The Idea Blog

I’ve been working on a research assignment this past week for one of our clients who wishes to embrace more “green” practices in their furniture manufacturing business. This was an assignment I was excited to accept since, like many people, I’ve become concerned about global warming over the past several years.

Even though I’ve been focused on “eco-friendly” practices for one specific industry, this assignment has still given me an opportunity to try and integrate some of the books I’ve been reading and discussions I’ve engaged in, and to reflect on my own opinions and the challenges I see surrounding this problem.

One of the more depressing conclusions I’ve come to in looking at global warming is that we human beings are an extremely selfish species, and we 21st-century Americans are probably the most egocentric to come along.

I’ve been reading Thomas Berry’s The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. (If you’re unfamiliar with Berry, he is a cultural historian, priest and environmentalist who has written a number of books, many focused on man’s relationship with the earth.) In the first several chapters of The Great Work, Berry takes a long view at the history of the universe and the earth, and man’s relationship to it. He points out how far the human race has moved even in the past several centuries, from a people who lived close to the land, relying on it for our day-to-day existence, to a culture completely disassociated from our environment. I was struck by this conclusion: “We think of the Earth more as the background for economic purposes or as the object of scientific research rather than as a world of wonder, magnificence, and mystery for the unending delight of the human mind and imagination.”

Americans are responsible for the lion’s share of this eco-vandalism we’re now all worried about, due to our insatiable zeal for making a profit at any cost. This is not a brand new situation, but rather a trend which, as Berry points out, was evidenced as soon as Europeans first set foot on this continent, determined to wrestle land from a peaceful tribe of Indians. So, how do we reverse this trend in an egocentric society that really isn’t prepared to make the necessary sacrifices, particularly if it involves money or personal inconvenience? This is the dilemma we face as a nation. The fact is that we cannot fight global warming without spending money and making sacrifices, on a personal, an industrial and a national level.

Since my opinions don’t hold much sway in Washington, the Motor City or the cornfields of Iowa, I wrestle with what I can do to affect change and help tackle this immense problem. Ultimately, I realize it comes down to each of us stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for our own small part in this. We have to move beyond the thinking that our small contribution does not affect the whole, and realize that, in some way, it actually CAN.

Let me give you an example.

I read an article on Salon.com months ago that really grabbed my attention. It was about plastic bags, and it had some truly amazing statistics. Like: “Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they’ve been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It’s equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil. Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide… and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries.”

That’s centuries, as in several hundred years.

But that fact wasn’t even what caught my attention. Ponder this: “In the Northern Pacific Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents, there’s now a swirling mass of plastic trash about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, which spans an area that’s twice the size of Texas.”

Hello! This is not something my brain can easily grasp, particularly since anyone will tell you that I’m not very good with estimating size, but even I know that 2 Texases is one big-ass mass of plastic!

And here’s the real problem with plastic: Plastic NEVER goes away. Every plastic bag you’ve ever used in your entire life will still be around centuries after you’re dead. It might be smaller fragments of plastic, but those bags will still be here as plastic in some shape or form. Talk about an environmental footprint! Personally, a football stadium of plastic is not what I hope to leave behind as the primary reminder that I lived and breathed on this planet.

So, what does one do with this disturbing information? For me, I can’t just move ahead, business as usual, and not acknowledge my role in this devastating reality. On the one hand, I think: Well, I don’t even really use plastic bags. I always request paper at the grocery store — frequently resulting in evil glares from the baggers. But is paper really much better? Why do I need to use a bag at all?

The answer is that I don’t. The problem is that it’s kind of inconvenient to carry around a bunch of canvas bags in my car, and then I have to remember to carry them with me into the grocery store or Target. But the fact is that this is something I CAN do, and what at first is inconvenient, soon becomes second nature. Furthermore, this doesn’t cost me a dime.

So, consider this: First, one single article that I read online was the final straw that got my attention and caused me to change one behavior. (And how many other people might have read the same article and had a similar response?) Second, every time I walk up to the checkout counter with my canvas bags, or return my egg cartons to the egg lady at the farmer’s market as I purchase a new dozen, there is an opportunity for someone else to consider these alternatives and maybe, in turn, think about changing their behavior.

If those reasons aren’t enough to convince you, think about this: I really get to piss off the baggers now when I arrive at the checkout with my sorry collection of canvas bags, all shapes and sizes, and insist they pack my groceries in these bags. When my teenage daughter is with me, she just rolls her eyes and pretends desperately that she doesn’t know the crazy bag lady. But my deep hope is that one day she will assimilate some of my behaviors. And who knows? We could raise a generation that has more regard for the environment than we have.