The Green Wean.
Not just a once-a-year thing, we tend to look at startups in a green evaluation (circa 2012–2019) as well as the big corporations (circa 19xx-2008). Like, how stray dogs are ASPCA-approved to be vaccinated, and re-cycled for adoption to families keen to “save” them, as well as have pets in their home, at an affordable non-pet-store pure-bred pricing, its equivalent to the Green Revolution we have initialised since finding scientists’ records in 1988’s Hot Climate response, corresponds to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) or the local NEA (the National Environment Agency) that relays what Green really looks like, in a few documents you have to be up for, to be considered or stamped-approved in your business operations.
WHY we hate being accosted with this reality:
1 / It feels like going back to cavemen ages.
2/ Saying goodbye to our really Convenient life, as we know it.
3/ We need to count carbon, as well as calories.
4/ We may never travel again.
5/ We had a really good run-up, energy-wise — all that effort to industrialise, insure, account for, plan, market, and hours of making products.
Gone to Poof!
HERE’S What i did:
Shopping: for relevance — we just need to CHOOSE our products well, from this day on. And have a different accounting personal system. I did — and not regret it, and haven’t looked back since. I am journeying to being 100% vegan, and it’s hard to miss the steak, and burgers and friday bits, but it’s not about taking yourself out of your comfort zones, in one year — or what’s “going whole hog”.
You can be lenient, and go at it slowly.
Look at THIS cuteness, out of our Pandemic-CoVid-indoor-life-WFH-(wtf) reality, thus far. It is all about the Pleasing Our Origin Stories (Continuing what we grow in the Land), Giving Back to the Environment (in a closed circle economy), and Farm-Communities (Consuming Local).
1/ FooD - it’s never “Go organic, or go Home”. It’s consciously consuming, from a grocery-zero-sum game: if i had $20, i would buy things i would CONSUME completely or takeaway food that i like, and would finish in-store, or takeaway in my own container (to reduce all the plastic bag use). And try not have leftovers. (Zero leftovers, and Zero packaging in the rubbish, is the IDEAL goal). I buy very frugally, the stuff i need — on a per-week rota (with a basic foundation), and for variety, i’d eat out or takeaway from all the organic cafés or acai shoppes.
I buy my groceries in specialty shoppes — like at The Source Bulk Foods buying, where “what i need = what i buy.”
The main conundrum i see here is (for the long term): FOODIES battling it out (as chefs do, sometimes in their foraging for ingredients that happen nearby, and oh-so-naturally “in the terroire”, versus “flown over” especially ).
Obviously, to be green, we want to wean you from The Latter.
2/ CoNTAINERS - having food, and eating it too, is no longer a Planet-Antoinette thing. It becomes a healthy-system-home game: learn to cook, consciously choose ingredients (grown in the right places, and making sure you choose well, because practise makes perfect) & learning about the food you eat first.
Here’s some i like, that had been recently procured (and magically appeared on my desk.)
(Insert pic here).
3/ Toothbrushes, and toothpaste. We must always take care of what we put in our mouths, both in the ingredients as well as the product-as-a whole. Where does it go, these tins of toothpaste, can we afford to, as a human race, not propel ourselves in mass consumption post-war fever with our more sustainable choices? If so, maybe production will follow — and companies will be forced to power down weights on producing more — and overloading supermarkets and superstores, and grade their products up, and distribute more wisely: third worlds (or developing BRIC continents)- might need the developing nation packaging (accorded to their systems/ regulations), developing nations (who can afford a sophisticated choice of NO plastic in the oceans).
Or back up some Kickstarter finds. To get their formulas off-the-drawing-board, in production, and off-to-market.
4/ Fine-tune all Ye Washing Kits. I tend to like (as i’ve recently in the past 3 years been using this), Method detergents and dishwashing soap (totally a treat to peruse, and actually not to take for granted in buying the best for your machine/ dishwashing tools /hands/ river where you wash your clothes), as sold by the grocery i procure my food from, and now, actively re-purchase it online, or hunt it down like a rabbit- if it becomes un-available locally. In my city, this is doable since i have a small radius of travel in my daily waging of propriety and wish to just go to bars and back but alas, we need to shop for stuff to sruvive, and my off-loaded carbon footprint points from all my other endeavours (will write about it in another blog), to enable my fridays a wider range of allowable distance.
5/ Share Your Ride, home applications, electric bills & telecommunications. It’s not rocket science. I live with people who co-pay stuff with me - from electric bills, to food, to everything (like a commune. but with kids and happiness, and immaterially-sourced joy). It might be an accounting system cleanup — or just sharing a white board post-it system at home, but all bills, and accounts must be stacked up for the payments to share - like, sharing another bulk-buy incentive for 3–4 people or dinners are free for 3+1 or whatever schemes are featured by restaurants in the cooperative-eating-scene in your region or in your community, but for space. There’s an NEA e-portal for this, too.
Well, that’s it so far.
I think i will get my dotboop paper soon. And catch more from me there. Less ethics-y. More what to do when you are you, and you are not me, as i do me, who is not you. Circularity, but not with the head-space of a philosophical-nut-head-butt baller case. (Or whatever people who didn’t grow up with Americans do.)
Later.
