Month: March 2024

As I have begun to think more sustainably, a problem that I was recently prompted with was the issue of gift giving during holidays and its implications on sustainability. Gift-giving, especially during the holiday season of December, is such an integral part of American culture. In fact, the EPA estimates that waste goes up 25% during the holiday season (EPA). Growing up celebrating Christmas, I got plenty of gifts every year. I never really questioned this practice; I’ve always embraced it. That was, until, I was confronted with the harsh realities of how harmful consumerism really is for Earth and marginalized peoples across the world. Now, buying and receiving gifts inevitably comes with feelings of guilt. 

I don’t think anyone would deny the joy of giving and receiving gifts. It would be unreasonable, and frankly sad, if we just stopped giving gifts altogether. A shift must be made, rather, in how gifts are given. Upon thinking about this further I came to the conclusion that the two main options we have are as follows: making gifts and/or thrifting gifts.

Thrifting is a great option. Thrifting gifts gives us the peace of mind knowing nothing new is being made, it’s just reusing old stuff. Thrifting is especially relevant in the realm of fashion but it can apply to other items too. One can find empty picture frames, artwork, furniture, electronics, kitchenware, and more at thrift shops such as Goodwill. Goodwill’s manager of sustainability, Brittany Dickinson, claims that Goodwill receives billions of pounds of donations every year, so there are plenty of options to choose from (Chiu 2023)!

Making gifts is also a wonderful option. This year, instead of buying cards from the Hallmark store for Christmas, I decided to write notes with penCIL and paper. I found the process to be more enjoyable and more wholesome, really. In my personal experience, I like to receive notes as well. It’s always more meaningful to get something handmade as opposed to a generic card with a signed name. To me, it’s a demonstration of care. I think I will continue this tradition. When it comes to packaging the gifts I didn’t want to use wrapping paper. Solutions to the wrapping problem can come in many forms depending on the gift(s) you have. Some, like the North London Waste Authority, choose to wrap their gifts in re-usable fabrics using a traditional Japanese method known as furoshiki or opt out of the wrapping process as a whole and send their gift recipients on a scavenger hunt! I got one person a mug and some other small gifts so I was able to fit it all into the mug and the mug acted as a container to hold the gifts. I wrote a little card, folded it up and placed it inside the mug for a cute presentation! I think avoiding waste ultimately comes down to being creative and working with what you already have.

I think many people aren’t even aware of the harm that their shopping and consumerism has on the earth. Maybe upon learning this they’ll be inspired to change, as I was. The main point is that there are alternatives. Maybe not every gift can be thrifted or made but I’m sure out of all the gifts one gives in a year at least a few of them could. Ultimately, our culture as a whole must change, and this is just the beginning of that journey!

 

References:

Chiu, A. (2023, January 4). How to donate clothes without wasting them — and hurting the environment. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/01/04/how-to-donate-clothes-waste-environment/

 

United States Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Holidays. Archived from https://archive.epa.gov/students/web/html/holiday.html

 

North London Waste Authority. (n.d.). Eco-friendly Alternatives to Wrapping Paper. Retrieved from https://www.nlwa.gov.uk/article/eco-friendly-alternatives-wrapping-paper

Recently I watched the 2020 movie Sound of Metal. The film follows a metal drummer named Ruben as he battles with hearing loss. Ruben’s whole life is music. He lives in a van and tours the U.S. performing small shows in various cities with his bandmate and girlfriend, Lou. Years of touring and playing with no ear protection has permanently damaged his hearing. After disregarding doctors’ recommendation to stop drumming in order to preserve the hearing he has left, Ruben is left completely deaf. Because Ruben previously had issues with addiction, Ruben and Lou decide to part ways in order to allow Ruben to spend time in a deaf community designed for addicts to recover and become adjusted to their new lives.

I promise this is going somewhere.

As time goes on, Ruben puts in a lot of effort to become accustomed to his new life as a deaf person. He learns American Sign Language and takes on roles as a mentor and teacher in his community. But he cannot ever shake the feeling that he has lost a part of himself. He misses drumming. He misses Lou. He misses hearing. To try to regain these parts of his life, he sells just about all of his possessions in order to pay for cochlear implants. In doing this, he betrays the community he has built. Trying to “fix himself” goes against the community belief that being deaf is not a problem that needs fixing, merely it is a neutral thing that must be adapted to.

The cochlear implants do not work the way Ruben wants them to. They cause distortion in the way he hears sounds, making it easier, but still very difficult, to hear the world around him. Upon meeting back up with Lou, Ruben decides that she is better off without him, and leaves her again. The film ends with Ruben turning off his implants, sitting in a park, and solemnly reflecting on the choices he has made.

This movie is a great exploration of the choices we make, and how we must choose to live with and adapt to the consequences of not only our actions, but also the hands we are dealt in life. As I was watching it, I could not help but see a parallel in Ruben’s arc as a character, and the path we are all headed down in regards to climate change.

For years, he have been drumming with no ear protection. Simulations indicate that if mitigating strategies were done as late as the 1980s, global temperatures would be predicted to rise far less than what is being predicted now (Sanderson, 2020). We now know that climate change is an issue, yet we still continue to drum. As of 2021, none of the world’s largest economies had climate plans in place that aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement, an agreement made by many major countries to try and limit global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial numbers (Kottasova, 2021). Instead of adapting to the new world we will soon face, we are turning to technology in order to keep things the way we like them. We are constantly being told of technologies like carbon capture, a process that will come to save us all, when in reality, the technology will likely not do enough to solve the problem, with it not even being half as efficient as we had been promised it would be (Anthony, 2022). Much like cochlear implants, these changes will help, but not fully solve the issue like we wish they could. As a result of banking on technology, it seems like we do not really have a plan of how we will live when climate change starts wreaking havoc on our society.

We are at a fork in the road here. We could change the way we live in order to adapt to the challenges we are and are going to face. Continue being a part of the deaf community. Reduce emissions and consumption and live smaller lives. Or we could go get the cochlear implants, trust that technology like carbon capture will save us. We need to change the way we are thinking about our response to climate change. You can’t solve being deaf with technology, you learn sign language and adapt to the new life being deaf brings you. We won’t solve climate change with technology, we must, at this point, live smaller adapt to the new life it brings us.

Anthony, Leslie. “The Truth about Carbon Capture.” Canadian Geographic, Canadian Geographic, 5 Jan. 2023, canadiangeographic.ca/articles/the-truth-about-carbon-capture/.

Kottasová, Ivana. “Not a Single G20 Country Is in Line with the Paris Agreement on Climate, Analysis Shows.” CNN, Cable News Network, 16 Sept. 2021, www.cnn.com/2021/09/15/world/climate-pledges-insufficient-cat-intl/index.html.

Sanderson, B.M., O’Neill, B.C. Assessing the costs of historical inaction on climate change. Sci Rep 10, 9173 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66275-4

As part of the Greenbelt course’s recent lifestyle project I experimented with vegetarianism. Although through the end of the experiment I did not continue with vegetarianism–I did rediscover a permanent staple in my diet: Sweet potato. This particular root vegetable is worthy of our collective adoration for a number of reasons I wish to relate. First, the sweet potato is part of an elite and mysterious group of transpacific edible flora. In fact, there is some anthropological evidence suggesting the sweet potato made the 5000 mile (8000 kilometer) trek from the Andes to the Highlands of New Guinea hundreds of years before Columbus’s voyage, probably by way of Polynesian sailors who (maybe) used the hardy vegetable for sustenance on these long voyages (Doucleff 2019).

“The sweet potato made three independent trips to Southeast Asia. The Polynesians probably introduced it in 1100 A.D. (red). While the Spanish (blue) and Portuguese (yellow) brought other varieties from the Americas around 1500” (Doucleff 2019).

From this evidence–and our own experience–we learn solutions to deeply situated problems of sustainability. That is, how do we reconcile, on the fronts of production and transportation, the simultaneous health crises of overconsumption, overnutrition, malnutrition, and undernutrition. Bovell-Benjamin writes, “Currently, in some developed countries, overnutrition rather than undernutrition presents a major public health challenge. However, from a global perspective, undernutrition, food insecurity issues, droughts, and limited agricultural technologies are major problems. In developing countries, many farmers are highly dependent on root and tuber crops, as contributing, if not principal, sources of food, nutrition, and cash income… The sweet potato… is high yielding and drought tolerant, with wide adaptability to various climates and farming systems.” Moreover, “the roots, leaves, and shoots [of sweet potatoes] are all edible” (Bovell‐Benjamin 2007). Sweet potato is filling enough to prevent its own overconsumption, and nutritionally dense enough to serve as a cheap staple in the diets of millions of people. Cartabiano et al. succinctly note: “Sweet potatoes are a convenient food to be used as a nutritional supplement in the diet of vulnerable people” (2022).

Furthermore, Afzal et al. recommend increased sweet potato production in order to encourage a variety of sustainable development goals. Goals, which importantly, seek to protect some of the most vulnerable people on the planet: [S]weet potato can contribute positively to reducing poverty by creating sustainable income generation opportunities for small farmers. This is due to its profitability, potential for biofuel production as a result of its high starch content, the selling of vines due to their high multiplication rate, low production costs due to low input requirements, and the potential for high yields” (Afzal et al. 2021). Afzal et al. goes on to note that studies of farmers in Uganda, Malawi, and Nigeria demonstrate the success of sweet potato production in increasing income for struggling farmers. Which further increases their access to food, clothing, medication, and education.

Afzal (2021) and Cartabiano (2022) both go on to note how incredibly understudied (and underappreciated) sweet potato is by academia and consumers. For me, I appreciate sweet potatoes for their decadence and sweetness. As individuals dedicated to sustainability, I think it is important that we find sustainable activities, hobbies, and foods that that feel decadent, relaxing, and fulfilling, that don’t also feel sacrificial and laborious.

With the development of technology, it has quickly grown harder and harder to refuse the temptations of products that can distract us from our human experience. Every December I am excited to see my Spotify Wrapped, which tells me how many minutes out of the year I have been trying to tune out the outside world. The past few years, I have listened to music for more than 100,000 minutes out of the year, which is equivalent to 70 days. While I love listening to music, I can’t help but wonder how many conversations or thoughts I could be having without headphones in my ears. I remember vividly listening to music during most high school and middle school classes. Globally, average time spent a week listening to music rose by nearly 10% to 21 hours a week (Yahoo). Music is often enjoyed more at lower lengths of listening, the absence of sound is just as important to the listening experience as the music is itself.

While it is hard to argue that listening to music is “bad”, it is easy to recognize how technology, more specifically, our smartphones have had a detrimental effect on our sense of community. Just walking around campus, half of the people walking around are staring at their phones. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who’s on their phone and you ask them a question and they never respond? It is infuriating. This behavior is normalized in today’s society and is likely a byproduct from the Covid lockdown and simply years being dependent on phones.

The Japanese term yutori is “a state with sufficiency and ease” and many Japanese citizens practice yutori by practicing efficient time management to ensure they will have time to show up early to wherever they are going. Once they get there, they simply grow accustomed to their surroundings and feel a deeper connection to the setting. While the average person spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone, the Japanese spend less than half of this number. This is one thing that is lost in younger generations’ culture. Everyone is constantly stimulated by different forms of technology and this makes me wonder exactly what both the negative effects could be and what we could be missing. (Yamashita) (Exploding topics)

General awareness and lack of stimulation tie in directly with sustainability solutions. A large driver of consumption is convenience and not having to think twice before discarding an item. A lack of awareness also contributes to a disconnection to the natural world: not only the appreciation of beautiful landscapes but also the everyday rhythms of nature like the sun setting, birds singing, or the wind blowing. These things can appear unimportant to the human experience but so much is lost in constantly hindering your senses.

Getting caught up in technology allows us to forget the basic human experience and that all we truly need is food, water, and shelter. A minimalistic approach should always be taken when possible to discourage waste and tie in a deep passion for sustainability and environmental issues. In a world where we are inventing VR masks to deprive of us all of our natural senses, we must remember what it means to truly be a human living in the world.

 

Sources:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/time-spent-listening-music-continues-000100578.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMI3_n30mHtAFigdvTyr4iRybs92AXNVLHzUQbIYgEWJFn1lp3LBJIN1Taui53-q7dC5f-bkadyb9aWXaVpwmaXP1lrgvzsYQC19Pqm-bwPaUspmCkffj2kknclPtrH8_3Nyv_eJl0LMonj7OhrfUinfY8cmabNj9mdvLO6JrIjA

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-5884.00180#:~:text=Accord%2D%20ing%20to%20the%20Japanese,such%20as%20finance%20and%20time.

https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats