BEING GREEN - PART 2
Last week, I said everything’s a trade-off when it comes to the environmental field and that’s not entirely true. There are plenty of things that are all good no matter how you analyze it. For instance, decreasing the amount of junk you buy. We live in a consumer society. If you don’t believe me (or just want to check out a thought-provoking video on the subject), check out The Story of Stuff. A frustration of mine is how much it’s become ingrained in our culture to buy cheap products that wear out or get broken very quickly and we just throw them out and buy another to replace it. Or else we replace something we have just because we don’t like it anymore, not because it’s worn out. I’m as guilty of this as anyone by the way, I can’t even pretend to sit on a high horse, looking down at everyone else. It’s something that I try to be conscious of and try to avoid doing, but I can’t pretend I’m always successful.

For me, I associate this with going back to the “Grandma sustainability” concept. Not long ago, it would have been unthinkable to buy, say, a sofa, knowing that you want to get rid of it as soon as you can afford to buy a better one. This is an incredible waste of money to continually buy one make-do solution after another. If you were to buy the one that you’d be happy with for the long-term right away, yes it would likely cost more, but then you won’t be spending the money to buy all the other in-between sofas as you would under the “upgrade a little every time you can” philosophy. Forgetting about the money and getting back to the environment, when you replace a make-do solution with only a slightly better make-do solution, that’s a ton of extra material that you’ve just thrown out. Not only that, but you’ve created a demand for businesses to process more material to provide you with more sofas. Now, realism does need to step in at a certain point, I do recognize that the large majority of us can’t afford to get everything we want to get right away. I’m not saying never buy a make-do solution, what I’m saying is think twice before replacing a make-do solution with another make-do solution. If you already have something that’s working for you and can’t afford to buy what you really want, why do you want to replace what you have with anything less than what you really want? I’d bet most of the time the answer is going to have something to do with wanting to impress someone(s) or otherwise make yourself feel better about yourself by having that slightly better piece of furniture, or whatever it is. This may be the core of the problem. We also live in culture that is very ego-centric and there are many, many people who feel at some level that they need material things to feel good about themselves, whether they realize it or not. Fix the core of the problem and maybe you’ll be happier, you won’t be under so much financial strain and you’ll reduce your footprint at the same time.

Does everyone know what it means to “reduce your footprint”? The expression is still relatively new and I wonder if a lot of people who hear it nod their heads, smile and just pretend they know what the speaker is talking about. The concept starts with the fact that our planet is only so big and there are only so many resources in it. Each one of us is responsible for using a certain number of its resources. They’ve started calculating individuals’ impacts on the planet in terms of how many hectares worth of land, ocean & resources are required to supply that person with everything they consume on an annual basis. They call the resulting number of hectares your “ecological footprint”. The combined average footprint in the United States and Canada is sitting somewhere around 8.9 hectares per person. The patriotic Canadian in me at first wanted to highlight that Canada’s figure is better than the U.S. figure, but really, being the second worst nation in the world is nothing to gloat about. In this, we really are more alike than we are different. Our planet has about 1.8 hectares available per person right now, which means that if everyone on this planet lived the average American/Canadian lifestyle, we would need 5 Earths to survive within our means. Just to be clear, that means we are using 5 times more natural resources than we have to use on a global scale. That’s like spending 5 times that amount of money you make in a year, year after year. That also means that we’re racking up some serious ecological debt!

Want to figure out how big your footprint is? The Global Footprint Network has one of the best calculators you can use to see how you stack up.

There are many, many things you can do to reduce your footprint. The biggest ones are things like: don’t own a vehicle (walk, cycle, use public transit, participate in car pooling or car sharing), live close to where you work and play, live in a small house, use as little electricity, heating and water as you can, avoid flying wherever possible (vacation close to home or use more environmentally preferred forms of travel, like the train) and reduce or eliminate your meat intake. I was pretty surprised at first to learn just how detrimental the North American meat-heavy diet is on the environment, and I don’t think I’m the only one. Did you know that it takes about 12,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef? Put another way, that’s 100,000 litres of water for 1 kilogram of beef. That’s not a typo. The prices of meat in North America are shockingly low and do not represent the real value of the resources put into producing it.

Again, I’m realistic and realize that habits are hard to break. All the above requires big lifestyle changes. Ideally, we’d all wake up tomorrow and start doing all those things in our day-to-day lives, but let’s not be too hard on ourselves. If we expect ourselves to change overnight, chances are we’ll disappoint ourselves and then live in guilt. Learning and changing behaviour because of guilt is not conducive to a happy life nor very effective, the purpose here is not to make anyone feel guilty. The purpose is to raise awareness and hopefully motivate to make small changes. If enough people make small changes, we can make a huge difference!

So let’s say you want to buy something, what are the kinds of things you can do to reduce your footprint and make the kind of small changes needed to make a difference? First as always is reduction; do you really need the latest and greatest cell phone? For most of us, most of the time, the answer is “no”. Look into repairing or upgrading something you already own; maybe you just need to replace the battery on the phone you already have. Figure out what exacting you are going to use the product for; what does it need to have to meet your requirement? What doesn’t it need? What would be a “nice to have”? If you only use the phone to make calls, you don’t need one with a keyboard built in for text messaging and you may even find it annoying if it does. If you text message all the time but buy a phone that isn’t great for text messaging, then you’re not going to be happy with it. Either way, if you don’t buy according to what you really need, you’re more likely to want to replace it as soon as you can (a big no-no!). Try to buy used. There are all kinds of stores that sell things second-hand, there’s also a range of online services that can help you find what you’re looking for, like ebay, kijiji and craigslist. Don’t forget to talk to your friends and family when you’re looking to buy big ticket items – you never know, maybe they or someone they know has been thinking of replacing theirs and would gladly work something out with you.

If you’re buying new, make sure to consider durability. If it’s going to wear down super fast, see if you can find a way to get a more durable alternative that will save you money in the long-run. Find out what certifications are available for the product you are looking for. There are tons out there right now! All of them are trying to make it a little easier to buy environmentally preferable items. Unfortunately, there are so many now that it can be very confusing what they all mean. Plus, there are many companies that are doing what has been coined “greenwashing”. They are trying to make their products and services appear to be environmentally preferable, when really they aren’t. So what’s a consumer to do? Look for reputable multiple-attribute leadership certifications. Think EcoLogoM (Canadian), Green Seal (American), the Nordic Swan Ecolabelling Program and the mother of them all, the first and oldest in the world, the Blue Angel (German). Their logos are at the bottom of this article for easy reference. If you see any of those logos, you know you’re buying a really good product or service. Why? Because these logos mean that it has been certified to meet all the toughest environmental criteria there are for that industry by a neutral third party. Remember all the talk of tradeoffs I was talking about? These guys have done all that homework for you. They are leadership standards, which mean that only the top performers get to use their logo. If the industry improves and suddenly everyone can meet their standard, they revise the standard to make it harder to get, so you know you’re always getting the best of the best. That doesn’t just mean that they have the highest recycled content or are the least toxic or have any other specific attribute, it means that they have all of them (or at least as many as makes sense on a case-by-case basis). They look at the total life of the product, so there’s as few sacrifices and compromises between one environmentally preferred attribute and another as possible. For example, they look into how far the recycled content has travelled and whether or not the wood comes from a well-managed forest but is then shipped to a mill that pollutes like you wouldn’t believe. The third party certified bit means that you aren’t just trusting the company’s word for it. A separate, independent organization who knows what they’re doing has toured their plant, poured over their documentation and asked all the tough questions so you don’t have to. I’m all about being an educated consumer and looking into things yourself, but there’s no way any of us have enough time to do it all ourselves for every single thing we buy! So these trustworthy labels help a lot!

There are many, many single attribute labels out there too. For example, labels that certify that it’s the most energy efficient, that it’s organic or that it doesn’t negatively impact air quality as much. Many of those are good too. I won’t get into all of them right now, but if you’re really gung ho and would like to check them out, see the Greener Choices’ Eco-label Centre. It’s a database of environmental claims and labels. You can search for labels in different product categories and you can also look up a label that you see in the store or online for an explanation of what it means.

That’s a lot for today, so I’ll leave it there and give it time for all that to sink in. Try not to be discouraged or get jaded because believe me, there is a lot of hope! There are many, many things you can do to reduce your negative impact on the environment and even make a positive impact every now and again. Start anywhere. The important thing is not where you start, but that you start.

Margaret Bailey lives in Ottawa with her husband and two cats. She believes strongly that knowledge is only useful if applied and shared. She strives to be a light to all who cross her path or walk with her awhile.