Vegan Sunday

OK, so it doesn’t have the alliteration of Meatless Monday, the environmental movement that operates on the principle that industrialized animal agriculture is one of the biggest sources of carbon and pollution. Cutting meat out even once a week (Monday, for example) makes a major difference. It’s been estimated that going meatless even once a week lightens your footprint more than eating entirely locally.

I’ve been vegetarian for a few years now, so every day is meatless Monday (or Tuesday, or whatever), but I sometimes feel like I’m keeping the letter but not the spirit of Meatless Monday. Dairy and egg products, while perhaps less ethically problematic for me, are almost as bad for the environment as meat. I don’t eat either in huge quantities (yay for being mildly lactose intolerant!), but I do tend to have maybe 1-2 servings a day. A splash of milk in my tea, yogurt, scrambled eggs, the odd baked good. You get the idea. 

So, in a fit of environmental zealotry, I declared Sunday my vegan day of the week. Instead of my usual yogurt and black tea, I started my day with green tea, a bowl of Life cereal, almond milk, and a slightly overripe pear. Things went well until about lunch time, when I bought fresh francesi rolls at the farmer’s market and then recalled that I had a wedge of triple creme brie waiting patiently in the fridge. 

Brie….brie….brie….

All afternoon I fantasized about making a brie bowl, brushing one of my rolls with olive oil and garlic and big chunks of creamy brie, toasting until the cheese melted into gooey gobs and the bread toasted up crisp and brown on the outside. I was borderline obsessed. I don’t actually eat brie that often. It’s certainly not a daily staple. But somehow, knowing that I couldn’t have any made me crave it madly. I contemplated cheating on my one day veganism. I even briefly considered staying up until it was technically Monday. I resisted and went to bed unsatisfied.

I suddenly feel a little more sympathy for omnivores who can’t face the thought of giving up meat for even one day. I’m sure I have days in which I am almost or entirely vegan without thinking about it, but the actual prohibition of all milk and egg products was…well, harder than expected. I’ll try again this Sunday, this time planning my meals in advance.

Things I learned from Vegan Sunday:

• Asian food lends itself much more readily to vegan fare. For dinner I had colorful stir-fried veggies with dark mushroom soy sauce. I could also have had noodles, curry, or fried rice. Since there’s no dairy culture in East Asia, most Asian dishes that are already vegetarian are also already vegan.
• I need to duct tape the cheese/butter compartment shut. Dangerous.
• Planning out my meals in advance could make a big difference in how deprived I feel. If I filled the day with vegan meals I loved, I probably wouldn’t think twice about dairy products. It’s worth the experiment.
• I should just buy fewer dairy products. Easier, more effective, and better for the environment.

But tonight? I am so making that brie bowl.

Why You Can’t Buy Yourself Green

As the holidays draw nearer, I expect that we will be barraged by lists of green holiday presents: presents that are recyclable or recycled, that reduce water or energy use, that are made from organic fabrics and fairly traded.

Speaking for myself, I love browsing the Rainforest Site shop. I think it has a genuinely quirky and cool collection of (somewhat) green items whose proceeds go to save the rainforest. I drool over the tree-motif, fairly traded fabric shopping bags (see right). I linger over the Roman glass jewelry. I consider doing all my holiday shopping there, irrespective of the interests and tastes of the poor folks on my gift list.

Surprisingly, the site’s association with saving rainforests tempts me to spend and buy more than I would otherwise do. The guilt I’ve come to associate with shopping vanishes because it suddenly has a good cause. It’s also harder for me to keep in mind the William Morris quote I shop by: “Have nothing in your home that you do not either know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” (This is the perfect compromise mentality for fellow materialists/aesthetes who can’t quite give up consumerism.)

But shopping is pretty much never a green activity, even if it’s for a good cause, even if you’re buying green goods, even if you only buy things you consider beautiful.

Anything you purchase has a certain cost in energy, carbon, resources, and labor. If you can get away without buying something new, it’s almost always going to be the greener move. It’s true that you can make better or greener purchasing decisions, and that those organic sheets or recycled plastic bags are a better choice than their non-green counterpart. But you’ll still be using resources and energy that you could preserve by simply reusing what you already have. (Seriously, does any of us need more fabric shopping bags?)

Today I saw a device that you can hook up to your car that will measure how much gas you’re wasting and how to reduce usage, and I wondered: is the total amount of gas being saved equivalent to the resources and pollution generated by developing, producing, and distributing this totally unnecessary gadget? Is there such a thing as a truly green gadget?

Being truly green probably isn’t very good for the economy in the short run, but our current consumer based economy isn’t sustainable in the long run, so we might as well nix the idea that we can buy ourselves to eco-friendly sainthood. Ideally, buying green would mean not only buying greener goods, but buying fewer of them and using them more wisely.  Consider it your holiday present to the Earth.

Oh, and as for presents? Why not contribute to someone’s solar power system fund?

Solar Goes Presidential

Renewable energy superhighways aren’t here yet. But they just might be in our future.

The renewable energy sector got a boost last Tuesday, October 27, when President Obama toured the new DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, Florida as it came online. The new 25 MW solar plant is the largest so far in the US and is expected to be able to supply clean solar energy for about 3,000 houses.

President Obama praised the ambitious new solar plant and offered his vision of America’s energy future: one in which a new interstate energy grid provides reliable, clean power to America. Rebutting arguments that clean, renewable energy would come at the cost of jobs and the economy, the president suggested that building a unified, updated grid system would in fact create jobs, lower energy costs for Americans, and reduce our environmental impact. An interstate ’superhighway’ system for energy would also mean that renewable power produced in one region could be distributed to meet energy needs outside the region or state (e.g. wind power produced in a rural area could be transmitted to an urban one).

Being able to distribute renewable energy without running into the bureaucratic rules of different energy companies (the US grid – the world’s most complex machine?) would make it a more feasible solution for curbing America’s CO2 emissions caused by traditional energy generation. President Obama compared his proposed energy superhighway to Eisenhower’s interstate highway system that made travel safer, more reliable, and more efficient.  Will energy superhighways do the same thing for renewable energy? We don’t know.

But wouldn’t it be awesome if we could find out, sooner rather than later?

10 Super Easy Ways to Be Green[er]

I watched An Inconvenient Truth for the first time last night. When it came out a few years ago, I wasn’t as much of an environmentalist as I am  now. Since then, and especially since joining Twitter, I have been bombarded with daily updates about How We Are All Screwed Why We Need to Act Now. The film didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. At the same time, it was a sobering reminder of just how much work it will take to clean up our act and preserve not only us but also the species we share the Earth with.

If An Inconvenient Truth has a flaw, it is surely that it doesn’t directly empower people to act. Al Gore talks a lot about the need to lower our gigantic CO2 output, but doesn’t 1) make the problem seem small enough that an individual’s actions can positively affect it; or 2) give individuals ideas on how to combat their own lifestyles.

Now, I realize that that wasn’t the point of the film, which was to serve as a wake up call, but perhaps it would have been a good aspect to address. Individuals have to believe that they can make a difference in the problem before they’ll act. Therein lies the problem: our actions, individually, are pretty minute and difficult to measure. However, en masse, they can make a tremendous difference. (Or at least I kept telling myself, as I cut short my morning shower on a chilly autumn morning.) At the same time, most people don’t want to change any really fundamental aspects of the comfortable lives they lead.

So I offer this list as a compromise. They are all extremely easy and practical to do, and require singularly little effort. They might even save you money. They won’t make as significant an impact as, say, going vegetarian or giving up your car, but they’re a minimal-effort way to start making a difference

1. Quit the plastic water bottle habit once and for all. Plastic, for all intents and purposes, does not biodegrade. According to The World Without Us, every bit of plastic we’ve produced in the past 50 years, with the exception of the small percentage that has been incinerated, is still around in one form or another (much of it in the ocean). We simply don’t know enough right now about the longterm effects of plastic on the environment. Switch to a stainless steel or aluminum water bottle instead, which can be used for years and fully recycled at the end of it.
2. For the same reason, go for a reusable shopping bag instead of taking plastic ones at the store. You probably have a couple already stashed in your closet that were given to you free by various companies. Use them!
3. Swap paper napkins with cloth ones. There’s no need for virgin forest to end up as a disposable napkin. (Much less as toilet paper. Rather than use cloth for that function, however, you can opt for recycled toilet paper.)
4. Shop less. Every item you buy has a carbon footprint and uses resources. Unless you truly need it or truly love it, consider using what you already have or doing without. Consumerism is a big part of our use of land and resources and, inevitably, of pollution and waste.
5. Take shorter showers. The world is likely to face severe fresh water shortages within the next fity years. Your water footprint is no less important than your carbon footprint to sustainability.
6. Go meatless for one day a week. Industrial agriculture is a major cause of carbon emissions, to say nothing of obesity. Do yourself and the planet a favor by cutting it out once a week. If everyone were vegetarian one day a week, we could prevent 1.2 million tons of CO2, 3 million tons of soil erosion, and 4.5 tons of animal waste. It would also be equivalent to taking half of all American cars off the road.
7. Walk one of your errands each week. Even a Prius can’t compete with the near-zero carbon footprint of walking. Do yourself a favor, too!
8. Join Freecycle, a group committed to keeping things out of the landfill. You can keep your unwanted items out of the landfill and get ones you do need.
9. Turn off the lights when you’re not using them. (Better yet, unplug appliances or turn them off from the strip.) Unless you’ve gone solar, your electricity is still largely generated by coal burning and non-renewable energy sources.
10. Reuse before you recycle. This may come as a surprise: recycling isn’t actually that green. It still takes up energy and resources. Reduce waste by buying less and avoiding packaging and creatively reusing things you already have before you recycle.

The rules are overall pretty simple. Choose reusable products over single or limited use products. Shop smarter (and less). And think before you consume resources. Don’t let anyone persuade you that you can buy yourself green — while you can and should replace necessary products with greener equivalents, buying new products, even if organic, sustainably produced, and recyclable, is never going to be as green as reusing what you already have.

Thoughts on the Sigg Recall

A favorite of the green movement, Sigg bottles are reusable aluminum water bottles with snazzy designs that are marketed in three ways:

 Reducing single-use plastic water bottle/cup waste (my Sigg has served me for over a year so far and eliminated my 1 plastic water bottle a week habit).

Reducing exposure to toxins present in plastic water bottles (reusable and otherwise) such as BPA, an endocrine disruptor leached from some plastics (#7 and #3).

Reducing the unpleasant plasticky or metallic taste associated with other resuable bottles.

Recently the news leaked that older Siggs, with their coppery baked-on liner, contain trace amounts of non-leaching BPA. Greenies shrieked in horror and dismay and rushed to Whole Foods to exchange their older Siggs for free shiny new non-BPA replacements.

Hang on a sec. Shiny. New. Green? Those words don’t belong in the same line.

As I understand it, the core value of the green movement is to reduce, reuse, and recycle. I can imagine that you’d be upset if you bought a Sigg primarily because you were looking for a non-BPA bottle. But if you bought yours, as I did, on the grounds that you wanted to stop being a part of the casual waste of resources, I think you’re being a little hypocritical in relinquishing your non-leaching bottle so readily. Even though Siggs are completely recyclable, recycling should be the last step. Reusing and reducing always come first.

There are plenty of good reasons to replace your Sigg. Siggs dent quite readily and a severe dent can actually mess up the inside liner and make them unsafe to drink from. If you’ve had and used your Sigg for over a year, and it no longer closes well or has other functionality issues, you might be justified in replacing it.

However, to replace your Sigg just because it has trace amounts of non-leaching BPA seems silly to me. You’re exposed to a lot more BPA in canned food. You are probably exposed to more endocrine-disrupting toxins just stepping outside for a walk. Heck, you probably apply them personally to your skin, hair, or teeth every day. On the day in which we have reduced our daily exposure to toxins to basically nil, then you’re entitled to be upset about being subjected to trace amounts of non-leaching BPA. Don’t hold your breath.

My Sigg is red, with a design of a gnarled tree and a bird taking flight. It has two substantial dents from when my car door closed on it.  (Yes, I know…I have a car…) Despite the aesthetic imperfection, it works perfectly.  Water from it tastes like water, not like plastic, not like metal. It goes everywhere with me. 

Replace it with a free one? No way. You can take my Sigg with its non-leaching-trace-amounts-of-BPA-liner out of my cold, dead hands.

Greenest Hair Removal

You no longer have to be a granola-crunching hippie to be concerned about the environment and the damage being done to it by the mounds of disposable plastic razors, packaging, and toxic chemicals associated with removing hair. But if you’re not enough of a hippie to leave the hair where it is, you have several reasonably green options for smoothing your body. Here are four methods that are effective, safe, and best of all, environmentally conscious.

Sugaring is an ancient Arabic form of hair removal that uses a simple paste of sugar, lemon juice, and water that has been heated into a honey-like consistency and smoothed on to the skin. Strips of cotton are then placed over the mixture and pulled off. Some techniques even bypass the cotton strips. Sugaring is less irritating to the skin than waxing, contains no dangerous chemicals, and produces little waste (the cotton strips can be washed and reused). It is said to be less painful than waxing and is good for larger areas such as legs, underarms, and the bikini area. Click here for a recipe and a demo.

Threading is an Eastern technique that also goes back centuries. A twisted piece of cotton thread is manipulated to pull hairs out singly or in a straight line. It takes some practice to get the technique down, but requires nothing beyond a piece of string and is especially effective in shaping the brows. Experienced threaders work very quickly and professional threading actually costs less than waxing. Click here for a detailed explanation and demo of threading.

Plucking. Notice a pattern? The most eco-friendly methods of hair removal are also the oldest and the simplest. If you already pluck, good for you! Plucking is the greenest of the traditional hair removal methods. All you need is a pair of tweezers and some time. Best for brows and other small areas — most women don’t have the time to pluck their legs!

Shaving with a non-disposable razor. Razors just aren’t that eco-friendly, but the ones with replaceable blades are much more so than disposable plastic razors. If you can’t take the pain of sugaring or threading, a well-made razor is your friend. Just be sure to take good care of the blade to extend its lifetime and pair it with an eco-friendly shaving cream.

Eco Fashion Made Easy

Let’s say you’re a treehugger in disguise – you wouldn’t be caught dead in Birkenstocks and tie dye, but you genuinely care about the environment and want to be a part of the solution. Is being a green fashionista a complete oxymoron?

 Not at all, as long as you’re willing to change the way you shop.

• Rule #1: shop less. You may not want to hear this, but consumerism is not and will never be as eco-friendly as using what you already have. Be creative with your stuff!
• Rule #2: shop smarter. Make sure that what you do buy is more eco-friendly, and in keeping with rule number one, choose timeless, versatile pieces that will outlast this season’s trends. Eco-friendly clothing is meant to be worn many times, and has the durable construction and quality materials to last you for years, unlike last year’s Old Navy jeans.

Green clothing does tend to cost more. Producing clothing responsibly is just more expensive than its pesticide-and-sweatshop alternative. But you’ll get guiltless glamour and fund sustainable practices with your dollars. And if you abide by rule #1 (shop less!) you may not actually end up spending more by going green.

 That said, getting started in green fashion can be tricky. Many unethical companies present their goods as eco-friendly when they’re merely greenwashed. Here’s a beginner’s guide to the three major categories of true green fashion: organic, sustainable, and vintage.

 Organic

Clothing that is labeled organic is made from all natural materials such as cotton, hemp, wool, and silk that were not radiated, genetically modified, or treated with pesticides and insecticides. In order to earn this label, the clothing must also be processed, cleaned, dyed, and finished in as environmentally conscious a way as possible.

Why it makes a difference: Organic clothing that has been grown and produced according to these principles has a significantly lower ecological impact than conventional clothing. For example, cotton is highly susceptible to disease and infestation, so conventionally grown cotton leaches large amounts of pesticides and insecticides into the soil and water, which are deadly to local ecosystems and harmful to human workers and even wearers.

Unfortunately, the organic clothing industry is far from standardized. A USDA or OTA (Organic Trade Association) certification is your best guarantee that something is genuinely and comprehensively organic. Many other certification organizations exist, but as a rule of thumb, if it’s suspiciously inexpensive, it probably isn’t low impact.

 Sustainable

‘Sustainable’ is an even less regulated term than ‘organic’ and can mean any of several things. Sustainable clothing tends to focus either on the reuse or recycle of materials or on the long term renewability of the crop and production process. Recycled clothing uses the fabric of old clothing to create new pieces. Renewable crops include bamboo and hemp, which grow quickly and well without pesticides.

When accompanied by a Food Alliance certification, something labeled as sustainable has been produced under fair working conditions, without hormones or GM crops, with fewer pesticides, and with special attention towards protecting soil, water, and local ecosystems for the long term. Fair trade products have more of a socially conscious bent but are often also environmentally friendly.

Why it makes a difference: Forward-thinking sustainable clothing is produced at a lower ecological and social impact and keeps a much-needed eye out for the 7^th generation. Look for a Food Alliance or Fair Trade certification.

Vintage

Ah, what a lovely euphemism for used clothing. Used clothing skips the extra step involved in recycled clothing and is your one truly budget-friendly eco alternative. No matter how greenly sourced, new clothing has more of an environmental impact than used. Luckily, vintage clothing is always fashionable, especially dressed up or combined in interesting ways, and there’s no shortage of styles to choose from. Dig through thrift store racks for real bargains, or go to a ‘vintage’ boutique for cleaner, pre-sorted, and more expensive used clothing.

Why it makes a difference: Buying vintage clothing consumes no new resources and keeps clothing out of landfills.

 Read on for more detail about greening your wardrobe:

How Organic Clothing Works

“Certified Organic Clothing” What does it mean?

How Green is my Bamboo Shirt?

A Quick Look at Organic vs. Sustainable

The Four [Reusable] Bag System

Just about everyone I know has, and earnestly means to use, reusable shopping bags. Reusable bags are a fantastic, easy, and cheap way to make a dent in your plastic usage. My parents accumulated a closet full of them during the dot com era of conventions and freebies, and I not only inherited some of these sturdy and free (if undeniably ugly) canvas bags, I also picked up a few hippie bags of my own during my wild university days at Santa Cruz. Yes, they have Celtic knots on them.

However, many of the people who have and want to use their reusable bags don’t actually manage to do so on a regular basis.  There are two key elements keeping would-be greenies from achieving greater plastic independence:

• We forget to take them out of the car when we go shopping. (We are too lazy to go back for them once we are ten feet from the car.)
• We forget to bring them back to the car after using them for toting groceries into the house. (We are too lazy to make another trip out to the car to drop them off.)

Sound familiar?  Ugliness isn’t a contributing factor: forgetfulness and a streak of laziness definitely are, and none of us are immune. So dig out those dot com bags or get out your snazzy organic cotton ones.  We’re going to need at least four to combat these two banal but real deterrents.

Step 1: Take two reusable shopping bags (more if you buy a lot of groceries at the same time), preferably the more colorful ones, and plant them somewhere highly noticeable in your car. My preference is for the passenger seat, but if you actually have passengers, you can stuff them by the side of the seat, on the door, or where you put your purse – anywhere you will see them when you are in the car. Bright is good!

Step 2: Put the remaining two reusable bags in your trunk. These are your back-up bags and should not be needed unless you’ve been abusing the system.

Step 3: Use your front seat bags whenever you shop. Remember, they live on your passenger seat (or thereabouts), so only short excursions to the store and to the house are permitted.

Step 4: If you forget to bring your front seat bags back to the car (which is probably inevitable at some point), you may use your back-ups on the condition that those bags return to their home ASAP.

Step 5: If you get down to 1 or no bags in your car, gather up the bags languishing in your house and put your purse in them so you’ll remember them the next time you head out. (Do not forget that you have put your purse in them.)

And that’s it. Pretty simple, with ample allowances for forgetfulness and laziness. Tested and true by yours truly, and I am by no means more attentive or responsible than the average green-ish citizen. Let me know how it works for you!

Oh…and please don’t run out and get designer reusable bags if you have perfectly usable ones already. Sustainability is ultimately about consuming less.

A Brief & Breezy History of Solar Power

So, solar power has been around for, like, a really long time. A lot longer than the Earth has supported life in general, or humans in particular. Humans have been relying on the sun for warmth and food since they climbed down out of trees and made the switch to bipedality. Clearly, a comprehensive history of man’s use of solar power would be lengthy, random, and largely uninteresting, unless you possess a keen interest in, say, man’s first sunburn.

However, a couple of early uses are worth mentioning. Ancient Romans built their bathhouses to have big south facing windows, still the best direction for capturing sunlight. Archimedes is said to have focused sunlight through mirrors to set enemy ships on fire. Forget ants when you can target battle ships!

Relatively little noteworthy happened in the history of men and solar power until the 19th century. In 1839 French experimental scientist Edmund Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect (photo = light, voltaic = energy). Woo! Solar electricity! Later that century, English electrical engineer Willoughby Smith discovered the photoconductivity of selenium.

In the 20th century, Albert Einstein published two earth-shattering papers, one on the photoelectric effect, the other (rather more famously) on relativity. Guess which one he won the Nobel prize for? Yup, that’s right: the one on photoelectricity. Funny how those things happen.

Solar power really took off in the second half of the 20th century. In 1954, Bell Laboratories developed the first photovoltaic cell, made of silicon, that could turn light into usable energy, albeit not very efficiently. Although efficiency remained low, solar panels began to be used to power satellites during the space race. The 1973 Oil Crisis provided further impetus for the development of alternative sources of energy. Alas, people have short memories, and by the 90s were back to buying Hummers.

But between mounting worries over the environment and  The 21st century promises to be even better for solar. Efficiency is up, costs are going down, and a plethora of new materials and ideas guarantee lighter, more effective, cheaper, and more versatile solar power.

Now all I need is a condo association willing to listen!

Ways I’ve gotten greener this year

Greenness is hard to quantify. (In fact, color is hard to quantify, within and without human perspective, but that’s a whole different story.) But in the last year, I think I’ve been hedging towards lime and away from lemon on the color wheel. Comparing this year and previous years:

• I did not take six (ouch!) transatlantic flights between California and England. Total carbon savings: several tons. I can only defend those flights by saying that for four of them (two in December/January and two in June/July) I was extremely homesick, depressed, and sick to death of my dissertation. 
• I shortened my commute from 12 miles to 3.  I haven’t given up my car, but I’ve made some progress towards driving less.
• My lunches no longer involve any packing materials that are not reusable and/or reused. My sandwich and snacks are now contained in highly reusable tupperware rather than plastic bags. Yes, tupperware is plastic…but it’s at least going to serve me for a good long time.
• My showers have gone from 20 minute soul-cleansing ablutions to 5 minute flings with soap and shampoo. Not entirely without regret.
• I pay more attention to where my produce comes from. California is one of the places where there is really no excuse not to buy local or at least state-produced food. I can think of a few things California doesn’t produce (bananas, Taiwanese bellfruit, pineapples), but it more than makes up for it with everything else.
• I have worked out the perfect four bag fabric shopping bag system. Two of my fabric bags live on my passenger seat. The other two live in my trunk and are to be used only if I have been very bad about returning my front seat bags to the car after using them. I can’t remember the last time I took a plastic bag.
• My lovely Sigg has replaced many disposable water bottles; at least 1-2 a week.
• I am now a solar enthusiast and can even bore you with the history of photovoltaics.

Naturally, there is much (very much) room for improvement…