Eco-Epiphanies: Personal Wastefulness and Societal Stupidity

For some, deep ecological truths are, looking back, arrived at in spectacular natural settings or dramatic experiences. For me, two anecdotes stand out as clearly pivotal, changing my thinking and my behaviors – hence, eco-epiphanies. The first was nearly thirty years ago, listening to Rabbi Arthur Green’s Yom Kippur sermon. I have no recollection what exactly his topic was, but his line: “American disposals are better nourished than many people with whom we share this earth” was so true and so jarring, that I vowed to start recycling that minute. OF course, recycling didn't feed people, but it was where responsible consumption started. Step by step, year-by-year, my consciousness about waste grew, until I became an environmental activist – fortunately, along with many others. However, I still thought of waste as a personal matter, that I should be more careful not to waste food to begin with, buy less packaging, that sort of thing. Virtue, as Dick Cheney would call it.

The second truth arrived in a story about Sudanese refugees, teenage boys settling in the United States. Survivors of great trauma, all orphans who had lived in refugee camps for many years, they were brought here and settled by Lutheran Services. Social workers helped them adjust, and it was educational for both these “Lost Boys” and those who helped them. One woman described taking them to a Big Box store to outfit them with American necessities. They stopped to look at a wall of hair dryers, unfamiliar to her charges.

On their first afternoon together, she took them to Walmart for clothes. They gaped at the endless rows of textiles and gadgets, including some that looked like futuristic handguns. “Those are hair dryers,” Bernstein explained. Benson couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Why would you buy a machine to dry your hair? It dries on its own.

Somehow that shocked me into awareness of how ridiculous much of our consumption is – looking at it through the eyes of the world’s have-nots. We Americans live in a bubble. We don’t question basic assumptions about how we use resources, and allow ourselves to be absurdly wasteful, spending time, money, and natural resources to do things that don’t need to be done. We could live a high quality of life much more resource efficiently, and certainly will need to do so if the planet is to survive the onslaught of the results of our over-consumption.

The Self-Provisioning Resource Conserving Eco-Nut Next Door

Amidst the landslide of greening and sustainability books constantly being marketed and touted (get the irony?), two jumped out at me.  Reading them as a pair made it clear that Plenitude, by economist  Juliet B. Schor, and The Cheapskate Next Door by journalist Jeff Yeager are describing the same contemporary trends using very different language.  People can earn fewer dollars without their quality of life being diminished, IF they also experience an increase in free time.  This free time can be invested in social capital, healthy lifestyle, creative self-provisioning, and ingenious thrift, aided by everything from social networking to asking grandma to teach canning techniques.  Schor’s book is analytic; Yeager’s is  a how-to-do-it  manual.

Reading over and over again how we aren’t “over” this Great Recession because none of us are buying enough, hence the jobs producing all of it are lagging, has often made me wonder how that squares with the carrying load of the planet.  The fact that personal savings have actually increased seems like good news, not bad.  The fact that demand for fossil fuels has decreased – isn’t that the goal here?  Schor, an economist with an emphasis on ecological concerns and the author of two other terrific books, The Overworked American and The Overspent American, reviews the basic theoretical underpinnings of modern economics and concludes that they don’t square.  As developing world incomes rise, driving massive additional consumption, the world’s growth limits will be tested.  We can’t just keep on extracting finite resources on the cheap and expect it will all end well.  Likewise, she predicts there will never again be enough conventional jobs for all who seek work.  We’re becoming too efficient and productive for that, through ever improving and disseminating technology.

Schor’s solution,, that we cut back on workers’ hours, thereby employing more people over all, is not original. This has been tried in many places and times, often to avoid laying workers off.  Kelloggs of Battle Creek, Michigan, famously offered a six-hour day for decades which workers loved, along with all the others lucky enough to live there.  Schor’s original synthesis is to combine this with the new realities of environmental as well as social stress, to define a life of Plenitude less dependent on material excess.  By editing out the waste of American life, and utilizing the dividend of extra time, whole new micro-economies are evolving, allowing people to live healthier, happier lives that – paradoxically – are lower income.  She effectively decouples standard of living from quality of life, as happiness studies have been confirming is correct, once people move past subsistence.

She cites examples of lowering overhead by resource sharing, plugging Freecycle, CraigsList, carsharing, Open Source internet software – much of which I have written about over the years.  Local agriculture, from gardens to micro-farms, is a favorite example, written about glowingly throughout the book.  She describes people once again learning to cook, preserve, sew, and build their own downsized homes.  It all sounds very idyllic; I want to believe her, I really do.  Except that what she is talking about as a trend looks more like an interesting trickle of outliers (Hi, Anna!  How’s the honey going?).  OK, I grow a few tomatoes.  That doesn’t make me Ma Ingalls.  But perhaps a generation from now her manifesto will prove true.  If so, we will all be the better for it.

The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means is a charming hybrid of two terrific classics, The Millionaire Next Door and The Tightwad Gazette.  Those books were all about resource conservation from a financial standpoint – why leave good money on the table?  TheMND describes a value-oriented affluent population who eschews conspicuous consumption.  TTG was more about people scrapping together a nest egg, even on a tiny salary.  The secret of both is living beneath one’s means.  However, they were written before the age of environmental awareness.  All their strategies translate quite well to a new eco-age.  The Cheapskate took himself on a national book tour – by bike, CouchSurfing his way across the country. 

His book is a lot of fun.  My main takeaway is that if you create good habits, these too are hard to break.  One becomes  a  reflexively resource-conscious consumer [a description I prefer to “cheapskate”].  Case in point.  Two friends and I were at the beach in search of 1% hydrocortisone cream for my friend, suffering from a bee sting. We grabbed the first brand we saw.  But I couldn’t resist going back to look at the shelf, where I found a generic tube for half the price.  Then I saw a generic tube half the SIZE.  It is generally more economical, both financially and ecologically, to buy a larger quantity.  But!  Only if you will finish it all.  Having just thrown out boxes of unused, expired OTC meds from my old house, I knew the smaller generic tube was a good choice.  Time expended: 1 minute.  Amount saved: ~ $6.00.  Since I earn less than $6.00 a minute, it was a good use of my time.  However, you can’t send a child to college or pay for health care –America’s two huge and ever escalating price tags  - on small salaries supplemented by self-provisioning and judicious cheapskating. 

If you’re following these authors’ advice, be sure to check these books out from your local library soon!

Wedding Registries: Reclaimed and Reframed

Two years ago I wrote a column about my love-hate relationship with wedding registries – appreciating their efficiency and loathing their impersonal, overly directive tone. Here I am two years later, based on recent developments, happily updating my report. Our son Zach just married the lovely Becca, and I have had a ringside seat in their gifting experience. New options for registering work beautifully, giving the couple an opportunity to express more than just a catalogue of items, while still allowing guests to enjoy the ease of a registry.

Wedding guests have been trained to demand wedding registries. They are convenient; gifters are assured they are sending something the couple actually wants, end of story. Brides and grooms are therefore conditioned to provide registries, even if they don’t need or want much of anything. Newly married couples who have been through the experience advise that it’s smarter to proactively choose things than be passive and see what comes. Guests seem to divide on the question of giving items versus money. If you’re a cash giver (more common in some ethnic groups than others), just skip this column. No brides and grooms ever dislike cash – it’s always the right size, right color, and right design.

For the rest of us gifters who like to pick an item for the couple, the simplicity of a registry is appealing. Their downside, which I emphasized back in 2008, is that they can come across as cold and greedy. Since then I have learned wedding industrial complex marketing strategies. Stores provide brides and grooms with all kinds of premiums and incentives and then send the couple through the store with a laser gun to literally zap any item they like. The laser gun zapper technique is the favorite part of the whole experience for some of the grooms who do not enjoy any of the rest of the wedding planning. I was told that one big box store has created a 3:1 “formula” for gifts to guests, though I can’t document this absurdity. The result is an endless list of completely unprioritized gifts, without any commentary or way of knowing anything about the bride and groom other than their taste in pots, pans and sheets – generally way more luxurious than the ones we’ve all been using since in the 70’s.

Zach and Becca used alternativegiftregistry.org’s smart, clever registry which allowed them to manage the process, instead of being controlled by big box stores. They wrote a bit about their thinking about gifts, building on their friends Ethan and Joelle’s manifesto:

You'll see that some of these gifts won't come in boxes. It would be a gift to us if you:

* gave a donation to one of the organizations [which were listed] or

* helped us with a few household items or

* did something creative we haven't thought of yet or

* any combination of the above!

But needless to say, this is a celebration of love, not stuff. The greatest gift is your presence in our lives and at our celebration!

That said, people do like giving gifts. One great feature of this type of registry is that the brides/grooms can pick the items and link them to the internet site which will be the best provider; it’s not managed by any particular store. They also put up suggested items without links. My personal favorite was their request for a knife sharpener. “We hear it’s important to have a good sharpener for our knives. We don’t know a thing about what’s a good one, but will trust your judgment on this matter if you know something about it and want to give us one.” In one case they posted a 12”skillet, along with a strange fact – on Amazon, the skillet cost LESS with a top than the same skillet without the top. It makes sense that the bride and groom would be better informed than gifters, since they are the ones doing the research. A flexible registry allows everyone to take advantage of better deals, and shop where they like. If a couple likes handmade things from artists or craftsmen without web capacity, they can include a link to Etsy (a portal for handmade things), another way to personalize an Alternative Registry.

Another nice feature of the Alternative Gift Registry is that as soon as a gift is spoken for, Team Bride & Groom takes it off the list. Hence those who visit are greeted with a half dozen or so suggested gifts, not hundreds, many of which are listed as already “taken.” It requires that the brides and grooms stay on top of it, but it works very well. Couples can be open-ended – listing their chosen stainless pattern but not how many place settings, for example. Zach and Becca included items which were very small and a few high-end ones. This is how they’ve acquired a Kindle and a very cool under-the-counter NatureMill composter. It doesn’t hurt to ask!

What about gift certificates, not quite money but not quite an item? They included a list of stores where they frequently shop, some quite near to where they live. Many people were happy to send them shopping cards to those stores. They can combine all those gifts and get larger items, so it seems like a win/win. Gifters aren’t spending a lot of money on wasteful, needless shipping. Stores like gift certificates so much they ship them for free; why not, since they get all the cash up front?One store, Powell’s Book Store in Portland, OR, carries a huge inventory of used books which can all ship in one order. Hey, Philadelphians, did you know you can buy and give a Weavers Way Gift Card? One piece of advice: keep careful track of all the serial numbers on the gift cards, in case they are lost or stolen.

Some people found their Alternative Gift Registry a little mysterious, since it required following unfamiliar instructions. In these cases, folks simply went to stores they like and sent whatever they wanted. That’s precisely what a lot of people do anyway. Alternative Registries can be used for any occasion such as birthday, graduation, birth or Bar Mitzvah.

image from www.OccupationGifts.com

Style vs. Fashion: A Shopper's Lament

Since I love well-designed clothes, it’s remarkable to me how few I can find to actually purchase. My advice to the women’s apparel industry, whose sales have plunged as low as this year’s necklines, is to ask women what clothes they’d like to invest in, instead of trying to create clothing fads which will catch on despite a recession. A good garment industry question for us, their potential customers: which clothes do you love? What garments do you take out year after year and enjoy wearing? What are the features of your favorite styles? Garment manufacturers would get an earful!

I have always loved style, but am annoyed by fashion. Style, by my definition, is the cut of a garment, along with its quality, color, fabric, pattern, texture, intended function, and comfort. Fashion is: whatever the stores are selling at a given time.

The garment’s cut: is it attractive? Many clothes are just plain unflattering. Pants which are low-slung, showing women’s rear ends when they sit down and necklines which reveal so much cleavage that onlookers are embarrassed come to mind. Cut also takes sizing into consideration. What a hassle it is to be any size other than what the manufacturers think of as normal! Short, tall, large, small, younger, older – somehow designers think the same clothes should look great on everybody. And of course a very basic question: is it comfortable? A garment cut too high will choke, a garment cut too low will create a lot of anxiety; too tight will never do. That’s probably why capris have remained popular for many years – they are comfortable, flattering, and their length is forgiving. And of course, it’s nice if the cut is predictable, so if you find a brand which fits you well, you can trust another garment in their line will ALSO fit you. (Good luck with that one….)

Color is one of the great delights of clothing. Bright, bold are just right for some complexions; pastels work better for others. Likewise, big bold patterns might suit tall women; short women (and there are a lot of us!) avoid them. Practical shoppers know that there’s nothing easier to maintain than black. Buying a light colored anything, no matter how gorgeous, is asking for a big cleaning bill and a lot of fussing over not getting the garment dirty to begin with. The palette is controlled by the apparel industry, so if you find colors you love, don’t be surprised when they disappear for a few years.

Fabric comes in an endless variety of textures and types. Some are easier to care for than others, of course, and their eco-footprints vary as well. Some are much more comfortable than others. I am a huge fan of bamboo; it is luxuriously soft and grows quickly, requiring less input than cotton. Hemp is another environmentally friendly fabric, though hard to find. Organic cotton is better than regular cotton since it is grown without pesticides, but growing any cotton consumes great quantities of water. Tencel and rayon have lovely drape and are sourced from renewable wood. Polyester is a petroleum product, though some high-end manufacturers source it from recycled materials. Obviously clothing that requires dry-cleaning is costlier to maintain, as well as more polluting to the environment. The addition of lycra to make fabric stretchier, better fitting, and more comfortable is a stroke of genius!

Function is important. So many clothes are simply impractical. Most women I know want pockets to stash a tissue, a key, a credit card, a cell phone. People are lowering the thermostats these days – so why did bulky sweaters disappear from the earth? Why does my raincoat’shood fly backwards when it’s windy, with no fastener to keep it in place? Why doe the zippers to my winter jacket’s pockets scratch my hands every time I reach in for my gloves? And why on a bride’s Big Day are all the dresses strapless, requiring said bride to continually yank up her gown so she doesn’t accidentally expose herself? I do think designers should test drive these clothes.

Lastly, is the style flattering? I find it amazing how similar each year’s fashions are from brand to brand, pretty much all the same, as if we all want to look alike, and would all look good in the same styles. I like t-shirts which are not too tight fitting and fall, in fashion-speak, at high hip. About five years ago I found ones that were perfect and snatched them in four basic colors. They’re schleppy now, but when I went to replace them, whoa! Every single brand I tried had added a few inches of length to their t-shirts and slimmed them down so they are tighter fitting, including the petite sizes. Someone decided that they should all hit snugly at the lower hips this year. Forget it! Am I the only person in America who is not a 5’10” model? Who do they think is out there?

Maybe some smart designer will figure out there is money to be made in orders where we can give exact measurements. There is definitely a business to be made in designing clothes that are beautiful, practical, flattering, consistently sized and responsibly sourced. They would be costly, but well worth it. And of course, if anyone has found such a company, do tell.

An Eco-Warrior’s Victory: Soda Bottle Carpeting

The eco-gold star for manufactured products is “cradle-to-cradle” - zero waste. These concepts equate waste with inefficiency; all products can and should be designed to be reused, recycled, and reformatted with no waste whatsoever.
Unfortunately, for the average homeowner trying to do right by the environment and the pocketbook, such cradle-to-cradle options rarely exist. Therefore while we wait for a new zero-waste paradigm shift to kick in, imperfect choices need to be made.

As new empty-nesters, one of our first to-do items was to replace our den carpet, frayed, snagged, and stained after twenty years of loyal kid duty. The simple way to accomplish this would have been: go to the store, pick carpet, and give them our visa card. The complicated way: go to the carpet store and request a natural, non-synthetic carpet manufactured in an environmentally responsible way. (The carpet industry is notorious for using toxic chemicals which pollute the manufacturing site’s watershed; once installed new carpets can off-gas, known to make people sick.) The salesperson was quite incredulous.

“You mean you want wool?!”

Wool, the material that rugs have been woven from for millennia, is now considered undesirable because it’s harder to clean than synthetics, and more expensive to boot. Doesn’t it seem somewhat ill-advised to buy something more expensive and harder to maintain, which the salesperson is deadset against selling to you … in the name of environmental stewardship? What is an eco-consumer to do?

After showing us many carpets, a light went off in the salesperson’s head. “Wait a minute! We have carpet made from soda bottles!” She ushered us over to another aisle, where indeed there were dozens of choices of carpets made from PET. PET - polyethylene terephthalate, not exactly a cozy name - is essentially recycled 2-liter plastic bottles. Ironically, manufactures do not broadcast that this product is made from recycled plastic, because they think it will turn customers off. Of course that is exactly why I wanted to buy it. About 40 two-liter soda bottles are recycled per square yard of carpeting, about 500 for typical 9 x 12 room. It is indistinguishable from any carpet I have ever seen, costs less, and has a coating which actually makes it stain-repellent. Win-win-win. It is designed to be recyclable after is wears out, too. This is hard to guarantee 20 years in advance, but it’s exciting that manufacturers are starting to think longer term and develop end-games for their products. This doesn’t help with the old carpet, though. It had to be put out on the curb for trash day, to be hauled to a landfill. No one I know has come up with a use for worn-out carpets, not even on our beloved NWPhillyfreecycle list.

But wait! It turns out that carpet padding is manufactured from recycled carpets, just not mine. Next eco-inquisition concern: is it good or bad to have this reformatted material in your house? It is bad because it reuses all those nasty chemical-laden carpets and brings them back into your house. But it is good because it takes all those wasted materials and reuses them. What is a green consumer to do? 

My answer was found at the Washington DC Co-Op AmericaGreenFest last October. This was a fabulous opportunity to view an amazing variety of green products, from clothing to food to household design. I happened by a booth devoted to green floor covering and discovered carpet padding manufactured from recycled natural materials. A quick call to my carpet store with the information got the ball rolling, but it quickly rolled right back into my court. Their supplier would have an enormous up-charge to order it. Was this worth it to me? How many battles does one want to fight just to get the damn carpet laid? But by then storeowner was getting into it, and he called back a day or two later to announce that his supplier could get a comparable pad, and it would only cost slightly more. That was a sweet victory.

Organic College Cuisine vs. Bed Bath and Beyond

The first day of college is a wonderful ritual. Unlike my day when my folks shipped my trunk and put me on a plane, now parents join their kids.
A friend who is writing a piece on environmentalism pointed out how local food is now the sexy area of activism, while paying attention to material objects' origins and fates is less so. This was readily apparent at my daughter's very socially-conscious school Kumbaya U. The dining hall options are eco-awesome! Each table posts their many sourcing options which include vegetarian, vegan, "Farm to Fork" local food, organic, Monterey Aquarium approved sea food, in addition to normal college fare. (But with plastic plates, silverware, and glasses. Go figure. Maybe that was just because of the extra number of visitors there yesterday?)
Contrast that with the scene in the dorms: next to the recycling receptacles were mounting piles of packaging (not readily recyclable on-site), all the boxes and plastics from the essentials provided by Bed Bath and Beyond. We did not fail to stop at BB&B ourselves, since they sell every imaginable item under the Chinese sun. They cleverly provide shipping to your college's closest store, from any location in the country. For a few weeks dorm stuff is this big box store's special feature. As my daughter astutely pointed out, they play on new college students' anxieties about what they will need to be happy away from home. The thing that caught my eye yesterday was a CEO-sized swivel cushioned office chair. Apparently for some the standard issue desk chair is now insufficient for academic success.
Of course come May, a huge percentage of this stuff winds up in the dumpster, since there's no simple way to bring it home, nowhere to store it, and lots of it is not really necessary anyway. What is being marketed is not quite disposable, but not long-term use either. Very clever of BB&B.
Check out Dump and Run and individual colleges' adaptations of this program, groups which promote salvaging and reusing all the discards at the end of the academic year.

A Summer Luxury: a Beach Chair with a Canopy

Last summer in Cape May, NJ, one of our two 20-something beach chairs bit the sand. I admired the beach chairs with adjustable canopies. Very clever! They also have arm rests which will hold a drink and a very small paperback or a cellphone. But it was the end of the season and they were sold out. I checked several places and then online when I was home. They seemed very pricey and of course the shipping for a chair is substantial, so I skipped it. End of the story.
This year with friends in Ocean Grove, NJ, I spied these same nifty chairs featured on the walk in front of a nice, old-fashioned True Value Hardware, next to the electric bicycles. The price, $49.95, was a lot for a chair, but I knew it was a reasonable price for this item.
Probably you are not very interested in the details of the chair, but the details of a purchasing decision are relevant for any purchase.
My calculus went like this:
Negatives:
1. That's a lot for a chair!
2. It's imported from China. Ugh.
3. It's made of polyester. Ugh.
4. Will I use it enough to justify it?
And then the positives:
1. Convenience: the chair was right there, not requiring anything other action than paying for it and stashing it in the car.
2. I knew from earlier research that the price was fair, and it's nice to patronize a mom & pop hardware store instead of a big box.
3. It makes sense to splurge on something that will be used on vacation - that's when you want an enhanced experience, after all. When you think of how much is invested in the trip and the accommodations, skimping on the equipment seems foolish.
4. I will only purchase this once, but will enjoy it every time I use it.
5. It is so well-designed I might actually use it in my backyard, not just at the beach!
6. I have been wanting one for a long time. Sometimes one loses interest in purchases when the issue comes up again, but in this case, the impulse was still strong.
True it would have been nicer if it had been locally manufactured out of hemp and recycled aluminum, but hey - sometimes you gotta go with what's there under your nose.

Win-Win Ice Tea

It's hot, and for most that means lugging a lot of heavy drinks home. They consume your schlepping energy, and also since the bottles need to be manufactured and are heavy to transport, a great deal of energy is consumed in manufacturing and transporting them. Then some of the ice teas, for example, are in the refrigerator section of the market, consuming yet more fossil fuel. All so wasteful, really. What's the big deal of making ice tea?
Here is a very simple and delicious version I've served to enthusiastic drinkers. Start with Celestial Seasonings Madagascar Vanilla Red Rooibos tea. It's obviously not local unless you live in Madagascar, but at least you're just transporting the tea, not the plastic bottle and the water.
Use a 2 quart glass pitcher - I do think the old koolaid commercial kind is the best ever....
Plastic pitchers are just not as aesthetically pleasing. Take 2 or 3 teabags (and appreciate that Celestical seasonings doesn't put each tea bag in yet another bag with a string, so it's more resource efficient), and brew the tea in a few inches of hot water. Hot tap water would be fine. Add sweetner at this point, so it dissolves - sugar, honey, or artificial, whichever is your thing.
After it brews about 10 or 15 minutes, remove the tea bags, add room water temperature, and refrigerate. If you have mint in your garden, even prettier.
Celestial Seasonings is a socially responsible company, by the way. So you can enjoy your tea from every angle.

Prius Envy

My neighborhood, affluent and socially conscious, has become a Prius parking lot. People around here were early adopters of hybrid technology and by now it's very common to see hybrids everywhere. From the beginning, Prius owners raved about their new cars. "I love never going to the gas station anymore!" was one of the hyperbolic claims.
There are debates in the financial/business sector whether the premium is worth it when buying a hybrid. For some there are tax benefits to consider, but I think these arguments miss the point. What hybrids offer is an investment in minimizing one's ecological footprint. If you can afford it, it's a great thing to do for yourself, and also you are serving as a role model and helping to create demand for mass production of fuel efficient cars. In fact that is exactly what has happened. Now Toyota is advertising Priuses. We put a deposit in on one - back then there was an 18-month wait, no doubt adding to the car's cachet - but in the end we decided against a new car at all.
Priuses, while incredibly fuel-efficient, are actually very large cars. I mostly need a car for just myself, having passed the carpool and family outing stage, so I am waiting for the teensy Smart Cars to come to Mt. Airy, maybe an electric car. But I have noted what folks love about their Priuses. Some of it is practical. They are roomy and well-designed, with peppy engines. It's fun when the engine stops when you stop, giving the driver an immediate feeling of making a positive contribution to the environment. (And distracting you from the fact that you're driving....) Even more gratifying is the MPG gauge which continually feeds back, instantly training you to drive even more efficiently. This Virtue Meter is a fun challenge. Prius owners swap pointers on how to improve their mileage. The read-out also keeps you company, patting you on the back, telling you how environmentally responsible you are. It is possible to install such a gauge in a conventional car, but since what it would feed back to is so depressing, such as the 16 mpg on my Subaru, it would be a negative reinforcer, so this idea hasn't caught on.
People like the Prius no-key electronic entry system, though a few friends warn that if you lose the key, the results are very, very expensive. 

The major reason I decided against a new, more efficient car is that while I would like all to see that I am not a Gas-Guzzling Global Warming Emitter driving around in my mini-van, I have instead focused on driving less. I keep a daily log on a Google document and hope this year to come in under 2500 miles, nicely lower than the average American's 12,000 miles a year. I work at home, a major mileage lowering fact, but in addition I have relocated many of my goods and services to walking distance in the neighborhood: doctor, haircuts, bank, coffee place, and of course Coop. Having no children to tote around is another major contributer to independence from driving. I bike a bit, walk a lot, take mass transit, and carpool, each of which cuts out a few miles of driving. It's tempting to mooch rides, allowing my own numbers to stay low, so I try to make sure I also offer rides.

And of course even if the miles are driven, with passengers they are driven more efficiently, and I might add, more pleasantly.
I am tickled that hybrids have taken off, but do remember that while it is better to drive a hybrid than a conventional car, it is even better to get your car off the road. Keep a daily log of your miles driven and many of the benefits of a fairly costly hybrid are yours, and the planet's, for free. 

Costco: I am a Fan

I have not shopped at local malls in years. I find them depressing and inefficient. I particularly dislike department stores, where items are clustered by brand and I am forced wander all over the store to see what the actual choices are. Likewise I prefer my local food co-op to a large supermarket where in order to choose an item, I am subjected to dozens or even hundreds of choices. Too much!

I have fallen in love with Costco. I go about once every 3 months and actually look forward to it. I appreciate that there is so little hype. In each category there is one choice which its buyers have carefully vetted, and if it's what I need, I buy it. I like letting Costco do the research. Barry Schwartz writes about "the paradox of choice": our society's superabundance actually decreases people's happiness. Too much choice make us anxious. Costco solves this problem for me. When I was shopping for a digital camera, I just put it on my Costco shopping list - no Schwartzing out about it! (Thanks to N and S for that new verb.) I just picked their cheapest digital camera, stashed it in my cart, and didn't have to think about it again. Yay! I have zero interest in researching digital cameras.

I get a kick out of the Costco's immense variety of types of merchandise. Instead of 100 kinds of junk cereal, it carries 100's of different types of items. Where else can you buy a computer, camisoles, canned tomatoes, car tires, cfls, and cannoli all in the same shopping trip? Costco is far from my home, so what usually occasions a trip is my hosting a reception or other gathering. I can do a lunch for 50 people for $100.

Costco is clever about consistency vs variety. You just never know what new items they'll be featuring, and they cater to an middle to upscale audience. (About 25% of their stock is always changing.) I find myself impulse gift buying there, because the items are high quality and reasonably priced. Last time I found their version of The Rabbit, a cool cork screw. I threw that in the wagon along with the lunch for 50 and the digital camera, and sure enough within a few weeks, it was the perfect birthday gift for my brother. I read Consumer Reports and have been impressed with how often Kirkland, the Costco housebrand, is objectively rated a Best Buy. My 23 year old son tells everyone about his favorite store for buying work slacks: Costco!

When I could see I was in love, I did my due diligence. (I started out at Sams Club, but dumped them when I learned more about Walmart's labor practices.) Costco's labor practices are superior in the industry. They pay about double of their competitors, have some union labor, and boast very low turnover. The CEO Jim Sinegal earns $555,000 annually and is philosophically committed to fair practices. Of course there are some negatives, such as its large eco-footprint parking lots, suburban sprawl locations, and lack of much locally grown food. And there is a temptation to over-consume because of the low prices. One must be judicious when shopping, and remember to bring a blank check, since they don't take credit cards. * You generally have no idea how much you're going to spend, since it's a combination clothing/office/grocery/hardware/furniture store and electronics store.

You may have figured out where this post was going. I recently purchased stock in Costco. I figure a store that has me excited about coming back, and can simultaneously earn my son's loyalty with their men's apparel, has a great formula. It's already up 10%! Long live Costco!

* My savvy son has just decided to go for the Costco American Express Cash-Back, No Fee credit card. Sounds like a good deal. For one thing, you can use it at Costco.

P.S. 2024 - I invested a chunk of my Platkin inheritance in Costco stock, and it did fabulously. Once we signed on with Values Added Financial, they advised we donate it to our Donor Advised Fund, as it was our most appreciated asset. A happy ending.

Ecologically Big Feet & Carbon Offsets

By now we all know about the catastrophic consequences of our fossil-fueled habits. I, like many, try to minimize my ecological footprint, but it's a really Big Foot to begin with. Since carbon is not [as yet] taxed, many of our activities are artificially inexpensive. Purchasing carbon offsets is a way of self-taxing carbons emission we cannot avoid.
Like I said about tipping - if I can afford a nice dinner, I can afford a generous tip; if I can afford to jet all over the world, I can afford offsets.
My favorite place to purchase offsets is Trees for the Future. This wonderful organization based in Washington, DC, has planted gazillions of trees which in addition to their environmental benefits provide income generation for impoverished communities in the developing world. One of the trees they plant, the jatropha, produces oily seeds which can be refined into bio-fuel, replacing expensive imported oil. Unlike many of the carbon offset options, TFT is a not-for-profit, so in addition to doing right by the planet, contributions are tax deductible. And the trees are very modestly priced. To offset your mileage, figure $.10 a tree per 100 miles, so a bi-coastal trip is really just a $5.00 self-tax. They send fantastic gift certificates. When my uncle turned 90, we planted 900 trees for $90! That was because I misunderstood the number. I thought I was planting 90 trees! What a great gift.

MyTipping Points

I have never been a particularly generous tipper. The whole concept of tipping annoys me - charge more and pay the staff better would be my preference. However, that's not the way it works.
Z recently said something which has stuck with me: if you can afford to eat a nice meal out, you can afford to leave a nice tip. Often servers are low income, especially in the kind of diners I frequent. And I remind myself: if I round up and am more generous, I am not going to miss it, but it may make a significant difference to the waitress. Of course I am quite measured in what I order, and that keeps the bill down anyway. Lately I've taken to ordering appetizers as entrees. The size of a typical entre is way too large for a middle-aged women who watches her weight. Ditto I never order dessert, and rarely order liquor. So I am not the ideal patron when it comes to the bottom line. But still, it's the principle. Cut back on the food ordered; go bigger with the tip.

Likewise my friend J taught me a lesson about tipping hotel maintenance staff gleaned from Nickle and Dimed , Barbara Ehrenreich's book on low-wage workers. If you want to help low-income women, who are likely immigrants supporting a family, leave a generous tip. Same idea: if you can afford to stay in a nice inn or hotel, you can afford to leave a generous tip. I have now adopted this as a spiritual practice.