This post was submitted by Michael

On Mondays, Michael explores the world of environmentalism and its intersection with queer culture in the column It’s Easy Being Green, despite what Kermit says.

So far in this space, I’ve described what I’m trying to do, I’ve shared with you the meaning of life and how our current lifestyles are out of sync with it, and provided some evidence of the elegance of nature as proof that life-equals-order.  Basically, we are living out of sync with nature, and living in a more green fashion will result in better connection between us and our planet.  In general, I refer to anti-environmentalism as the creation of “disorder” and in today’s column I’m going to explore the sources of such disorder.

Sadly, anti-environmental disorder comes from near every aspect of our modern lives.  Using an example I discussed before, all other species live in concert with nature, they live with nature, a part of it.  Somehow over the past few thousand years, we have tried to overcome nature, supersede it, dominate it.  Living this way, while sustaining our current modern way of life, threatens the way of “all life” on our earth, by changing our planet into a chaotic, disordered mess.  This disorder comes in many flavors, from many aspects of our lives, but their causes can be narrowed down into three categories:  the creation of goods, the consumption or use of goods, and the disposal of goods.

The creation of products for human consumption creates a lot of waste, a lot of disorder.  For every Egg McMuffin, bottle of Coca-Cola, and pint of Ben and Jerry’s;  for every block of wood, blender and iPhone, there is an unmeasurable amount of waste created.  Each of these products can be broken down into their component parts, most of which don’t occur very naturally in nature on their own.  These components must be dug out of the earth, or grown in a field or a feed lot, in order to be used by us.  Unfortunately, in our modern times, we don’t usually like things they way they come from nature, so we have to modify them.  Ores and metals must be refined, whole wheat is split up into starch and bran, corn is transformed into corn syrup and then modified into high-fructose corn syrup.  And each step in this process removes these ingredients away from the earth, and also removes from the ingredients components that must be disposed of somehow.

Especially wasteful is the development of animal products.  First, raising animals for food creates a lot of waste, and our modern industrial farming practices don’t really care too much for how that waste is treated.  Animals also produce a large amount of methane gas, which is a large contributor to global warming. One statistic from an article I read a while ago stated that more greenhouse gases come from the raising of farm animals than come from our cars.  All of this waste gas floating through the atmosphere is a huge example of what I’ve referred to as disorder.

The consumption of products causes a lot of problems and disorder in our world.  One omni-present example is driving:  the consumption of automobile fuel, rubber tires and brake pads, etc.  Driving takes a lot of different elements not normally found in our natural environment and spews them across the land scape.  Carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions are just the tip of the iceberg.  Potentially more deadly are fine particulate matter which are too small for our cillia to push them naturally out of our airways and are thought to cause myriad health problems.

Aside from driving, the consumption of nearly every other product we use has some sort of impact.  A bunch of bananas, the earth’s nearly perfect food, still has a brand name & bar code sticker on it that must be disposed of.  Nearly everything we purchase in our modern culture comes in packaging that must be discarded at some point.  And how much of this ends up discarded on the ground, tossed aside in parking lots, on sidewalks, out of car and bus windows, as we eagerly dig through it to find the target of our desire:  the new fun product we just purchased.  Most people, I fear, simply find packaging a barrier between them and their joy, and think very little about where it will go when they discard it.

Luckily, much packaging is designed to be reused:  I pack soup for lunch in the wintertime inside mason jars that originally came to my door filled with store-bought pasta sauce; my spice rack is composed entirely of reused hummus containers that happen to be dishwasher-safe and airtight.   Sadly, most manufacturers don’t keep packaging reuse in mind when designing the packaging for products.  The design it like a special gift wrap, specially made to show off the product and educate of its many uses.

Finally, disposal of products causes a lot of disorder in our world.  Think of everything around you right now at the moment you read this.  Grab one item.  How long do you think it will be with you.  Where will it go when you are done?  Can it be used for any other purpose?  Where will it end up, and how long will it stay there?  The first item at my fingertips is a Papermate brand ball-point pen.  It will last until the ink runs out (or dries up), which is probably a month or two.  Not bad for a 99-cent item.  Once its original useful life is over, there isn’t much I can do with it.  I could turn it into a drinking straw, or perhaps use it to make a bong.  But most likely, it will get tossed in the garbage and end up in a landfill, where it will sit for decades, if not centuries.  Every item that surrounds you probably has a similar fate!

I’ll spend a lot more time in this space exploring how we can better live our lives in harmony with the environment, illustrating opportunities for employing items that are more environmentally friendly to create, consume and dispose of.

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