A Green Voyage

Since the beginning of this year I have become more and more concerned about improved our impact on the environment. The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico only heightens my desire to be very green. But over the past few days, it has struck me that the average American who starts from the perspective of wanting to save the world often misses the boat.

Why do I say that? Because even though I have only recently become serious about being a good steward of the world God gave us, one of the carbon footprint tests I just took calculated our family's carbon emissions to be 33 tons a year. The average American by contrast gives off 130 tons of emissions, four times as much. The site stated that the world average is 27 tons, so we still have some work to do, but we have already done a lot with even trying.

How we did it was by trying to save money and eat more healthy. We have long bought most of our clothes used, in other words, recycled. So when I was researching organic cotton and finding it too expensive, I was happy to see that all of our used clothing makes a greater impact. I still hope that the price for earth-friendly underwear and socks will come down, but for now I will continue to buy recycled stuff. Our energy use is low as we try to walk more to be healthy and use less electricity to save money.

Where we live our own recycling options are limited, so fortunately our bulk buying and unprocessed food choices make it a minor issue. Our most processed foods are saltines, graham crackers, pasta and tortillas. I have ketchup, salsa, taco sauce, and spaghetti sauce recipes that I am going to be using as we eliminate those from our pantry. Take it from a lazy person, making your own breads, sauces, and spreads is not that hard.

I have been researching a switch to more organic foods over the last week. Nearly all our produce is already organic, thanks to a weekly CSA shipment and not having much produce available locally. In my research I discovered that much of the organic food industry food growth has been in over-packaged processed food, meat, dairy and poultry products. This does not help the problem and may be making things worse as some say it takes more land to farm organic animal products.

People need to save themselves from their debt-ridden, unhealthy lifestyles first before they try to save the earth. They will be far more effective and feel better if they do.