Over the past several years, I have tried–and I continue to try–a variety of ways to reduce household waste, to shop, cook, and live in a simpler manner. In so many ways, I fail again and again. Some days, even trying seems useless, especially if I’ve spent any time at all reading climate-related news. Most days, I just keep trying, taking steps that seem miniscule and feel futile. But ultimately, I know I owe it to myself, to my children, to keep trying.
I am often irritated by climate change writing that suggests there is a path forward without detailing what that path might actually look like in daily life. There is also a contingency of writers who will offer ideas on how to make changes in one’s home, for example, and spin it so it seems like those individual actions will save the world.
Obviously it’s good that anyone discusses this at all, but my take is that as we discuss vague and sweeping notions of long-term change and then stoke our own egos when we do even the smallest good thing, we aren’t starting enough conversations with the people we know, and certainly we aren’t being honest and realistic enough about how damn hard this all is.
There are four main resources that, when stressed, combine to make individual changes really, really difficult. Let’s get those into the conversation more, in the hopes that we will be able to resolve some and find workarounds for others. These four resources are time, money, mental bandwidth, and community.
Time I challenge you to find the best ways to eliminate as much plastic packaging as possible from your grocery shopping. The solution will likely be multi-pronged: buy in bulk when possible, using your own containers; bring bags; skip produce bags, or bring re-usable ones; eliminate processed foods (by cooking your own or changing what you eat). The list goes on.
One common denominator in implementing any of these solutions? Time, both in the planning and the execution. Which stores, for example, will allow you to bring your own containers (obviously some other challenges with this one in the time of Covid). How long will it to take to make your own graham crackers, and what extra ingredients will you need to buy and prepare? Will those extra ingredients include the purchase of goods with additional plastic packaging?
It’s something of a project, to say the least. How will you make the time to plan? You can whittle it out, or sit down and make a day of it if you’ve got the luxury to do so, but you need time. Public transportation instead of private vehicle? Time. Growing food from seed? Time.
Money Time is not the only significant factor in the aforementioned list. It also helps to be at least reasonably financially secure. No, I don’t meant that rethinking the materials used in kitchen and bathroom products should cost a fortune or inspire a shopping spree, although certainly either is possible. I mean that even having the time and energy to consider something like rethinking material usage or planting a garden is a privilege most readily enjoyed by someone who is financially secure. If you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you have other more immediately pressing concerns than how to swap plastic storage bags with something more sustainable.
Mental Bandwidth We need to pay attention to climate change. The trouble is that if you go all in, follow every scrap of news, worry about the impact of every choice you make, you risk losing your sanity. But if you allow yourself to be too detached from the issues at hand, you risk losing the only change you’ve got to improve anything. In the best of circumstances, finding a balance is challenging.
For several days in mid-September 2017, I cringed whenever I drank water because I’d recently read an article about microplastics in drinking water. I spent a good deal of the next year monitoring every move I made as a consumer, trying to limit waste, packaging, and so on. Then I got pregnant and literally dry heaved for months at the sight of anything leafy and green. I know well how any sort of strain can derail even the most well-intentioned plans to make better choices.
So many things can become obstacles on the path of good intentions, from deeply personal immediate issues to broader global issues. Any type of stress eats up mental bandwidth, reducing what’s available for trying to change a lifestyle.
Community We are products of our time and place, and so both the communities we have and those we lack can make change difficult. Want to cut down on paper and plastic waste, as well as de-emphasize consumerism? Try telling that to a gift-crazy friend or family member at a birthday or holiday. Then try telling it to your sentimental self that would mourn either the loss of a childhood tradition or the loss of an opportunity to make up for childhood’s wants.
And yet if we want to eliminate at least some of these mental gymnastics for our own children, then we have got to restructure the present (ha). The communities we are a part of might resist change. Perhaps the individual’s job is not to convince through argument but through action, but both argument and action are… yup, difficult, at least at first.
But… Some people may not lack these resources at all. Time, money, mental bandwidth, community — maybe they all line up to create a setting that is perfect, or at least good enough, for making positive changes. An advice columnist in a magazine I read has several times offered the thought that the happier person in a situation is the one who must do the harder work. In other words, where you are fit to do hard work that others cannot manage at this moment, you must do that hard work.
Writ large, this suggests that those in power ought to be moving pieces on the board in a more beneficial way. But on a small scale, what change I can afford to make, I ought to.
Still, it’s bigger than just one person It should be evident that many of these problems are systemic and governed by forces outside an individual’s control. Individuals can help, but cannot solve the whole problem without large-scale systemic change. To think otherwise is to place an undue burden of guilt upon anyone who is simply trying their best in their current circumstances. It’s enough to make a person feel utterly hopeless.
At the same time, I don’t think a lack of resources is valid as an excuse to push a person firmly into the “Why bother, because it’s useless” camp, but let’s tell it like it is and say it’s understandable that anyone might linger there for periods of time, and moving past it–and then moving past it again when it undoubtedly recurs–is hard work.
And, so? What do we do, then? Maybe we can withhold judgment and support each other in our efforts, be honest in conversation, and just remember that this is really, really hard. Even starting the conversation in the first place is a huge step. How many people are you comfortable talking with about environmental concerns, particularly at the practical level that gets you discussing person lifestyle choices? It’s not easy. (Are we sensing a theme, here?)
Surely we might agree that we want a safe and healthy place to live–bonus if it it looks nice. So, let’s start there. Let’s start with the facts, with what science tells us to be true that is happening in the moment. Let’s add on our hopes, our fears, our realities–and then, perhaps, we will find ways to use the resources we do have to make change happen.
No one can do this on their own, but we aren’t having enough of the type of dialogue that allows us to get there together. What changes are you making in your daily life? What has been difficult or just hasn’t worked? What changes would you like to make? And how might you get there?