ECOlogue

Are you willing to pay more for your tote bag and T-shirt?
Do I need to buy a tote bag or a T-shirt?
Your dollar is a powerful vote!

Has the environmental movement been limited to the people who can afford luxury items? When did creating Eco-conscious consumers become a means to encourage more consumption. It is true that people here in the states will continue to buy things, whether or not they need them. It seems that having more luxurious Eco products and more contagious advertising strategies to convince consumers to buy green is the 21st century strategy for spreading environmental consciousness.

I understand this strategy for food and cleaning products, things we will be buying regardless, but now we have a green product substitute for almost every item you could hope to buy. Unfortunately, these green products are beginning to feel just as much a part of our expendable product lifestyle. Buy this now and do your part to save the world! Replace your flooring, curtains, bedding, dishes and clothes with these products that were more consciously created than the ones you already have.

There is a dearth of literature encouraging consumers to think long and hard about what things they actually need to buy. On top of that, nobody is encouraging consumers to carefully select quality products that won’t need to be so readily replaced. What we are missing is depression-era sustainable thinking through frugality.

Every ECO-themed magazine I open has product review pages that keep tabs on Eco-consumables including food, clothing, shoes, home decor, outdoor gear and technology. I am not arguing that we return to an age of undereducated consumers, but must everything be about products? We are encouraged to purchase organic bamboo undershirts for $30 because they are made attractively and from a renewable resources rather than encouraged to set up a neighborhood clothes swap or to frequent second-hand shops. In the reduce, re-use, recycle system we are already ignoring reduce and what about re-use?

I was so excited when in one product article called “Eco Chic on the Cheap,” the author Donna Garlough wrote about re-use. She said we ought to look around our homes for old things to re-make, re-design and re-purpose. She quoted Eco design author Danny Seo who said, “As a society we spend so much time and money accumulating new stuff.” My attention was piqued. Finally! The article begins with a DIY approach and suggests making centerpieces from your old jelly jars and perfume bottles or reupholstering dinning room chairs with old sweaters. But, indubitably, the focus shifts half-way through to recommendations for purchasing bamboo salad tongs for $12, stylish recycled glass bowls for $25 each and microfiber cloths to replace you paper towel habits.

We have been raised in a culture of disposable commodities. When I was 15 and ambitious about environmentalism I never predicted Eco-Chic would be such a hot consumer market. I am not blaming the author of the article, it is big trend she was reporting on. I have found myself in the same position. I heard about the black-background search engine Blackle.com, which was started by Eco conscious company Heap Media. Google could save 750 megawatt-hours each year simply by switching to a black background screen, Heap Media claims. That is the equivalent of ten thousand 100-watt light bulbs burning for over 31 days. Great article idea, I thought. The little things we can do when we choose to save energy: switch to compact fluorescent bulbs, use Heap Media’s Blackle.com for all your web searching needs, switch off lights when you leave a room and power down or even unplug your computer when it is not in use. But, that information is boring. All those tips are boring, chiding and moralistic. Who wants to read an article that tells you, remember to turn out that light! Our mothers told us that and we rolled our eyes. We want something more tangible and more satisfying that proves we are doing good. Enter the consumer market. So, suddenly I was reviewing Eco software that monitors your energy use and the Eco-button that drops your computer to sleep at the single touch and keeps a running tally of how much good you did by touching that button. Simple tips became a list of products to buy.

Will we really make the world better by buying green gear, asks Adam Fisher in Ready Made Magazine. He traces the green consumption strategy to Paul Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce. Hawken holds to the supply and demand of social change and claims that if we change the way the world shops, we change the world. I recall the book from my High School Global Environmental Options class. My teacher listed the title on his suggested reading chart. I wasn’t interested in the economic model of ecology. I still don’t consider it a great answer but it has had the most visible effect.