Going Green (without causing myself too much inconvenience)

Earth Day always manages to shed a light, a gigantic energy-efficient fluorescent light, on my hypocritical, liberal activist wannabe but don't wannabe inconvenienced lifestyle. If you have carefully followed my blog, and I know there are many of you (mostly family members) out there, you may have picked up on an overarching theme that encompasses the majority of my writing. Guilt. And Earth Day is my most guilt-ridden day of the year. I know we need to save our resources, take care of our land, air, and water, stand up for human and animal rights both globally and nationally. But am I willing to make drastic changes to accomplish those goals? Probably not.

I used to work with a teacher who really lived what she preached. She drove a fuel efficient car, supported fair trade, bought local produce, boycotted Nike, Con-Agra Foods, and Wal-Mart. She wouldn't even wear a diamond in her wedding ring because of the horrific diamond conflicts in Sierra Leone. Another colleague commented on her once, "She's an innovative teacher, but she dresses like she's going on a hike everyday. She doesn't look very professional."

When you truly stand up for your principles and refuse to buy sweatshop produced materials, that doesn't leave you very many options, a sad commentary on American society and our labor outsourcing practices. Personally, I still want to look professional and fashionable. Like I said, a sad commentary . . .

Every year around Earth Day, I spend the whole week at school teaching recycling and Native American Mother Earth songs. I mean, at least I can teach about recycling without feeling like a complete Pharisee. My husband and I are the Royal Family of recycling. In college, I would fish the aluminum cans out of my friends' dorm room waste baskets. Now, Dan and I hardly throw anything away. We keep paper grocery bags in our pantry filled with plastics, cans, glass, paper, and magazines, nevermind the fact that all of the discarded lids end up in landfills choking baby seals.

Every week, I take my reusable bags to the grocery and recycle the plastic bags that they still insist on giving me for one item when my environmentally-friendly bags are full. I am properly offended when they try to bag my remaining groceries in plastic, and I feel contrite all the way back to my fuel efficient -- er -- SUV.

In the first grade classes this year, I extended the lesson to musical activities about taking care of our Earth's animals.

"Some people kill animals, and that's sad!" one little future PETA member said.

"But they eat them! That's not bad!" another little future Fish and Game Officer said.

A chorus of little hunters chimed in, "It's not wrong to hunt! It's for food!"

I shared my wisdom, "Some people choose to hunt legally for sport, and they eat the meat and use the animal for survival purposes. But there are also other people who choose to eat vegetarian. They choose not to hunt or eat meat."

"Like the vampire on Twilight!" the PETA girl said. "He was a vegetarian!"

"That's not quite the same thing," I said and quickly changed the subject.

Dan and I have really tried to make small changes to help out the environment and boost our healthy lifestyle. We bought BPA-free water bottles. We quit microwaving plastic . We use dryer balls instead of fabric softener even though all of my skirts cling to the back of my thighs and my fleece coat has so much static charge that I refuse to wear it when I'm pumping gas for fear of blowing up the entire station.

And how can I forget? We replaced most of our light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs that cast a beautiful purplish hue over our entire house, like walking into a school gymnasium. I'm just waiting until "They" come out with some report that says CFLs are no longer prudent alternatives because of the unsafe levels of mercury, that "They" previously were unaware that such levels existed in those bulbs. Oh well, then we'll just make a few more adjustments that don't inconvenience us too much.