Green Consumerism

When did this green craziness begin? When did everyone become so worried about what their clothes were made of, if their cars were hybrids, if the food they were buying was organic? A craze that is now nicknamed “green consumerism” has turned the world upside down, but do we really know what Going Green means?

It does not mean owning two solar powered houses in the Hamptons, driving a Lexus Hybrid, wearing your organic cotton jeans, sleeping on hemp fiber sheets. What the public does not understand yet that it is the quantity of our fuel uses, not the quality of them. It means not owning two houses that are eco friendly, but maybe just owning one, because that is what is going to change the carbon footprint you leave. The public has become obsessed with this movement, not really analyzing what it is saying to them. The movement is not urging you to go out and buy twelve pairs of $214 Organic-Cotton Levi’s jeans. This is where we are wrong. Going green just wants us to REDUCE what we are already consuming. Acknowledge that you might not need 3 cars, even though they might be hybrids. Realize this, and we might get somewhere.

I was reading a book last night “Food’s Frontier” by Richard Manning and this quote made me think: 

          “By feeding ourselves, are we starving our descendants?”

It may not be directly focused on the green movement, but it got me thinking, are we demanding too much from the earth that the possibility of starvation right now seems impossible, but may be a future consequence? If I told you right now that in the future, we won’t have enough food to eat, would you still go to Burger King and order 4, $1 menu burgers, just because? I feel sometimes that the human population only cares for the right now. We need to start; we need to realize what the reactions to our actions are and we need to correct them ASAP! If not, what will we be looking forwards to in the future?

What makes YOUR lifestyle green? Share tips and suggestions!  Happy Monday and thanks for stopping by!