Here’s something I don’t understand: people who don’t care about the environment. Now, I don’t expect everyone in the world to be a composting, recycling, cloth diapering, all-natural cleaning products, plastic-avoiding person (like I am), but the people who really, honestly don’t give a shit about doing ANYTHING? I don’t get you. How are you not racked with guilt? How do you dispose of your diapers and buy water bottles and use plastic grocery bags and just not care? Fuck the Earth! I’m all about CONVENIENCE!
Is it the money? Do you choose your ocean-polluting laundry detergent over a safer, biodegradable kind because it’s less expensive (it’s not always)? Do you choose to use disposable diapers because they’re cheaper (uh, they’re totally not- there’s not even a comparison)? What about your household cleaning products… oh man, the list goes on.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to be a little more eco-friendly, and it really doesn’t cost a lot more either. It’s just about making different choices and sometimes changing the stores you shop in.
Ahhh, Wal Mart. You know, overall, I don’t really have a big problem with Wal Mart. I sometimes shop there for sewing supplies and we even bought an all-natural, 100% recycled mattress yesterday! BUT! Oh the absolute crap that they carry for parents. You go to the baby section and you can find almost everything you could possibly need for the first 6-12 months of the baby’s life if you want to be one of THOSE parents. The formula feeding, sposie diapers, plastic toys, ugly and polluted clothing, canned baby food parents. For the parents who don’t do any independant research, Wal Mart is probably their store of choice. Why go anywhere else?
These types of parents are right up there with the ones who don’t even try to breastfeed because it’s “gross” or whatever. Not even once! “Ewww! My tits are leaking!” was something I once read in a blog by a new mom. I could have throttled her.
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I’m not sure what kind of parent I would have been if it wasn’t for a few key moms who I spoke to online. I’d never heard of co-sleeping before getting pregnant, certainly not with a newborn anyway, and the only thing I knew was that I was going to breastfeed. People tend to be clueless about pregnancy (I remember one newly pregnant woman asking what amniotic fluid was once in a forum I used to go to), it’s such a major thing with so many details you should pay attention to (advice I gave to a friend of mine whose wife just got pregnant, “For now, make sure she’s taking her prenatal vitamins, especially extra folic acid. Make sure she doesn’t eat a lot of tuna (too much mercury), that she doesn’t go near (used) cat litter, raw fish, unpasteurized milk or milk products, or deli meats. All are really horrible for pregnant women and can cause birth defects (or worse).”
Thanks to Rebecca, Ashley, Corrie and Kelly Marie, I am a far better parent than I likely would have been otherwise. I’d never heard of the term Attachment Parenting, but I basically just follow my instincts and it tends to fall under the guidelines that the Sears doctors write and talk about anyway. If I’d been surrounded by other kinds of parents (ie- the ones at the babycenter.com forums) who believe in plastic, CIO, sposies and cribs, I probably would feel pretty alone.
What I’m always surprised at are the amount of people who rally around other similar people who aren’t very “green” like in this comment section of another one of Sundry’s posts. It’s all “YOU GO GIRL! SCREW THE EARTH! Those lame eco-friendly people are so fucking judgmental!” And by making fun of us- um, aren’t you being judgmental too? Like one charming commenter said: “The Green Trolls (hee! Get it?) are more obnoxious on the internet than the Militant Nursing Advocates. And that says a lot.”
If it wasn’t for people talking about the Earth outside of their comfortable Earth-friendly circles (which is like preaching to the choir- why even bother?), there would be much fewer people with the know-how of what is good and what is bad. Some of it people don’t even realize- like did you know that fabric softener is bad? Do you still use it? (We don’t.) Do you care?
I totally don’t expect people to go to the extreme of being eco-friendly, as much as I’d love them to. People are selfish, people are lazy, people are broke, people are just apathetic. I’m not going to think you’re a horrible person, but I am going to wonder WHY you live the way you do. Why you think that you don’t have an impact, when you really do! Why you’re teaching your children a pretty bad way of living when you don’t have to. It’s about making simple choices.
Organic food here costs 1.5-2x as much as conventionally grown produce. I think that has more to do with price gouging than cost of production, though; the supermarket had organic oranges from California which cost DOUBLE the price of conventional — and they were imported from SOUTH AFRICA!!
