Environmentalism: East vs West

[Note: This is half of a two-part Oregon Voice article comparing approaches to environmentalism on the East and West coasts of the US. A fellow student from New Jersey is writing the other half, so it should be an interesting final product (I believe they're looking at printing next month, so look for it on oregonvoice.com) This article is also in draft form, so feedback is appreciated!]


West Coast: Keeping the Green in our Wallets

I believe the ideals of environmentalism on the west coast are best embodied by my father, an old-school conservative who grasps better than a lot of eco-conscious Generation Y-ers these days what it means to reduce, reuse and recycle. Raised by a depression-generation single mother and with decades as a small business owner behind him, the man knows how to cut corners. Yes, it’s admirable, but if you’re not careful, this frugality can deliver some unpleasant surprises.
I learned this lesson the hard way one family vacation in Hawaii a few years ago. Having forgotten to pack my own, I asked dad if I could borrow some floss. Instead of the customary plastic case containing a spool, he handed me single, suspicious-looking waxy strand. However, it was generously long, for which I give him credit. I accepted the offering, ran it between my molars and deposited it in the wastebasket as usual.
An hour later, it was his turn to perform the ritual pre-bed hygiene. He went into the bathroom. Then he came back out. With admirable coolness, he asked, “Hey, where’d you put that floss?”
“What floss?” I asked.
“The floss I gave you earlier.”
“Um, threw it away,” I said, a little confused. He looked at me with an expression of mixed disappointment for having lost his floss and dismay at my carelessness.
“Tuula,” he sighed. “That was my only piece.”

Safe in the bathroom wastebasket – where even my father wouldn’t delve – that floss was spared from the mango-fiber and pineapple-strand hell that was sure to have lain ahead during those fourteen days in the tropics.
Of course, the frayed and gummy quality of his floss over the course of that trip would never have fazed my dad. For him, stretching consumer goods beyond their reasonable lifespan is not just a way of life, it’s an ongoing little game he plays with our throw-away society. There’s nothing he enjoys more than plucking something out a discard pile, brushing it off, and using it for the next twenty years. The wobbly, undersized bicycle he rides came from a gulley near his house. He drags his firewood in off the beach. If he does come across something new, he ensures it’s darn well expired before he disposes of it himself – writing on every square inch of a used envelope and wearing t-shirts until they’re more hole than fabric.
It would be nice to believe that this thriftiness goes beyond penny-pinching and is based in a more deeply rooted conservationist ethic. But if such a philosophy does exist, it is buried under a strong aversion to environmental and social “do-gooders” that defines my father’s political views. Instead – perhaps out of a simple desire to save funds – Pop has invented his own form of environmentalism, one that rejects the entire concept of consumables.

These days, recycling the items we use in our daily lives falls under the self-righteous headings of “sustainability” or being “green” – terms that would be nice to write off on east-coast yuppies but that we’re culpable for perpetrating as well. Worse, we’ve allowed marketers to convince us to attempt to buy our way out of our multiple, converging environmental disasters with such things as hybrid cars and organic cotton clothing sold at Wal-Mart. After all, in this era of plenty, one of the luxuries we’ve earned ourselves is the ability to throw things away and purchase newer, better, greener versions. A classic example of this are the well intentioned “light bulb exchange” campaigns that you see cropping up form time to time. Sure, it sounds nice to get a free fluorescent bulb, which will save who knows how many megawatts of electricity, but do we have to throw away thousands of perfectly good “old” bulbs in order to make the transition?
So, in this context of this hip(ocritical) eco-friendliness, can west-coasters keep our cool and rationally discern between what’s good for the earth and what simply makes us feel good? The west coast in general, and Oregon in particular, has a good reputation for not only rejecting the pretentious but also enacting legislation that helps make it easier to reduce our collective footprint (which is itself a slippery concept, but we’ll run with it). Oregon was the first state to create a bottle deposit system, providing broke college students and the homeless in 11 states now the opportunity to regain some of their beer money. Its somewhat controversial land-use system – in which urban growth boundaries are strictly enforced and land designated as agricultural must remain that way – has also been heralded by environmentalists. And of course, one can’t discuss green policies without tipping a hat to Portland, where happy citizens bike, recycle and build energy-efficient structures with an air of smugness that should itself be monitored by the EPA.
Oregon’s neighbors generate a good amount of eco-friendly smug themselves. California was the first state to place emissions caps on new vehicles lower than those imposed by the federal government and is generally ahead of its east-coast counterparts in environmental leadership. Washington gained attention this winter for refusing to put salt on Seattle’s roads, irritating commuters around Puget Sound but probably generating a lot of gratitude among those who live in its waters.

Of course, good ol’ dad scoffs at all of the above schemes, and maybe he’s right to do so. But at some point, the priority needs to be placed not only on protecting consumers from themselves, but also on protecting the earth from our resource-gobbling, polluting habits. The west coast does a reasonably good job of doing so, even if we’re sometimes given to “greenwashing.” One thing’s for sure, though – you won’t find many east coast yuppie environmentalists reusing floss.