Welcome to The Devil's Workshop, Now Exclusively Featuring Sustainably-Harvested Bamboo: The Perils of being a 'Lazy' Environmentalist

Figure 1:  "Thank god I didn't bother to recycle that dumb old plastic water bottle!  Think of all the time that would have taken me away from my main pursuit of concocting sustainable methods of being the hippest navel-gazer on the planet...!"

It's Wednesday and I'm feeling bitter as hell.  Perhaps it's the fact that we overslept and missed preschool.  Perhaps it's the lovely gray bullshit atmospheric aura that seems to hang around like a freeloading relative sleeping on your couch.  Perhaps it's because my blog is little, bitchy and fierce, all adjectives stemming from its intrinsic lack of cash-making and scene-stealing.

So, awash in all this dismality, I birth my irritation with a blog/book/phenom The Lazy Environmentalist.

I had heard tell of this book first from some green blogs, Treehugger, probably, and my first thought was, Great.  No matter that so much environmental degradation has come from our lust for convenience and easiness.  Let's just promote the idea that changing our habits for the greater good is yucky and hard and subscribe to the idea that we can fix things by buying some carbon credits or a sweater made by Tibetan monks from repurposed silk or, Cod forbid, by blogging.

There's something elitist about the New Green that bugs the hell out of me.  The insistence on having life exactly the same way, with the same conveniences and luxuries (which are truly the same thing in some instances) by just slapping some no-VOC paint on it and calling it Green, Sustainable, Eco-conscious, making it instantly Good.  If you've got enough money and style, you need not fuss your pretty little head about such mundanities, like basic materials recycling.  To quote Lazy Environmentalist founder Josh Dorfman,

"I won’t always place my empty water bottles in the recycling bin. Why?  Because, frankly, it’s a pain and there’s nothing fun about it."

In other words, let's do this green, earth-saving thing, but only as long as it's sexy and scintillating. 

What's that, you say?  It's made by Prada and a Swedish design team?  Fabulous.  I'll take three.  And hook me up with some carbon credits, while you're at it, Jeeves.

"No guilt trips," promises Dorman.  "Never any sacrifice." 

Yeah.  Because Maude knows that's what got us into this enormous ecological mess -all that sacrifice.

As demonstrated by many a mother, guilt is terrifically powerful and if it makes you recycle or use fewer resources, then I'm all for it.  I'm afraid the environmental situation requires folks to get past their personal feelings and buck the fuck up.  Toss your goddamned plastic water bottle (!) in the recycling, even if it doesn't happen to have a joystick that tickles your dick attached to it, and realize that nobody is blaming you for the situation of global warming.  It's been a long time coming, so the blame is rather diffused, anyway. 

Unfortunately, you are living in what the Chinese cliche lovers would call "interesting times."  So it's up to you to become a better planetary citizen - too bad, so sad!

Sorry, but you don't get to stay in a state of perpetual infancy anymore, even if it isn't your fault.  Thus, a bit of sacrifice, a loss of convenience and a decided lack of fun. Suck it up, First World Cry-Babies.  Because there's a whole lot more to unlearn. 

So chalk up my crotchety finger-wagging to the fact that, unlike some of my hip and sexy counterparts, I don't have a line of stylish sustainably-sourced furniture, a satellite radio talk show, a book deal, or even an income-generating blog.  But know this.  On the occasions that I deign to buy plastic, at least yours truly endeavors to summon every last bit of her human courage and triumphantly manages to toss it in the right disposal bin. 

Photo:  Idle Moments by M.B. Parkinson, New York, 1896.  LC-USZ62-83777

Comments

[Lab Rat]

Hear! Hear! I think this is your best post yet. I actually stopped someone from pitching an aluminum can in the trash and made a point of taking it to the proper recycling bin.

However, I don't feel guilty about garbage as much as I feel a little sad. The idea that the stuff we put into the trash bin is useless seems lazy to me. I understand economics may make the utilization of said trash difficult but GOD! think of all the already refined resources sitting in landfills. Mark my words; "Garbage dumps will be the gold mines of the future."

Oh, and I don't think just burning the trash for energy is reasonable either, just a lazy cop-out.

[Carrie]

Recycling at this point is a weak gesture, for sure. It's like quitting smoking on your deathbed. What it points to, and what your comment suggests, is that bad design is the main issue. Why make something out of finite resources that will then go on to sit in a landfill, benefiting no one?

[Lowell]

It's actually sad that people even think that their plastic water bottles, etc, will BE "recycled"... it might be temporarily re-purposed into a park bench or something, but in the end, it's toxic waste and will break up into small toxic pieces that can kill fish, birds and other wildlife over and over. We haven't even had it around all that long (plastics) in great quantity, but they already are a significant portion of the material floating at sea, choking and killing marine life and inexorably adding to the toxicity of the food chain...

Add to that the fact that plastic water bottles (PET, etc) contain pthalates and other nasty compounds -- some of which are known to totally mess up endocrine systems, producing sterility and/or premature adolescence, among a host of other issues -- and you should come to the conclusion that it's better to carry a good water filtration system when traveling abroad and use a better one for home. We just don't need more of that garbage in our environment.

Aluminum... we have enough in use to just keep recycling it, but the vested (bauxite mining) interests want to keep producing virgin material... contributing to destruction of rainforests in the Amazon's mineral-rich Guiana shield, among other nastiness. It'd be best to avoid drinking or eating ANYTHING that comes in aluminum packaging, anyway... and you certainly shouldn't cook in it. I think we have enough to keep the planet in nice, light bicycle frames for a long time.

We should tell the bloody multinationals pushing this crap on us that we don't want anything of theirs till they stop indiscriminately overproducing crap the planet just doesn't need! Buy local, buy organic, grow your own... reduce, re-use, and as a last resort: recycle! [ /rant ]

[Carrie]

Hi Lowell!

Thanks for your comment, which I completely agree with, by the way. Have you been reading Alan Weisman's The Earth Without Us? Or Cradle to Cradle? Great books that also have underscored the half-measures that recycling represents. If not, you'll love both

Well, LOVE probably isn't the word. Both books are highly disturbing when it comes to how we've spread our trash everywhere on the planet. But both inspire me to make better choices.

Plastic containers give me fits! I scan the grocery store for glass first and if I'm absolutely desperately in need of said product, I'll get the damn plastic.