Whether she’s teaching Oprah how to recycle a Christmas tree, or Martha how to decorate with bamboo, award-winning journalist and green lifestyle expert Simran Sethi makes living lightly on the earth look easy. A pioneer in the burgeoning world of eco-themed media, 36 year-old Sethi is the face of Treehugger.com’s TreeHuggerTV, the voice of TreeHugger Radio’s weekly segment on Air America Radio’s environmental program EcoTalk, and the host of The Green, a new series debuting next month on the Sundance Channel. As former host/writer of the PBS series Ethical Markets and contributing author to the book, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, Sethi worked with futurist Hazel Henderson on the first television show highlighting sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility — all while simultaneously getting her MBA in sustainable business at San Francisco’s Presidio School of Management.
WLT caught up with Sethi for a Q & A on the most cutting-edge green ideas out there, the evolution of the environmental movement, and the challenges that lay ahead.
What are some of the most exciting ideas/businesses/people on your radar right now?
I’m obsessed with pre-fab. Homes today are turning into monstrosities and the amount of resources required to build and sustain them is increasing our ecological footprint [exponentially]. The building and construction industry is one of the most polluting industries in the country. It’s really exciting to look at minimalist design and the way people are trying to reclaim what pre-fabrication is and turn it into something sustainable. I’m also excited about eco fashion as a strong indication of the way environmentalism is changing and evolving. Before, people felt like they had to make a compromise; if you want to be green, you’re going to have to suffer. Eco fashion and architecture are helping people understand: things can still be stylish and have a modern aesthetic — and be sustainable. The fact that the price point [for sustainable goods] is dropping because demand is increasing, while the design remains strong, makes me really happy.
Is the green thing just a passing fad?
Graham Hill [founder of Treehugger] is very concerned that people are going to don a little green ribbon, buy a Prius, and check it off their list, saying, “I did environmentalism, and now I’m moving on.” But I strongly believe that — with the way this issue is manifesting and cutting across sectors — it’s not going to go away. [Economically,] It doesn’t behoove the powers that be to sustain the status quo. You can’t just check it off your list, because our relationship with the natural environment and our legacy, what kind of environment we are leaving for generations to come is just… we can’t silo ourselves from it. I don’t know anybody suffering from breast cancer or HIV, so I can write a check to the American Red Cross, or do the AIDs run — but it doesn’t touch me every day. Whereas no one can escape what’s going on with the climate change. You can’t escape what’s going on with the war in Iraq, you can’t escape what’s happening with our food supply. There is a compelling business case for it, there is a compelling case for it just on a community level, and for that reason I feel like — I hope — it’s here to stay.
Who’s on your dream presidential ticket for 2008?
I would like to say Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich. But I’m a little unresolved because I haven’t investigated enough, and I think that’s a huge mistake that people make. When I interviewed Arianna Huffington, she talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger, and how she ran for governor against him on the platform of “The Hybrid Versus The Hummer.” So I asked her how well she thought Gov. Schwarzenegger is doing now. And she said, “Well, you know, saying he wants to reduce CO2 levels for the state of CA to 1999 levels is well and good, but he is going to be out of office by then.” Meaning, how do we hold our officials accountable over a longer trajectory? Or as Arianna puts it, “Rhetoric is cheap.” So I say to you very liberally, “yah, Kucinich/Obama,” but I feel like I have to do far more research to know who I would vote for. I think right now Barack Obama seems very inspiring to a lot of people, but I take the opportunity to vote very seriously, and try to look at the issues that are important to me, both in the short term and the long — and so to that end, it’s a very caveat-ed response.
What issues are most woefully ignored in public discourse?
Racism and poverty — and the intersection of the two. It was briefly addressed after Hurricane Katrina, but I’m still… going back to your last question about your ideal ticket, when you asked me that, in my head, I was still going through the filters of “who is electable?” This is an ongoing debate for me and my friends and colleagues: are we ready to embrace an African American male president, or, you know, Hilary, a first female president? I think that racism is still a huge issue in this country, obviously, when you have comments like Sen. Allen’s “macaca” reference. We are just woefully behind, and, even worse, we assume that we are really progressive and far ahead. I don’t think we’re doing enough to address these very common, fundamental issues and to ensure our move toward a more equitable society.
What keeps you up at night?
Wondering if I’m doing enough. If I’m working deeply enough. Daily, I worry about being conscious of what I eat and how I live and what I buy. But I also want to have a macro focus, and sometimes I don’t know how to do both — looking beyond just me, and my world and how I consume. How can I, how can we work toward shifting the paradigm so there is greater equity across communities, across countries? That’s the part I don’t feel I’ve fully connected to yet. Because so far we’ve mostly focused on how to consume differently — which I think is a great entry point for people — but I’m also impatient to go further. How do we re-envision our world? That’s what I want to get to. I think the environmental justice movement is a key component of that, and that’s my goal in terms of self-education and the kind of organizations I want to promote, making sure they’re moving towards looking at environmentalism as a human rights issue. So what keeps me up at night is — did I do enough of it today? And where am I going to find time to do more, because I want to talk about all of these stories.
There’s been a lot written recently on whether or not the idea of “voting with our dollars” is an effective means of promoting social/environmental change. What’s your take?
The thing that I love about TreeHugger.com — and the thing that I love about this evolution in the environmental movement — is that it’s making [environmentalism] more accessible to people. A great point of entry is what we buy. The first step is thinking about how you can buy in a different way and the second step is thinking about how you can buy less. It’s naive to assume that people will stop shopping, and I think that’s why for so long the whole reaction to the green movement was like “I’m not going to live off the grid, and wear, like, a hemp muumuu.” And now that there are alternatives to that, the movement will reach a lot more people.
That said, I feel like there definitely should be a healthy dose of skepticism, and people on the edge of the continuum that say “that is not enough,” (and that’s part of what keeps me up at night). But at the same time, if someone buys a Prius just because it’s a cool car, or Brad Pitt has one or Cameron Diaz has one — great! Because that still means you reduced your carbon footprint. And I’m going to celebrate that, I’m going to tell you that, and encourage you to do more — whether it is you as a person or you as a corporate citizen. We have to start somewhere, and for me, that somewhere is celebrating what people are doing.
What keeps you focused, motivated and hopeful?
Meditation and eating well, and being conscious of how I nourish myself — the kind of TV I watch, the kind of books I read, the kind of food I eat, the people I hang out with. I work really hard, and I care deeply about the work I do so it’s not just “oh, I just do that job and when I’m home I disconnect from it.” My work never ends because it flows through to my life. So I need healthy nourishment, good, sustaining, soulful nourishment to keep myself centered.
What question do you wish our readers would ask themselves?
Is what you’re doing everyday moving you closer to the goal of how you want your world to be? And when I say your world, I mean both your smaller, immediate environment, and the bigger world — because it’s easy to get disconnected. So, if you know you want a healthier environment, and your water is served in plastic cups… bridge those disconnects. We live in such a disposable society, it takes two seconds to fill a plastic cup with water, and the cup will outlive us. I hope people won’t grow complacent. And I’m optimistic that people aren’t checking green off of their list. But in case they are — we’re here.
Read the full transcript of our interview with Simran, including her take on organics at Wal-Mart, the best part about appearing on Martha Stewart, and how to spin passion for environmentalism into an inspired career.