Environmentally Yours: Monday, Green; Tuesday, Not So Much

A friend of mine started a challenge on Instagram. It has to do with our everyday green acts, the little things we can all do and should do to ease the burden of this pretty plane of ours so that our legacy to the next generations won’t be a re-enactment of the Nebuchadnezzar ride outside the Matrix.

An old workmate of mine, back from when I was working in another town, was, and still is, an eco-terrorist, as he himself liked to describe himself back then, and concern over ecological matters was a mutual thing for us. Nearing some election or another, when discussing parties and who to vote, I still remember what he said in the conversation as we were all hanging out behind the counter because of the five p.m. lull. “The thing is, if the planet goes, no one is going to be left standing to argue with anybody about anything.” For some reason, perhaps because we both tend to vote for the same party, the line has stuck with me, and there may have even been an occasion where I myself have used the exact same line in a discussion on elections and political parties.

My friend’s challenge in social media (author's note: it isn't actually hers in origin, but the green party's she is involved in, but who's counting?) is spreading under the hashtag #munilmastoteko and the point of it is to urge people to show or tell what they are doing to maintain our living conditions, or better yet, better them in some way. Every small thing counts, she wrote in her introduction, and she is right: they do count. Even when one sometimes opens the paper and despairs over how the petite bag of one’s recyclable plastics, waiting to be taken to the energy waste center, can compare to the gigantic mountains of plastic waste lolling in the oceans and all over the big polluter countries, I believe China in particular has been quite notorious in the headlines lately.

For years now, I have been living under the impression that I am one of the most environmentally friendly people I know, and secretly like to boast about this fact. The challenge got me thinking though. Yes, I recycle, and have bullied my whole family into recycling; even my father has gotten into collecting tin cans in a bag, and if I happen to be visiting my parents when it is time to add another one to the load or take them to the recycling bin, he never fails to remind me that I was the one who initiated the idea, and the metal waste basket is even named after me: Tuija’s Tin Can Basket.

But am I really as environmentally amicable and conscientious as I like to brag? Let’s see. I am going to go about this in the signature way of Rory Gilmore; by making a kind of pro/con list. So, if it’s pro, then it’s all go for the green living. If con, it’s, unfortunately, forget nature.

Okay, let’s begin. Pro: I do recycle. I am the Queen of Recycling. I have different waste baskets for not just paper waste and biodegradables and cardboard boxes, but also energy waste that includes all plastic save hard plastics, such as buckets or toys, but I never toss buckets or toys, so I don’t really heave plastic into nature at all. I recycle glass jars and the aforementioned metals, but also clothes, gift wrappers, electronic devices, and old, useless cords, and take hazardous waste into their own respective bins, such as fluorescent lights and batteries – this really should be a given. I use every t-shirt I own until it’s in shreds, and then I use it as a rag.

Not only that, you all know I am an avid flea market fan. I buy most of my stuff from those, including furniture and even linens and towels whenever I find something truly gorgeous and hardly used and the price is right. Otherwise, I would never in this life have the funds to sleep in Marimekko sheets or dry myself in their signature striped towels. I know, Phoebe’s ghost is probably turning in her TV-show grave, but it is only gross if you don’t wash them first. I love vintage clothes and wearing something pre-owned has never given me any form of heebie-jeebies. I also take excellent care of my shit, hand-washing those bras, putting that pantyhose in a separate washing mesh bag so it won’t tear, so my things last a long time.

Con: Okay I really don’t need that many clothes. It is ridiculous. I own probably close to forty different kinds of sweaters. Forty! I have ten pairs of sneakers, seven track jackets, innumerable pairs of socks and underpants, fifteen bras. I can’t help it, it’s a compulsion. I mean I could clothe an army. I try and try to cut back, and keep donating stuff to Good Will from the other end. But somehow, I don’t know, there is always one more spectacular silk dress or a lovely wool jacket or a pretty skirt looming in the horizon, and I can never rest easy until I am wearing it.

Also, I cannot resist buying a piece of furniture from an antique store if I love it and the cost is reasonable. A particular weakness for me is chairs. There was point in my life when all I seemed to possess were a ton of mismatched vintage chairs and a horde of books. These days, I try to walk away as many times as I can, but it was only last summer, when I found a truly exquisite piece of wicker furniture, an easy chair for patio use, and after hemming and hawing for a few weeks I managed to reason myself into buying it. It is sitting in my living room as we speak, beautiful and old, and while it is certainly sturdy enough to hold my weight, I hardly ever sit on it, I just like to marvel at its loveliness. It is also a marvelous place to whisk some of those sweaters on to air them a little after use.

Another major Con: I buy books. I buy books. I don’t borrow them from the library or from friends, I don’t own a Kindle, I don’t download. I am the reason the forests are dying. I buy new books, used books, all books. All the time, everywhere. And not just books. Records. Movies. I even own my very own copy of Big Little Lies in case it ever goes out of circulation. Knowing it is to be found streaming online is just not enough for me.

Truthfully, I only now buy the albums and films that stand the test of time, and on that respect the streaming services have turned out to be an enormous help. Before Tidal and Spotify and Netflix and HBO et cetera, I just bought everything blind, and while most times I knew what I was getting, there were some turkeys sometimes in the mix, too.

Pro: I use a menstrual cup. Not only that, my menstrual cup is domestically made. Furthermore, my vibrator, too, is made in Finland, so there’s a whole Support Your Local -angle about both my period and my St. Vincent moments with the vibrator. Which I by the way recommend to the whole female population of this country, and why not the world! I know there is so much wrong with everything right now, but there just has to be something right, too, having all these people around who are pioneering in such important areas of the female existence. I won’t name names, since this isn’t an advertising channel, but those interested will find info easily on both the domestically made menstrual cup that changed my life completely, and the vibrator that just keeps on giving.

Pro: I walk and bike and use public transport. I don’t have a car. Walking is my favorite form of transportation, and a way of life, really.

Con: Though I was always a walker by nature, when I was young I lived in the countryside, and having a car was kind of mandatory if one ever wished to have any kind of social life whatsoever, or run errands or, you know, go to school. And I did not just merely own a car then, but a car that only drank leaded and didn’t have seatbelts in the backseat and was from 1973, a forest green vintage beauty that probably polluted the air so much that no amount of hiking and biking and my general current carless existence can ever outdo the awful destruction of the world I managed to squeeze in the ten years when I drove my lovely demon of an automobile.

Pro: I hate paper cups, and generally all plasticware. I consider the height of hubris to repeatedly buy take out coffee in paper cups with the plastic lid, when we all could easily buy the Keep Cup or one of its many competitors, and thus save even a tiny smidgen of our forests and seas. I know, I am hardly the Save the Oceanic Forester with my awful book buying habit, but paper cups, paper plates, plastic forks? I don’t know. - Suddenly I am profoundly aware that should my superiors at work read this, they might frown upon the fact that I hand out paper cups with their plastic lids, plastic spoons, and the like, to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of customers every day and doing so keep the destruction of the planet well on its way, and then come here and yammer on how wrong it all is. Well, like Daryl Van Horne says, we don’t deal the cards down here, we only play the percentages.

I may not be able to persuade people to sit at a table while they drink their coffee so we can wash the cup after use instead of drinking it on the go and throwing the paper cup in the thrash, but there has been a small victory for me personally at my workplace concerning the issue of paper cups. I have these two workmates, Taggart and Rosewood, who tend to pour their cuppa joe every time in the paper cups that we provide in our establishment. However, after years of pestering them on this topic, ordering them to freeze and spread’em every time I see them using a paper cup on shift, they have finally learnt to switch into the porcelain mugs, at least whenever I am working the shift with them. If they sometimes forget, I can see them sneak in the back, supposedly unobserved, to pour the coffee from the paper cup into some china. Afterwards, they proudly come back, brandishing the porcelain mug, saying see, we are good, aren’t we? Yes, yes, very good, I reply. It may be for show only, and only for as long as I’m around, but at least that is something, right?

Con: I fly. I fly on a plane, and also have stuff I want flown over, to my apartment, or to a convenience store near me, or the post office.

My yearly trips to Paris are how I cope with living a rather modest and down-to-earth and simple life the rest of the year. There is no way I would ever forgo those. Then again, I don’t exactly stay at the Ritz while there, and love to walk everywhere and never litter and prepare most of my meals at the apartment; just a few methods to try and undo the carbon footprint from the flight over.

I have ordered clothing from U.S.A. Office supplies from Asia. Picture frames from Sweden. Posters from France. Twenty years ago I ordered my collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer VHS tapes from the U.K. A new half-season every six months, or whenever I could scrounge up the money. I am not only the Queen of Recycling, but also the Queen of Obscure Orders from Other Countries. Nothing I have ordered from far away has ever been a matter of life and death. Also, everything I have ordered from far away has been super important.

I am the Emily Gilmore of my life when it comes to excellent produce and canned and dried goods. I will not eat just any pasta; it has to be the expensive, marvelous spaghetti from Tuscany I have referred to in some other texts, too. Also, canned tomato, olive oil, pine seeds, pesto, what have you. I guess there is small compensation in knowing that the particular brands I like to buy are mostly produced by small family businesses, and the shop where I buy them is a small business right here in my town, so basically I am providing for all these people by choosing to support the little delicacy boutique instead of shopping in a department store or those huge, horrible box stores, and therefore am not in the very lowest sphere of Hell just yet with my eating habits, even though most produce and other goods have traveled thousands of kilometers from a different country to be on my dinner table.

Also, I shop at the huge, horrible box stores. But I walk to get there and carry my groceries back home, even when the bags are heavy. This is something my man has never ceased to marvel at, and the marveling may not be entirely complementary. But I am telling you, it is the most excellent cardio, and when I finally get home I always experience a deep feeling of satisfaction of having accomplished something significant.

Pro: While not exactly a strict vegetarian, I hardly ever eat red meat.

Con: I am a tchotchke girl through and through. I may not buy porcelain kitties or pigs or ceramic nativity scenes, but I do collect postcards, vintage picture frames, pencases, colorful teapots from the heyday of Kupittaan savi, et cetera.

Pro: I buy domestically grown garlic whenever I can. Unfortunately, given our weather conditions, there is no year-round supply of it. Still, when I was biking around my old neighborhood last summer, I stumbled on a roadside seller who had these incredible stalks of fresh garlic for sale. I think it was euro-fifty for one, and after getting two and making that night the most delicious tomato-basil-garlic salad from those cloves I have ever tasted, I immediately biked back the next day and bought every single piece the boy had on him. He told me he was growing them himself, along with onions and shallots and red onions, a little kid in fifth grade. I felt the Stars Hollow spirit and essence surround me and fill me, sweet and fragrant and proudly small-town, talking to the little farmer about his produce. I always buy domestic garlic when the time is at hand, but this kid’s fresh garlic from the soil of my childhood? Oh, man. I skimped and used his organic garlic way into fall.

Con: I’m a water whore. Most days I shower twice, in the morning and before bed, and use water luxuriantly and freely, as if we had an endless supply. This is something I have pondered upon a lot, and I admit it is probably my biggest violation against the planet. Sometimes, if I don’t feel dirty and haven’t perspired during the day, I may survive with showering just once, but there is no way in hell for me to go over twenty-four hours without cleaning myself. I shower daily even when I am sick. With high fever, with my back out, whatever.

I not only drink a lot of it, which I think doesn’t count as an environmental misdemeanor, since water is the stuff of life, but also wash the dishes, by hand, in plenty of it. Then again I never let the tap run while brushing teeth, and, having clocked my showers, I don’t really think four minutes a pop is the worst time in history. I wash only full loads of laundry and prefer to air out all possible clothing to clean before finally tossing it in the hamper. Still, I never stop and think when I feel like running some water.

Perhaps my cavalier attitude towards water is just reaping what was sown when I was a young girl living in a house in the country with pipes that had a tendency to freeze during the winter months. It was persisted again and again to us kids to leave the tap running a little in the kitchen and never ever use the “small” flush no matter how small the number lest the drain pipes clog, and the plumber was not cheap even in the Eighties.

So, here we are, these are some of my favorite environmental pros and cons. I have no idea what all this comes down to, what the final tally of my situation is, environment-wise. Am I a planetary horror show, or do I actually practice what I preach?

I’d like to think the odds are in my favor as a nature lover, but admittedly there is some definite side-stepping occasionally from my so-called green living, so I can’t in good conscience call myself any kind of eco-purist. I try my best. And what Tillman said all those years ago about the planet going rings in my ears at regular intervals, so at least I think about doing the right thing whenever I can.

I don’t know if this exactly counts, but in my book, there is one more major pro I feel I should tell you. Talking to Weaver the other day at work I rampaged on and on about how in my parents’ co-op the caretakers had just one morning up and cut all the enormous, ancient pine trees to the ground, the only greenery in the otherwise sad and bare yard, in order to be able to fit some large construction equipment there to do some terrible devil’s work I’m sure. My parents were livid with resentment and so was I. Mother said father was so beside himself he almost cried seeing the barren land and the once beautiful, majestic trees lying on the ground, every one of them. Weaver’s reply was heart-wrenching: “I know, it’s horrible! Where do all these tree-haters come from? I mean when they took the old birch from our yard, I cried. It’s hateful and despicable! I totally get your parents crying.”

And she is right. It is hateful and despicable. If they ever try to take the pine trees from my yard, I’ll be waiting with handcuffs and chains and the Six O’Clock News team.

Inspired by and dedicated to Helmi L.