Okay is anyone else already getting frustrated with "going green"? It seems like everything that gets in the mass market/media blitzed meat grinder and suddenly it's very little of what it was supposed to be. The filler become the product. I mean it just seems that the marketing race to shove those "feel good" choices down our throat is bulldozing over the facts and not actually changing the demand for natural sustainable materials or the way manufacturers do things. And plus the esculating guilt trip over the choices you do make is getting really stressful not to mention confusing as hell.
I pick up a magazine hoping for a little entertainment after a long unenjoyable Monday and all I find are tips on going green that contradict one another. Granted it's my fault, I should have skimmed the magazine better to begin with so I could have better decided not to encourage earth-killing printing practices and gloss coating but then when I did open it... ugh, some of the info is so repeative it's like recycled sound bites heard across the globe... but then other parts are just so confusing... this recycled bottle is bad for me? but I thought recycling plastic was good? Oooooh I'm supposed to reduce or eliminate my use of plastic except well gosh I'm not really given the choice of water in a carton but then even if I do find one I have to read the label to be sure it wasn't processed or printed using to many chemicals (that come in plastic bottles btw) and when they are that the wastes are disposed of responsibly... Okay never mind I'm not thirsty any more and I'm starting to look forward to a lecture from my doctor and another news cast with confusing health tips about just how much water is good for me or that "studies have shown" are bad for me.
I really wanted to slip on my hole-ly t-shirt and just go to bed but then I read that I could have been sleeping on cotton sheets that weren't made using harmful chemicals and instead of feeling better about the tip I just felt guilty I liked the design on the ones I already bought and stupid I hadn't thought about how bad textiles plants are and then I wondered if those less chemically treated sheets were being woven by exploited third-world workers. AND THEN right below that tip I read that I could have been slipping into a silky organic bamboo tee made with less chemicals then it take to process cotton... So wait does that mean the "green" cotton sheets are bad? or just a less bad, and exactly how much lesser of evils are we talking about really? I mean they aren't going to start subsidizing bamboo crops and ruin the cotton farmer's lives are they? or using geneticially altered bamboo that will cause some other strain to the world oil reserves to process are they? Will the farmer's start using alternative fueled farming equipment or will that just increase the demand for corn crops and stir all farmers away from growing ANY vegetables. like not even the pesticide treated kinds... thereby driving up the global cost of food and leading to more & more people starving in Haiti...
Seriously I give up... I'm not a bad, lazy person - I've just been stunned into apathy. I'm just really really confused and I feel like nothing I do will ever really help, it will just lead to some other global crisis. DO you think they will start broadcasting news reports on what we are doing right when we find it or just release reports on how satellites and cell phone towers do cause cancer afterall?
