After a thoroughly depressing past month in climate news (see the most recent IPCC report, this photo that went viral on social media, and all the smoke in my backyard), Eric and I are deep-diving back into sustainable living.
It hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind with young kids, honestly. We have some good habits, like using cloth diapers, reusable dishrags and wool dryer balls. We get our vegetables from a local CSA and our beef, milk and eggs from a local farmer with reusable containers. And I buy almost exclusively secondhand clothing for myself and the kids (anyone know of a source for men besides Goodwill? Ugh).
But we could do a LOT more. And you know I like to put my money where my mouth is–or in this case, NOT put it where my mouth isn’t.
So, we cancelled our Amazon Prime membership.
Although as the parents of two young kids, the convenience of fast and free shipping (and honestly the better prices on many, many items we use) is very tempting… let’s be honest. The environmental footprint of Amazon is awful. There’s no way to justify it.
All the packaging. All the fuel used in those trucks (that often are not remotely full–talk about inefficient). All of the inputs used to produce things that we probably wouldn’t buy if we didn’t have access to Prime. All the low-quality stuff that gets junked because it breaks, or it’s not what it seemed online, or again, we wouldn’t have bought it if it wasn’t so easy.
And let’s not forget to mention that Amazon’s employees work hard for pennies while the CEO takes himself to outer space.
We have to stop buying crap.
And if you were raised in a family and society that generally thought new crap was superior to used crap, that can be really hard. Because it’s true, secondhand stuff isn’t as “nice.” Clothes aren’t crisp and bright. Kids’ toys have bent and broken parts. Books have dog-eared pages and creased bindings. Furniture has worn-out corners and stains and scratches.
But the time for caring about owning shiny new things and “keeping up with the Joneses” has come to end–it should have ended decades ago. There’s enough stuff in existence for the lot of us. Way more than enough! Go on Nextdoor Free & For Sale, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, your local Buy Nothing page… you can find almost anything you need on there (besides consumables).
On the flip side, it’s easy to judge and say that we live in the “era of convenience” and that people are just lazy. Really, nothing could be further from the truth.
I recognize that I am beyond privileged to be a homeowner and a stay-at-home mom in my 20’s.
I have time to focus on this. That is not realistic for many people.
Nowadays it takes two people working full-time to scrape by, paying their mortgage or rent, paying for childcare, paying for healthcare, putting dinner on the table every night. In the US, people don’t live together as extended families–resources are not pooled, money but also time and energy. Now we’re subject to the pandemic, and the mental strain of all that accompanies it ON TOP of already ridiculously stressful lives.
I’ll be honest, too, sometimes I resent the work that it takes to make very simple sustainable swaps. The closest local dairy source to us is 40 minutes away. Not having access to Amazon requires more thinking ahead than I’m accustomed to. Sometimes I’d really like to buy some new clothes that are exactly what I want, instead of scouring ThredUp for a reasonably similar secondhand item.
But I do it because I see a purpose. And if I am so incredibly into sustainability and self-sufficiency and couldn’t bring myself to make those changes–what hope could I have that others would make them? Somebody has to care. Not just condemn us, “We’re destroying the environment!” but care enough to make themselves uncomfortable to save it.
Frodo: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
xx