Our Voice
Green initiative. You hear about it. You read about it. You see the evidence of it everywhere. You wonder when the madness will end, and when society will slow down and just function in a sustainable way without bragging about it and using it to capitalize in the economy.
“Organic” this, “all-natural” that. Companies love to market the eco-friendliness of their products over another. And more often than not, the bet is that you fall for the seduction of the organic or all-natural label.
Surely you wouldn’t want to discover that more than half your seductively labeled products are not actually very eco-friendly. Consider what is called “food miles,” for example. If you live in Georgia and you buy avocados from the supermarket down the street, they are likely coming from somewhere as far as California, or even further in some cases.
The label may read “organic,” and you may have paid a whole $1.75 more than the other non-organic label, but you just helped spend thousands of gallons of fuel to transport that avocado across the country. Do you still feel better about buying that avocado?
Your next destination inside the supermarket is the frozen organic food section. Picking up a bag of frozen organic veggies, you see the nearly $5 yellow price tag, pause slightly, then place it in your shopping cart. Consider what lengths were taken to get that plastic bag filled with flash-frozen goodness. And consider the fate of that plastic bag-your neighborhood landfill, no doubt.
In both of these cases, couldn’t you buy from Farmer Joe down the road, rather than swiping your card at the local supermarket? Couldn’t you have enjoyed, cheaper, fresher produce that you can proudly say was grown within fifty miles of your own home? Farmer Joe would appreciate the gesture and you would certainly save on throwing some unnecessary plastic waste into the local landfill to sit, not decomposing, for at least the next decade.
So, why can’t we simply live in cohesion with a world that we came from? The natural world is our home; yet, popular society has historically loved to drive us as far away from it as possible. We end up living complacent with mounting landfills and arching energy expenditures.
Going green certainly is not a bad thing, but is it working? Is Western society actually standing off the couch and stepping out the door of laziness to find a greener pasture of sustainability? Or, is Western society simply loving to feel good about thinking of “going green?”
By all means, continue to buy your organic labels, just to peel them off and throw them in the trash. By all means, continue to drive to the GCSU campus when you live less than four blocks away. And certainly, by all means, argue why everyone else around should be “going green,” while you sit and watch, never changing habits or educating yourself on the actuality of the environment outside your window. Besides, its not you that is ultimately affected, it’s the next generation that will reap our consequences.
Where will the real revolution start? And for the love of mother earth, WHEN will it truly begin?
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Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Sep 26 2008. Filed under Opinion, Our Voice.
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