I’ll start with this month.

This week, The Economist’s environmental topics column green.view is on the Prince of Monaco and his environmental efforts (one example: environmental taxes on the annual yacht show: oh, the life!). But he is being criticized for not having done more already. Skeptical Columnists: “If you care so much about the environment, Prince Albert, why aren’t you offsetting the entire country’s carbon outputs and being the first country to go carbon neutral? Kvetch Moan Judge.” Can princes, or even people, who care about the environmental impacts of their actions still do non-environmental things? Or do they have to abandon all unsustainable ways of life immediately and huddle in fields for warmth, moving every 15 minutes so as to not disturb the plants beneath? I bet you know what I think the answer is. An earlier green.view presents the arguments of the people who think that population reduction is the only way to save the planet. Scary, hunh! Both of these columns go on to point out that a balance between humans and nature must be struck (and that rising population is not tied to increased environmental destruction, so we don’t need to kill anyone off). Moderation is a good answer- it’s worked since at least the Greeks. Our current mode of life is unsustainable, yes. Changing our lifestyles and developing the technologies that reduce our impacts on the earth is going to take time, and much more combined effort than Monaco raising yacht taxes.

Some groups are encouraging lifestyle changes by taxing each other, and trading their own carbon credits in groups of 15 or so. It’s a start. People are encouraged by group meetings, “confession”, and occasionally fines to keep their emissions below a certain level, and to reduce them steadily. So yes, Skeptical Columnists, we’re not all sustainable yet, but take a (short) cold shower and change out your own lightbulbs (CFLS, please!). Then start encouraging concrete, discrete changes, lead by example, laud good faith efforts, and stop throwing the first stone at your own glass house because of the log in your eye. And Monaco will get there.

One last thing: Monaco can’t be the first carbon neutral country, since The Vatican already is. Thanks to a donation from Hungary, their carbon emissions for the next few years will be offset with the planting of a forest. The Pope is teaching respect for the environment as a gift from God. He’s also focusing attention on the issue since environmental changes disproportionately impact the world’s poor: his efforts are paying off in the Philippines. Talk about leading by example.