Is Not Shopping Sustainable?

A lot of times when a person engages in a one-year challenge, it's assumed to be a stunt. A stunt that cannot be continued over the long term.

When I began my non-shopping challenge I wasn't sure how long I could keep it up, but I assumed that it would be hard to continue for more than a year.

However, two and a half years after I started this challenge, I'm beginning to believe not shopping is a fairly sustainable option.

Sort of.

Let me explain. I still rarely shop. When I do, I engage in throes of agony. Do I really, really, REALLY need this shirt? I know it's only $20, but do I really need it? Do I love it? Will I wear it a lot?

Most of the time I don't need or love the shirt enough to deal with the ensuing guilt. So I exit the store sad and empty-handed.

But I still need to, you know, wear clothes. And clothes wear out. Weight fluctuates. Put simply, one cannot just rely on one's wardrobe from 3+ years ago.

Enter my friends.

See, most of my friends still shop. They're not shoppers, per se. They don't go to the mall every weekend. They aren't competing with Carrie Bradshaw for number of shoes. But still. They do buy new clothes and then they have old clothes that they want to get rid of.

So they give them to me.

In the past year, I've revamped my wardrobe simply by going through my friends' Goodwill bags. The white and black cardigans I wear everyday? Came from my friends. The black ballet flats? My sister. Those nice work pants? Yup, that once belonged to a friend.

So, yeah, I can continue to update my wardrobe and not shop ... with a little help from my friends. It's not a sustainable life for everybody ... obviously if all my friends were like me and never shopped and wore their clothes until they were falling apart, I wouldn't be able to pick up new clothes from their Goodwill bags. And every so often, I do cave, and buy that $20 shirt from Banana.

But the truth is, I need fewer clothes than I ever thought before I started this challenge.

So, not shopping. Sorta sustainable. At least for me.

Building Up My Cooking Muscles

As most of you know because I whine endlessly about it, I hate to cook.

But I like food.

And honestly there is nothing about the cooking process that I inherently dislike. It's just that I don't think I'm a great cook, it is time consuming, and it involves constant grocery shopping. It's just easier for me in many ways to say, "Screw it," and just go out to eat.

But eating out isn't sustainable in a number of ways. And frankly, I know that I don't want to always be the person who doesn't know how to cook. I don't want to be feeding my children (if and when I have them) microwave dinners because I don't know how to cook. I want to be able to cook. I recognize the value of the skill.

And that's why I'm making a concerted effort to cook at home more. Sometimes, dinner is pretty simple. Last night, we had grilled chicken and a salad. Sometimes, I'm up for something more complex. But I realize that ultimately, I just have to stop whining and DO it.

Cooking is like working out. At first it sucks, and you're terrible and you feel gross afterwards. But after a while, it gets easier and you actually enjoy it. (So I'm told. I'm also horrible at working out.)

So, we're starting small. Baby steps. Simple things. And hoping that one day, I'll have built up those cooking muscles and have a lovely repertoire of recipes I make well.

Eating Healthier for Me and the Planet

As regular readers of this blog may be aware, I have high cholesterol issues. My father passed away at a relatively young age from a heart attack so there is a clear genetic component here. In fact, when I was in college and a vegetarian, I had my cholesterol tested and it was around 270. I still remember my doctor's disbelief to this day. "This is a vegetarian's cholesterol level?!!"

She quickly decided that, clearly, I needed to be on medication. Stat. And so, at the tender age of twenty, I was put on cholesterol drugs.

However, I was unsure myself whether or not this was really the right course of action. Starting cholesterol medication at twenty meant I could be taking these drugs for sixty plus years. Many of these drugs simply haven't been around that long. In addition, I knew I couldn't be on the drugs when I was pregnant or breast feeding. So, to me, it seemed like I should at least try to see if I could lower my cholesterol without drugs. (I should note at this time that I am talking about the right course of action for MYSELF. I would personally rather not take the drugs, but I'm not saying that others should not or that it may not be the right choice for someone else.)

And I found that by changing my diet, I was, in fact, able to lower my cholesterol levels. By eating healthier, I got my cholesterol down to a manageable level.

No drugs needed.

But while I was in graduate school, I really let go of many of my good eating habits. And though I've gotten better about my eating while un(der)employed, and though I've started running more regularly, I'm really nervous that my cholesterol has spiked and that my doctor is going to recommend the drugs again.

In fact, I have a physical scheduled in a couple weeks, and whenever I think about it, I get a little freaked out. What if, what if, what if, what if?

The thing is, I know better. I *really* know better. I know that if I followed our friend Michael Pollan's food rules I could not only reduce my environmental impact, but I could also keep my cholesterol under control.

I'm hoping desperately that my cholesterol levels are not out of control. But if they are on the high side, I hope I use that knowledge as a wake-up call. Hell, even if they are on the lower side, I could still use a wake-up call. 

Because I know that it is not inevitable that I suffer from heart disease. And by eating healthier, I can both help the planet and myself.

Is Moderation More Difficult than Deprivation?

The title of this post may at first seem ridiculous. How can moderation ever be more difficult than deprivation?

But I submit to you that we Americans as a society have a hard time with moderation.

We understand how to give things up entirely. We know how to diet. We know how to save money when we get laid off. We get that the best way to get over an addiction is to abstain entirely.

But when we've lost the weight or get a new high paying job, we become unsure of how to find balance.

I can have a box of chocolates next to me for a month and I will not eat a single chocolate. If I open the box to eat just one, suddenly the box disappears in two days. It's easier to give up chocolate because after a while, you forget how much you liked it. You adjust to a chocolate-free life. But eating just one chocolate a day? Requires a level of will-power that I'm not sure I have.

When I was an eco-nut, life was easier in a way. My life was defined by the environment and my environmental choices. I gave up heat. I gave up convenient frozen dinners. I gave up air conditioning. I gave up shopping.

And gradually, that just became my life. I forgot what life was like with air con. I forgot how convenient it was to just pick up a Trader Joe's salad.

Now I'm trying to find middle ground, and yet I often worry that I'm sliding too far back. I turn on the space heater, fully intending to turn it off in twenty minutes, and then ... I don't. Because it's so lovely and warm and I LOVE HEAT. I plan to cook, but then the conference call that was supposed to last twenty minutes lasts for an hour, and I've run out of cumin, and it's raining outside.

In a way it would be easier for me to say, you know what? Screw it? I can't find moderation, so I better just abstain. But I'm not sure that's the better answer. The healthier answer. The sustainable answer.

In the comments of the post on dieting that I linked to above, one woman talked about how she craves sugar. And how she was wondering if she could have cake to celebrate her PhD or if, knowing her cravings, she should forgo the cake. And another commenter pointed out that a life in which one cannot have cake to celebrate one's Ph effin D is a little sad.

And yet, somehow, cake in moderation is more difficult to achieve than it should be.

The Indecisive Grocery Shopper

I always wonder whether the clerks at the checkout stand are judging my grocery selections and perhaps secretly wondering what my criteria are when buying groceries.

The truth is, I have no real criteria.

Okay, that's not true. Given the choice, I will almost always choose organic. Unless I decide to choose local. Or fair-trade. Or plastic-less. Or high fiber. Or delicious. Or low-fat. Or less expensive.

I think most people would agree, the grocery store is a daunting place for us eco-types. I can spend ten minutes easily staring at the cheeses trying to decide if I should go for the local California cheese that's non-organic but is low fat, or the decidedly non-local European cheese that is also organic but also expensive.

In a perfect world, I'd buy all organic, local, groceries and I'd only shop the perimeter of the grocery store or I wouldn't even be at a grocery store because I'd only shop at food co-ops and farmers' markets.

Sadly, the reality is that I spend a lot of time in Whole Paycheck instead. Which isn't the worst place to shop for groceries, but also isn't the best place, either.

So, I'm curious. Does everyone else decide on the fly what to buy organic versus local versus plastic-free versus choose your own adventure? Or do some of you have actual systems and priorities?

No Longer Over-Ambitious and Challengicious

For a couple years now, the tag-line under the title of my blog has read "over-ambitious and challengicious." I like the tag. It's cute, it's funny, it's pithy, but it no longer describes this blog.

At the time that I started using the tag, I was in the early stages of my eco-journey. I constantly was challenging myself to do more, new things. To cut my carbon footprint lower, lower, lower! I was going without heat, not buying stuff, and even making my own butter.

But that level of eco-intensity was unsustainable, for me, anyway. The truth is, I can go nearly freegan for a month, but over the long term, things get much more difficult. Looking over my past several blog entries, a constant theme has emerged: balance. How do we balance our environmental concerns while still living the rest of our lives?

So from now on, that's what this blog is going to mainly focus on. There will still be other things here and there. I'm sure I'll get irritated about some policy proposal and write a long-winded post. There will still be book reviews and the occasional rant. But the thrust of the blog is going to focus on what it means to truly live the sustainable life.

I will continue to be honest with you about what's been working for me long-term and what hasn't. What's easy and what's not. Where I'm slipping and where I'm succeeding. And I'll count on you, dear readers, to ensure that I don't slide too far back. Balance is one thing, but it's no excuse to just get lazy.

So, join me on my continued ride as I try and figure out how to balance eco-awareness with my friends, family, work, and play. Cheer me on, commiserate with me, and call me on my s**t.

And thanks, as always, for reading.

What's The Appropriate Amount of Food Packaging?

Most of us in the eco-world probably agree that in an ideal world we'd all eat a mostly local, organic diet of food we bought at a farmers' market and cooked ourselves. We'd thriftily manage our food waste through careful meal planning, and would use leftover almost-bad veggies in a nice no-waste stew once a week. The little waste that was unusable or unavoidable would go in our compost piles or be fed to our pet chickens.

Unfortunately, the reality for many of us eco-bloggers and the majority of Americans is quite different. As someone who has struggled through Crunchy Chicken's No Waste Challenge (sign up now!) several times, I can attest that it is HARD not to waste food.

Which is what makes this article today in the Freakonomics blog so interesting. In it, James McWilliams points out that though many of us disparage food packaging, it does have the effect of increasing shelf life of food. As a result, food packaging might decrease food waste.

I know it's not super popular to be pro-food packaging in the eco-blogosphere, but I couldn't help nodding along when reading McWilliams' post. Last year, I subscribed to a CSA for a few months and I found that I wasted a LOT of food. It wasn't just that it was too much food for one person (which it was) or that I was too lazy to cook much (I was.) Sometimes, the food would arrive at my door almost spoiled. I also found that oftentimes, unless I processed the food right away, it would go bad.

I've come to realize that I personally need to take short cuts in order to cook more, eat more fruits and veggies, and waste less. For instance, I will often put off washing and peeling my farmers' market bought carrots. The carrots will go bad, and I'll have to dump them in the trash. On the other hand, if I buy organic baby carrots, I'll probably eat the whole bag in a few days. Similarly, the resealable bags of baby spinach are my friends.

Now, there still is an inordinate amount of food packaging waste out there. I still fail to see why bananas require plastic wrap. And though I have occasionally bought the Trader Joe's packaged cut apples, I recognize that the inability to cut your own apples is an extraordinary form of laziness.

But I think we all need to assess (as always) what the right balance is in our lives. If food packaging keeps us from wasting food, it might not be the evil bogeyman that many environmentalists believe it to be. I suspect Beth is going to kill me for suggesting this, but if the waste trade-off is either the plastic bag for a bag of pre-washed lettuce, or an entire head of lettuce that rotted before you got to eating it, I would probably say to go with the bag of lettuce. (To be clear, the obvious best solution is to buy a head of lettuce and then not waste it. I'm not denying that. I'm just arguing that that's not always what actually HAPPENS despite our best intentions.)

My point, aside from antagonizing everybody, is that the reality is that Americans waste a lot of food. Thus, rather than trying to achieve an idealized unpackaged world that may be unrealistic for the average consumer, we need to take a hard look and differentiate between frivolous packaging and packaging that might actually lead to less overall waste.