Sustainability Ain't Fancy

This week I've been trying to think of all the things I want to say about the sustainability efforts I've made, and what I've learned and the more I've typed the more I've wanted to type about. But there has also been a lot of anxiety involved in putting this on the internet and here's why: 

If you look at the internet these days, at influencers, and some of the loudest voices advocating a sustainable lifestyle, they are usually wealthy and they are almost always curated as hell. The photos are edited and polished. The lighting is just so. There is a quaint story to go along with each decision and everyone seems to have the design savvy of someone with a 4 year interior decorating degree. (Is that a thing? I don't know if that's a thing.) And I'm not hatin'. I respect all the work these folks are putting into their online presence and I'm generally envious of anyone with a design sense. The first time I lived alone, my beau at the time came over and said it was a nice place but it had no theme. I decided the theme was "stuff I like" and I haven't really strayed from that in the last 15 years. 

Here's the thing - none of that matters and anyone can make little changes to make their lives a little more sustainable. Anyone can choose to waste less and save more (stuff, money, and the planet). You don't need to spend a lot of money, and you don't need to buy expensive replacement products, and you don't need everything to match and be just so. And you don't need to do it all at once! I am okay with presenting a practical, if not always pretty, version of making changes. No, my kitchen rags don't all match and I refuse to throw away all those perfectly useful items and then buy a matched set of new things. And yes, I do still drive a car because I can't really ride a bicycle because I didn't learn until I was twelve. It's all okay!

I hope this also in some ways addresses some issues of environmental elitism and environmental justice. By framing sustainability as an approach to environmental stewardship that requires buying "the right things," that's just another way that we have taken environmentalism away from everyday people. Poor people live, across the globe, far more sustainable and less environmentally ruinous individual lives than wealthier citizens do. Sustainability and environmentalism are also frequently discussed as matters that are only important once other needs have been met - it's a rich person's problem. I call bullsh*t. 

I grew up poor. Dirt poor. Really freaking poor. And that made me very pragmatic. We didn't waste things and we practiced reduce-reuse-recycle as a matter of necessity. I know I'm not the only one because I've seen the meme of the Country Crock butter tub being reused for every kind of tupperware. 

But we also valued our environment. I grew up in the middle of what was historically my family's farm. Our connection to the land, to knowing it and spending time in it and caring for it, is an important value for us. Clean air is important to us. Clean rivers and beaches. We were poor and still cared about sustainability; we just didn't call it that.

It is my right to own the concept of sustainability and to practice it in a way that works in my life. And that's your right too.