Don’t Believe the Hype. You Do NOT Have to Go Green

I’ve met quite a few people that don’t have the slightest interest in pursuing a green lifestyle. They would sooner pour crude oil in their eyes than live by the light of a compact fluorescent bulb (shameless self promotion). People can be reluctant, apathetic or flat out lazy about lifestyle changes that hint of making even the slightest impact on their life, regardless if that impact is good or bad. I know because I am a former reluctant, apathetic, lazy bastard, still am sometimes, but getting better, and I’ve got a message for the rest of those people.

Fine, be that way.

You really don’t have to buy a single light bulb, bamboo t-shirt, hemp grocery bag or compact hybrid vehicle. You don’t have to buy a single green product your entire life and you can still have a positive affect on the environment as long as you do just one thing. Don’t buy anything.

Check Your Brain, You’ve Been Greenwashed

Of course you’re going to buy things. I buy things, probably too many things, but instead of my normal quest to have the next hot gadget, I’m being a bit more conscious of my purchases. Our obsession with consumerism is largely why we’re in this global warming predicament in the first place. The more stuff we buy, the more needs to be manufactured, the more energy we expend.

Buying green products helps improve the situation, but only if we’re buying out of necessity instead snatching up all the cool, new things we want. Another problem with our green consumption is that corporations are now lining up to make the next great “green” product, or so they would have you believe. Really, they just want you to buy more of their stuff, and sometimes that stuff isn’t nearly as green as they make it sound. The popular term for this is Greenwashing and we’re all susceptible, including some of our most beloved celebrities who we look up to for what is cool about sustainable living.

With Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney driving around town in their shiny new Toyota Prius’, we tend to bank on their celebrity currency instead looking at all the facts, but dig a little deeper and that currency falls as flat as stock shares in Lehman Brothers. Based on a paper written by James Martin, President of the 60 Plus Association, about the Hidden Costs of Driving a Prius, despite the awesome gas mileage, the actual energy usage to get a Prius to market far exceeds any benefit of making the purchase in the first place.

The nickel for the battery, for instance, is mined in Sudbury, Ontario, and smelted at nearby Nickel Centre, just north of the province’s massive Georgian Bay. Toyota buys about 1,000 tons of nickel from the facility each year, ships the nickel to Wales for refining, then to China, where it’s manufactured into nickel foam, and then onto Toyota’s battery plant in Japan. That alone creates a globe-trotting trail of carbon emissions that ought to seriously concern everyone involved in the fight against global warming. All told, the start-to-finish journey travels more than 10,000 miles - mostly by container ship, but also by diesel locomotive.

And that doesn’t even touch on the dramatic effects the nickel mining and smelting have on the environment. Both the mine and the smelting plant pump sulfur dioxide into the air killing off all the vegetation in the area. What isn’t done in by the greenhouse gasses is finished off by severe acid rain. Killing off all the plant life also created mass erosion making the soil on the hillsides fall. The most ironic part of the Prius greenwashing is that we’d probably be better off driving Hummers instead.

A ‘Dust to Dust’ study by CNW Marketing Research of Bandon, Ore., shows the overall eco-costs of automotive hybrids may be even higher…To put the data into understandable terms for consumers, CNW translated it into a ‘dollars per lifetime mile’ figure, or the energy cost per mile driven. When looked at from that perspective, the Prius and other hybrids quickly morphed from fuel-sippers into energy-guzzlers. The Prius registered an energy-cost average of $3.25 per mile driven over its expected life span of 100,000 miles. Ironically, a Hummer, the brooding giant that has become the bête noir of the green movement, did much better, with an energy-cost average of $1.95 over its expected life span of 300,000 miles. And its crash protection makes it far safer than the tiny Prius.

They’re not saying go buy a Hummer. Instead consider the impact of the purchase you’re making. Although the Ford Focus doesn’t get you the gas mileage a Prius will, it has the highest fuel economy of any other American car at 24mpg city/35mpg hwy. Buying the American made Focus also means jobs for Americans, and the money earned stays in America, helping our economy. Where does the money go when you buy a Prius?

Also, being at least $10,000 cheaper than the Toyota Hybrid, depending on your commute, it could take you as many as 10 years to make your money back with the Prius’ gas savings, but we all know you’ll be buying a new car before then anyway, right?

There in lies the problem. Whether we own a Prius, a Focus or a Hummer, Americans are likely to ditch that car after only a couple years for the newer, hotter model. If instead you held onto that car, took good care of it and drove it for 10+ years instead of 3, not only would you save money by not having a car payment and cheaper insurance, you’d help the planet out by not consuming another vehicle (or two) in that lifetime.

That same ideology could be applied to your entire life. Do you really need those black leather pumps when you have 3 other pair in the closet collecting dust? Do you need a new set of golf clubs because your golf buddies all have the new Calloways? I want a 50″ flat-panel display with surround sound speakers, but I find it hard to justify when my 32″ big box tv works just fine. Keeping up with the Joneses is at the core of global warming problem and if we’re not more careful, we’re going to consume our way into oblivion.

I’m not saying you need to be a miser. If you can afford new things and you want new things, by all means go for it. Just try to buy items that will last, and will make you happy for several years rather than just a few. If you do buy new things, don’t let the old ones collect dust in your garage or attic. Donate those to charity or Goodwill and let someone else have a crack at them.

Buying Vintage & Used

I remember a few years back when vintage clothing shops were everywhere. Buying a classic suit or a vintage Hawaiian shirt was all the rage. A lot of those shops are gone now and replaced by boutique shops filled with tons of new clothes fresh from the factories in China and Central America. As the economy goes further into the crapper, I’m guessing gently used clothing will be coming back into fashion, maybe not at brick-n-mortar shops, but definitely on eBay. There’s no shame in buying cool stuff that someone else took good care of before you.

Even better than buying that new Ford Focus would be to purchase one that’s a couple years old. I drive a Focus that I bought used. It’s now 8 years old, has well over 100k miles and except for some dings and scratches, it’s still kicking. Most used Hondas and Toyotas will give you years of good use and still get you reasonable if not great gas mileage. Maybe the body style is different than the new one, and maybe your friends will think you are broke because you bought a used car instead of new, but in the long run, you have a great car that will last you a long time, save you a lot of money and you’re not contributing as much to mass consumption.

To button this up, if I had to lend some amateur advice, I’d tell you to apply these ideals to as many aspects of your life. Don’t buy things if you don’t need them. If you must buy something, go for the gently used stuff first. If it must be a new product, put a little due diligence into the purchase and find out how and where the product is made. A little bit of research goes a long way and you can tell your treehugging friends that you’ve done your part.

I just found out that fellow greenie, Joel Bittle wrote a similar post over at Green Building Elements. Check out his take on this subject from a building perspective

Photo by Justified Sinner

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