Green Options

Some time in the sparkling green future, all of our holiday celebrations will be zero waste.  But that will be then, and this is now.  For a lot of us, the post-holiday hangover still means trash, and plenty of it.

But wait!  With a little in-house preemptive dumpster diving, you can save some pretty good stuff from the scrap heap.  If you have an extra shelf or drawer, or a corner in your closet where you can stash the goodies away until they’re needed, here’s where you can save the big bucks:

May Day, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and even Cinco de Mayo… lots to celebrate in May.  We had lots to celebrate at sustainablog, also… especially a bevvy of new voices who joined us during the month.

Those new writers got us over our Spring fever slump, and took sustainablog in some very interesting new directions…

May 2008

• Keith Rockmael reviewed the film A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba.
• Our friends at Low Impact Living suggested five eco-smart ways to spend your tax rebate.
• GO editorial intern Oscar Cardenas explored the environmental impact of using echinacea to fight colds.
• Guest poster Max Gladwell argued that social media can change the world.

With several new GO blogs launching in March, a few of sustainablog’s regulars moved on to other posting assignments. We were fortunate that a number of friends, such as the folks at Life Goggles, Environmental Defense Fund, and Eco-Libris, did admirable jobs in filling the gap.  Additionally, we were pleased to republish several posts from the University of Kansas’ “Media and the Environment” course blog.

The original content we did publish was great stuff, of course.  Take a look below, and see a few of the goodies from March (and not a single post on green beer!).

March 2008

• Maria Surma Manka took a look at the Saudi’s interest in solar power.
• Victoria Everman reviewed online shopping guide thepurplebook’s green edition.
• Kyle Weatherholtz examined issues with wind power in Texas.
• Carol McClelland profiled some intriguing green companies.

I’ve done my share of dumpster diving in my youth. Some of the booty I collected was donuts, a large area rug, and a vintage Singer sewing machine.  I no longer look in dumpsters for freebies, but Americans discard a lot of useful items. These wasteful habits are not good for the enviroment and fuel our consumer culture.

Fellow sustainablogger Robin Shreeves recently wrote a great and helpful post — Your Trash Just Doesn’t Disappear, Stupid! (Or How To Make Sure Useful Things Stay Out of Landfills) — that touches on a bit of a phenomenon that piques my interest: mongoing, freeganism, dumpster diving.

The term “dumpster diving” probably conjures certain derogatory images: “bums,” lowlife dregs of society sifting through mostly rotten morsels of discarded food for sustenance.

Pushing aside such an unfortunate view of human beings living, hopefully only temporarily, in such unfortunate circumstances, let’s look at what dumpster diving has become: environmentally friendly, if not downright urban chic.

Perhaps no one knows better than I do what it means to take individual responsibility for my environmental impact.  For those of you familiar with my blog, you know that for the past three months, I have been trying to live 100% environmentally sustainably within urban Pittsburgh.  A formidable task, indeed.

In Robin Shreeve’s provocative article, “Whose Responsibility is Sustainable Consumerism?”, she champions the youngest generation’s recognition that the responsibility for our actions lies with us individually, not mainly with corporations.  Three months ago, I would have toasted to her conclusion.  (Of course, I then believed we don’t need corporations whatsoever and we could live without them and be sustainable.)  Today, however, my reaction to Robin’s article is different.  I’m inclined to deeply disagree.

During the sustainable living experiment called the Sust Enable Film Project (which concludes by midnight today), I would argue that I succeeded in living sustainably less than a dozen days of the 3-month project.  Does this fact disappoint me?  At first, it did.  But I will tell you why my experiment failed.

There are systems in the United States–for getting food, for getting rid of our trash, for flushing away our body wastes–that collectively (and historically), we have all agreed to adopt and abide by.  They seem(ed) like the best solutions for problems we all face, and as a society (through the government) wereinforce these systems.  This was clear to me every time I flushed a public toilet, and another huge chunk was subtracted from my sustainable water use for the day.  This became even clearer when I learned that many sustainable living methods–such as dumpster diving, squatting, and building a composting toilet–are outright illegal in many towns.

Doing something illegal (like dumpster diving) if it seems right to you… that’s one thing.  Civil disobedience: often harmless, functional, and a true expression of freedom.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But going hungry because the society-subverting alternatives are more difficult, demanding or have greater consequences than the unsustainable, mainstream options?