Eco-Moi

Lately, I've been developing greater and greater concern about the environment. I'm not sure what, exactly, is driving this change -- I've not been reading about the environment much, not been watching much television out of the ordinary -- but suddenly, I have been feeling increasingly self-conscious about my environmental footprint.

Maybe it's my neighborhood. The other day, I was in the supermarket and saw that my favorite skin lotion was on sale. I didn't have a bunch of groceries to get for the week, so I decided to load up and got three of four of them. As I was pulling them off the selves, a young woman browsing the lotions asked me, "Do you know if those containers are recyclable?"

I looked at the tube. I have no idea, I said.

She regarded me with slightly pursed lips, and I felt instantly shamed. Here I was grabbing all these non-refillable tubes of lotion without even thinking about the landfill. But then, there was the landfill in my mind all of the sudden. Big pile of rubble with seagulls buzzing around the smoke-belching bulldozer on top of the whole ghastly heap.

So then I wanted to know: WHY don't the good-smelling (coconut, glorious coconut oil) lotions come in bulk where you can fill your own bottle? The bulk lotions always smell like ... oatmeal. It's not that I'm being environmentally dispassionate, it's that I can't get what I want the green way. So to the makers of Desert Essence Organics coconut hand and body lotion, I say: Buck up, you fat cats, and make your lotion available in bulk at my local New Seasons Market or make friendlier containers!

I wrote them. You can too. There, having now shouted out that plea into the universe, I can move on. (Or try to rattle their corporate cage.)

A few weeks ago, when I was getting take-out at the Thai place downstairs, another customer came in for take-out too, and as I was picking up my plastic bag with a plastic container in it, she set down her own collection of tupperware on the counter and asked the owner to put her meal in that.

*gulp*

I've been using reusable canvass bags for my grocery shopping for years, but I often forget them or decide to go to the grocery after making a quick list at work. Therefore, I have all these paper bags hanging around in my place. I walk over to the little food co-op on the corner and give them my paper bags, and they re-use them. So that is at least something.

But I can see it is not enough. My eco-conscious is bothering me.

I suppose that's why I've got a long-term relationship going on in my home with a styrofoam cup. I got it on Friday night when I stopped in at the tacqueria down the street and got a burrito (in a plastic container inside a plastic bag) to go. I had been out walking the dog, and I was thirsty. I had started to pour water in the cup already when I suddenly connected to what I was holding. Who the hell uses styrofoam these days? Good god!

And so, I have been using it and using it and using it. Only for water, and I give it a good hot flushing every so often, but ... how long can this thing actually last? Will it begin to disintegrate while I'm using it, or might I have it for years -- if I don't get carried away one night and start chewing on it? I throw away all sorts of crap, but for some reason, this styrofoam cup is really bugging me. Seems my ploy is to use it to death (or some otherwise reasonable point) to assuage my guilt.

Lastly, I have been seriously contemplating ditching my car and getting a scooter. My only problem is that the only way across the Columbia River is via the interstate. I'd have to get a full-on motorcycle or large-engine scooter -- or walk the damn thing across the bridge on the pedestrian sidewalk, which would take too long.

All I can think is that in the not-too-distant future, so many people will be unable to afford gasoline for their cars that we might get a slow-lane on the freeway to ourselves. I had a vision the other day while driving home of a nearly empty freeway with more than a few cars that had just run out of gas and been left at the side of the highway like dead bodies on Mt. Everest. Is that what our future holds if we don't make a quick transition to alternate-fuel vehicles?

In the meantime, it seems like the right-hand lanes on the freeway system could be designated for people going 40 mph or slower, and other drivers could be forced to use them as extended on- and off-ramps. That seems fair and reasonable to me, as an auto driver right now and a would-be scooter driver if it was safe and legal to drive a smaller-engine vehicle on the freeway.

So I'm hardly an environmentalist, but I have my concerns. Seems the only way I'm actually working it right now, though, is by drinking from a styrofoam cup.