Figuring out the most eco choice can cause a crisis of conscience
by Nancy Davis Kho
About a year ago I was standing at my kitchen sink, two soiled plastic baggies inverted over my hands so I could scrub them clean with non-biodegradable soap under a stream of piping hot water, when I thought, “What the heck am I doing?” If it takes two minutes of hot water and a couple of squirts of dish
soap to make the plastic bags reusable, is it really the better choice for the environment? I was struck by the multitude of everyday decisions I make in an effort to be environmentally conscious, but which may, under closer examination, result in the opposite.
What I need, I thought, is a way to determine which of each set of everyday eco-tradeoffs really is best, and a team of experts telling me why. I decided to make a list of the “beyond paper vs. plastic” choices I face every day, and methodically resolve them using eco-expertise from trusted sources. I’d be “empowered through knowledge,” or some similar catch phrase that is probably the mission statement of my local school district. A self-improvement project was born.
The problem is, so was a heightened sense of self-loathing whenever I made a questionable environmental choice. Let’s take food coverings. I know, of course, that the most environmentally friendly way to store leftover food is in a reusable container. (Actually, the best way is to cook only as much as you need, but I have children in the house who vacillate between eating like ascetic monks and college quarterbacks, so it’s difficult to gauge.)
Thanks to my research, I know I should start by feeling deficient that I failed to stock up on more reusable containers, preferably purchased from a flea market to which I traveled by bicycle. Indeed, these are always my first choice, but what if they’re already fully deployed with leftover soup, undressed salad and that one piece of cornbread that someone is bound to eat eventually? So I move on to choice two, which is to invert a plate over the leftovers, which inevitably causes me to spill something, which I simply can’t clean up using paper towels, knowing what that means for the trees. So out come the reusable rags, which will need to be washed later in the washing machine using more soap, plus energy to heat the water I’m supposed to be conserving.
Aluminum foil is my next logical choice, but aluminum production causes massive greenhouse emissions and acid rain. However, once aluminum is in circulation, it’s almost infinitely recyclable, at least where I live, so I buy recycled foil—which requires only 5 percent of the energy used to make virgin aluminum foil—even if it’s the highest priced item in the store. Only afterward do I remember that it tears more easily than a preschooler’s end-of-year art collage, so my first effort sometimes ends up being only a practice run. I don’t even consider tucking it around a pan of, say, brownies, as it would never survive multiple incursions intact.
There’s always plastic cling wrap, but I’m proud that the box in my kitchen drawer dates back to 1998. I’m determined to deliberately not use this relic of a less enlightened consumption era for at least another decade or two, but I’m not throwing it out either. What? And let it take up space in a landfill?
I fault myself for not sewing little fabric caps that could fit snugly over the tops of the bowls, but creating those would mean running my electric sewing machine and a gas-powered trip to the fabric store. Not that I really have time for either.
By now vultures are circling the food, the children have left for college and I’ve gone from not having any answers to having too many of them. I’m now actually “paralyzed by knowledge,” or some similar snarky motto adopted by local school kids who won’t grapple with such real-life dilemmas for another decade, if then.
In the end, I take comfort in a quote I read from a highly regarded eco expert who, it seems, also understands the human condition. “It’s not about doing right every time; it’s about making the right choice more often.”
I reach for the aluminum foil, pray forgiveness from the eco gods, and tear off a sheet.
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