Bill Mckibben's questions to live by: "What things about my circumstances can I change by myself and what require me to be politically active? Is my way of life at all sustainable? Durable? Could 6 billion people live anything like I am living? If not, what can I do politically?"
I want to check out Deep Economy: the wealth of communities and the durable future, by Bill McKibben. Definitely the reason my husband and I live in a 900 sq foot home in Berkeley, CA has to do with the East Bay community and its durability. Why is it durable? Because neighbors talk to each other about something other than lawn products, because our neighborhood is so diverse, because we have access to farmer's markets, a marina, great hiking trails and the ocean all by bike or public transportation. And because of the farmer's market I know what is in season and grown locally and can pick produce that does not require a lot of fossil fuel to grow and transport. The fish and meat counters of our stores list the sustainability of the fisheries and farms.
But we do not live in a way that 6 billion people could live largely because of our housing and food costs and the fossil fuels and manufactured products that we use. Our consumables. A few days ago, I bought some moisturizers made by a Colorado company. The box it come in was made of a biodegradable cardboard with basil seeds embedded in it-- just put it in a hole in your garden, and the box will come back to life. Can we imagine something similar for our yogurt containers? And what about our tooth brushes?
As a 40 year old, I feel that I sit upon a massive mound of garbage that if I imagine accurately is the detritus of my years with the privileges to buy and consume in the U.S.-- It would have shoes, and dresses, pants, hats, belts, 1000 yogurt containers, 10 of thousands of plastic bags, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and gas...clearing out my aunt's basement after she held on to all her New York Times newspapers for 10 plus years I rescued for recycling 50 pounds of New York Times-- and that was just 10 years accumulation. I think school children should be asked at some point to draw everything that they've owned and thrown out in the first 15 years of life-- a sort of rite of passage before they enter full blown materialism.
I am from a family of shoppers. At a young age, I was taught how to shop. How to entertain myself for hours in a store while my mom bargained hunter for fashion, and I love shopping. I am a product of this culture without knowing its roots and consequences intimately. And yet my grandmother whose character rooted me and my mother cherished the orange put in her stocking as a child at Xmas, and hung her clothes on the clothes line long after she could have owned a dryer. Because of her I know sheets dried on a line are crisp and smell like the wind, like sails.
1 comment:
Hey Sue -- Love the blog.
Joel and I are trying (trying) to figure out how to live more simply in order to waste less. Recently that's meant less processed food (I made my own yogurt a few days ago and plan to continue) and more local food. The hope we have is that as we learn to live more simply we will have more time (less time will be spent working for things and less time will be spent maintaining them). We still have a long way to go, obviously, but there's a learning curve.
Have you heard about "The Compacters?" It's a group of people in SF who committed to live without buying anything new (except food and things like toilet paper) for a year. A few articles have been written about them. Perhaps you can dig one up.
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