52 Weeks Down – Week 38 – Buy Green
Sharon April 1st, 2008
Sorry for the pause in this series – but it is back, although it will probably take me longer than a year to get through! In the meantime, I’m re-orienting my focus. All the bad news, gloom and doom are getting too depressing for me, while readers clamor for good, solid information about what products to spend their hard borrowed cash on. Not to mention that this blog was starting to attract the attention of the wrong kind of people, KWIM? I mean a bunch of eco wackoids and peakies and climate change freaks and some people who aren’t even from America! I’ve decided that instead of writing about peak oil and climate change, I’ll be advising you on how to save the world by buying products that use marginally less energy, or give a tiny percentage of the profits to some poor person. Make sure you buy a lot!
Today, we’re going to talk about how to deal with finding environmentally friendly products to substitute for those unfriendly things you want and desperately need shortly after you read the catalog. It is important to remember that these things will most likely cost more – but you can compensate for that by working more hours, borrowing more on your credit card or taking out a home equity loan (better hurry!). As things get tighter, consider laying people off at your company, or skimping on private jets and flying first class to keep the green products coming in.
Let’s start by thinking about your dryer. It is an essential replacement for the lint brush and the archaic clothesline. No sacrifice is too much to prevent global warming, of course, but fluffy towels are an essential, not a luxury. Shockingly, energy star doesn’t even label clothes dryers, because they are seen as non-essential. But do not give up hope – a generation of fancy new European models, is, I’m told, just around the corner. Look for daily updates on this essential issue on this site! In the meantime, it will cost only a paltry 10K to buy a solar system that can run your dryer – heck, buy two and run a fridge, freezer and some power tools too!
Ok, I know you are desperate to warm up your credit cards, so let’s move on to the next essential – baby clothes! Babies are so cute and just the best accessory, as long as they are properly contained, deoderized and nannied. What better product than a $24 onesie that starts a kid off being properly proud of his ride? Let’s see – your kid will go through approximately 3 onesies a day, so it will only cost you just over $500 to have enough to keep the kid well dressed. And organic! Oh, don’t forget the 20,000 dollar hybrid to go with it!
Not having a baby? You want something for you? Well, remember, when things get tough, when the news is full of ugly stuff about billions starving because of biofuels and climate change, it is time for some pampering. You know, that thing where you make yourself feel really good by focusing on the most important thing…yourself! Now here’s a product I bet you thought you’d never fine – eco-mascara! Only $15 for a few ounces, now you can truly have those thick, lush lashes so essential to feeling good about yourself. And why shouldn’t you feel good? After all, you care! You care enough to buy non-toxic mascara to protect yourself from toxic chemicals.
What about for him? Well, he can’t wear it himself, but he’ll think himself fortunate that the world has not yet neglected the urgent category of “eco-lingerie.” Sexy eco-knickers will liven up the lowest-energy evening. Remember to find some equally environmentally friendly sunglasses, and greet him at the door in your new outfit! “Woah, you look so…green…honey!”
What about something for the man to use himself? Well, every guy needs a stylish way to tote his stuff to the office to process foreclosures. Instead of going to goodwill and picking up one of the zillions of bags, briefcases and backpacks that are dumped every year, how about something that will truly express his individuality, when his friends say “hot bag, man.” “Yes,” he’ll answer proudly, “Honeycakes gave it to me – it is made of pure hemp, and the edible underwear she wore to dinner the day she gave it to me were made of sustainably harvested sugarcane and corn fibers, hand appliqued by a bunch of weird non-white people with no money to buy food.”
Finally, what if you need to redecorate? My recommendation is a subscription to Natural Home Magazine, where health and eco-conscious consumers (not readers or citizens or people - it is good to know who your audience is) are helped to decide how to spend their half million dollars to re-green their homes, or better yet, to build a 6000 square foot dream home. Sometimes celebrities even show off their 100,000 dollar grey water reclalmation system. You’ll be able to pick out the right couch at the right 10K price. And who doesn’t need that.
Ok, I hope that’s gotten rid of the undesirables. Coming up next week – Take a Green Spa Vacation and save the planet!
Sharon
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Damn. I’m all over that. I can’t wait to max out my credit cards on green items and green jewelry. Check out this press release email I got yesterday:
“In honor of the green movement and Earth Day, a day dedicated to celebrating the modern environmental movement, Brilliant Earth will add a complimentary conflict free green sapphire to the inside of all engagement rings through the month of April. As a beautiful reminder of what socially and environmentally responsible couples value most, the Green on the Inside engagement ring symbolizes their shared commitment to a vibrant future together in support of a healthy, sustainable planet Earth….”
I really think it’s important that we support this very important campaign.
phew…you really had me going there …lol
“In the meantime, it will cost only a paltry 10K to buy a solar system that can run your dryer – heck, buy two and run a fridge, freezer and some power tools too!”
BWAHAHAHA, Sharon!
Oh, Crunchy – I wish I’d known about the engagement ring – that’s definitely the best one I’ve heard in a while!
Sharon
Great post Sharon!
I wish the earlier post had been the joke.
Yeah, I had that thought too, Dewey.
Sharon
*grin* And happy 1 April to you, too!
The sad thing is, I was halfway through the post before it got through my thick head that this was an April Fool’s joke!
Aw, man I feel so dumb; I totally caught the sarcasm and joke-like nature of this post, but didn’t realize why you were posting this way until I read the comments. Doh! You had me going!
I was a little slow on the April fools thing too because I have been in such a depressed stupor lately! You are one in a million, Sharon
That onesie is too much. No, really, too much. Just… gah.
I remember reading an angry letter from a new mom in “Parenting” magazine, where an article on saving money was placed on a facing page to a kid’s clothing spread where the average cost of an outfit was $125 (for 5 year olds, no less).
But I do need to get on those green purchases! No more baking soda, Borax & vinegar for me!
You think that onesie is a joke? I know somebody who is one of these consumerist organic eco types. She seems to be doing it out of fear of toxins, and desire to buy more high-end stuff. Her baby registry was full of $30 organic onesies.
No, the $24 organic onesie is not a joke, it’s for real. The joke is, that Sharon suggested you buy one, or several.
re: eco mascara
“Although NOT water-proof, it has GREAT wear-ability and resists smudging, but washes off easily with regular skin cleanser and water.”
hmmm, wouldn’t that run while shedding crocodile tears for the poor people of the world? ;-P
–sgl
Leila,
No no, I definitely know that the onesie is real. In fact, I believe I’ve even seen one in a store down south of us . Of course, I’m the woman who once spent $28 on a romper that says “Visualize Whirled Peas” on all-organic fabric–yeah. I’m all better now, though.
R.
I do find the eco-spa vacations ridiculous; prices run to $600 a night not including air fare (and carbon emissions) but even at $100 a night the whole thing seems dumb.
We are renting a cottage in the country two hours north of us this summer. So we’ll spend money on gas (and on living in somebody else’s house in the country) – this is instead of taking a vacation that involves flying across the world to hang in somebody else’s bio region. We will be visiting our friends with the goat farm and artisan cheese operation, and their neighbors the organic winegrowers who use friends’ surplus goat whey to spray for some blight that affects wine grapes.
Yes, yes, if I were really living by Sharon’s suggestions, we would stay home and donate the money to the food bank, but I am battling very serious cancer and I feel like seeing a bit of the world before I go. However I don’t plan to go for some time yet so don’t cry for me, Peak Oilies. Just sayin’ – if you knew your doctor didn’t think you were going to live long, would you stay home from vacation?
Leila, I hope you don’t think I’m sitting in judgement of you – if I were in your shoes, I doubt I could do anything like the ecological living you’ve been doing. I don’t begrudge you a vacation – that’s a good use of energy.
Sharon
Dear Ms. Astyk,
Having laughed myself to death, I now need information on eco-funerals.
I remain, your late, devoted reader,
M. E. Allen, (Miss), A.B., M.L.I.S.
Ah yes. The eco funeral. I assume you don’t mean the one that starts…first you hole in the ground near the compost pile…
.
Sharon
Re: eco funerals
Well I don’t want to be the one to tell you about this since I carry around that nasty diagnosis that gives people the creeps,
But there is an outfit in Marin County that is doing eco burials. Makes a lot of sense. I think it’s still in the planning stages. Just wrapping a dead body in a winding sheet and burying it in the dirt somehow violates the rules. You have to have the lead-lined box, the preservatives, etc. Cemeteries don’t want human bodies going into the ground unmediated by all the trappings. Ew. Like, they might rot or something… (snark)
Then there’s cremation, but think of all the energy it takes to burn up a corpse.
So an eco-burial, i.e. buried the way the Muslims do with no box, in a winding sheet, no marker either if you’re really strict – this seems like much less expenditure of carbon.
Sharon – I know you don’t judge me … I just judge myself a little. But mostly not. If I can get through the day, remembering to take all my meds, remembering to be present and enjoy kids, hubby, my body, this life, then that’s a good day for me. Everything else seems not so important.
ROFLMAO
Jewish burials are eco-burials, no lead lined coffins or embalming fluids, a plain shroud, etc… So it can be done in the US if Muslims and Jews are doing it.
Also, I’ve read that in some circumstances and regions it is possible to either bury on a designated section of your property or to be declared a church of the holy whateverish, and have a designated burial ground.
But here’s to hoping none of us need this information for a good while yet. Leila, I’m assuming you are going to be fine, because no one else pimps my blog in so many amazing places
! I need you 
!
Sharon
For some reason I didn’t see this post when I scanned my blog feeds yesterday, so I saw it today and was completely confused until I went back up to check the post date. Whew!
“Then there’s cremation, but think of all the energy it takes to burn up a corpse.” I know! You have to multi-task the energy. Who is ready for a barbecue? LOL!
But don’t folks still have to have a box, even if unlined?
Sorry to keep harping on this. I read about this eco-burial thing a couple of years ago. Must look up article.
Wiki is our friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-cemetery
so I was wrong, it is possible to bury without all the trappings, and some places in the US are doing it.
My best friend from high school died in college, and I remember a huge ivory colored polished wood casket with a Jewish star on the top. I guess her dad went for the funeral home’s glitz plan rather than tradition. I didn’t know Jewish tradition prefers simple burials too. Now the internet tells me that Orthodox Christians also prefer this. Well we live and learn…
I do indeed intend to stick around for quite some time, Sharon. I’ll try to pimp your blog someplace new and fabulous…
Oh, gack – yeah, there are some Jews who do the big shiny thing, but the halacha (Jewish law) is a plain pine box, no chemicals (Jews have to be buried as fast as possible), and a simple shroud. When we buried Eric’s grandparents, that was how we did it.
I admit, I have a fairly visceral reaction to the idea of embalming fluid – ugh!
Sharon
Not to rain on anybody’s April Fools, but there is one quick thing about funeral practices everybody ought to know: if you have silver fillings in your teeth, get them yanked before they cremate or bury you (unless you have strong religious objections, i guess – I don’t know everyone’s rules).
Funeral parlors will do this, and dispose of the amalgam fillings as toxic waste, but you have to *ask*. I actually feel really bad that I didn’t get any input at all when my grandmother died – she had a mouthful of old silver fillings that by now are mercury pollution in the groundwater, because she was cremated.
Several Pagan groups are trying to set up minimalist burial options too.
Also I thought Sharon might be interested in this fun fact from “The Automatic Earth” Today
“No government agency counts those who move for a job, either across state lines or just from one town to another in the same state. The Census Bureau, however, calculates how many people move across state lines for all reasons, and that number fell by a startling 27 percent last year, after climbing by almost that percentage for each of the previous three years.”
My favorite from some eco magazine or another was a special tool to help you mix your natural peanut butter (yuck- the oil on top!). Basically, a fancy knife. My husband almost had a cow when I showed him…
I thought the post was funny, too. But I wish you’d write (seriously, even if briefly) about the lint brush. Being dumb and uninformed, I’ve spent years wondering what you do about lint (and dog hair, and cat hair, etc…) without the dryer. Obviously people managed just fine for millennia and most still do — but … what, exactly, did they do? I did finally figure out that you buy a special brush, online, ’cause I haven’t figured out where to find one locally. But is there more to know? Sharon, on behalf of the dumb and uninformed, help!
Dryers rub clothes as they toss them around, wearing down and breaking down the fabrics gradually and producing tiny pieces of cloth: lint. It needs to be captured, vented, removed, and dealt with. Hang drying has never presented any of those issues for me- the clothes are not sustaining the damage from being tossed in the dryer, and once you get used to the new texture and feel of the fabric it can be really wonderful and luxurious- plus the smell…but it’s true, the towels aren’t as fluffy, or the cloth diapers…
Fluffiness is not the issue. The dog and cat hair from the pets is an issue. (There’s also the fact that it rains 9 months of the year here and it’s hard to move around in a small house covered with wet sheets, comforters, towels and soggy jeans — but mostly when I talk about the evils of dryers, DH answers with the lint issue). We do hang things to dry during the dry months — but he still wants to toss them in the dryer for 10 mintues, to get the pet hair off. Dalmation hair is particularly tenacious. I have a couple of lint rollers — one with masking tape, obviously not sustainable, and the other with some weird sticky substance that does work fairly well, but it would take a loooong time to get all the pet hair off everything with it. Toweling yourself off with a dog-hairy towel isn’t pleasant. Convincing DH that some towels should be reserved for dogs only and some for people only, and that maybe dogs really won’t feel deprived if they don’t sleep in the bed all over the sheets is a long-term project.
*clears throat* I manage a small historic cemetery, and have written at some length about “green burial,” most recently here.
Oh, thank God! I just knew we could buy our way out of this mess. Thank you for the tips – I’m off with my credit card . . .
Sara, thank you for that – that’s fascinating.
NM, you aren’t dumb and uninformed – you don’t even want to know how long it took me to figure out that I could use a lint brush. I think it sort of depends on your tolerance – a lint brunsh looks like a hair brush with a velvety front (I’m not describing this very well – mine came from a drugstore, but you might find them elsewhere or online). Seperation is probably the best long term strategy, but one I still haven’t mastered.
They work great if you have lowish standards, or want to brush clothes for a bit
– you just rub them and a good bit of the crud comes off (not all, unless you are more diligent than I am). I still haven’t managed to get 100% lint and pet hair free clothing, but I’m lazy and have low standards 
.
Sharon
Natural Burial Around the World
The modern concept of natural burial began in the UK in 1993 and has since spread across the globe. According the Centre for Natural Burial, http://naturalburial.coop there are now several hundred natural burial grounds in the United Kingdom and half a dozen sites across the USA, with others planned in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and even China.
A natural burial allows you to use your funeral as a conservation tool to create, restore and protect urban green spaces.
The Centre for Natural Burial provides comprehensive resources supporting the development of natural burial and detailed information about natural burial sites around the world. With the Natural Burial Co-operative newsletter you can stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the rapidly growing trend of natural burial including, announcements of new and proposed natural burial sites, book reviews, interviews, stories and feature articles.
The Centre for Natural Burial
[...] though, you can save money and spare the environment at the same time. Recent marketing of “green products” may make that not seem true, but it is. In light of that, I would like to list some ways [...]
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