Why I Review Green Products
If you ask me why I review green products, the answer is very simple. I review these products because I care. I care about what goes into my body and what my family absorbs. I care about the Earth. And as for mass produced corporate products, well, I am not going to hang them all. Corporations can become green and pure, too. In fact, it is their karmic destiny to become just that.
I also understand that not every product we consume or need otherwise can be green right now. But the clocking is tick-talking and each nanosecond is screaming at us to wake up.
But we’ll see how long it takes until consumerism tips decidedly into the green zone. I won’t accept the prognostication of NEVER.
In the meantime, I form a part of a cohort of consumers, people who are trying to do their best. Granted, sometimes we are priced out of the green market, and often we have make sacrifices to buy a thimbleful of good green stuff.
But what really are we sacrificing?
That all depends on the products involved and the relative condition of one’s pocketbook. Just as the need to buy greener and healthier products has risen, so has American poverty. I am no Polly Anna. I meet too many people even with the middle class in my home city who cannot buy groceries as needed. And what I see is just the surface of a very real epidemic of hunger.
You can’t expect an American on the brink of homelessness to spend his last five dollars on a bottle of organic green juice, even if he has a coupon for it.
Decreasing One’s Carbon Footprint
Consistently using green products does indeed decrease one’s carbon footprint.
Every act of green living is lit with intention that the Earth, herself, notices. If we lose this battle and lose our planet, culminating in slow or rapid mass extinction, it is important to have stood on the right side of history/ morality.
In my household, I know that we minimize our carbon footprint the most through our work practices.
My husband works five minutes away from home, and my daughter, ten. I now telecommute exclusively.
Beyond using green products, the idea of being home-based or not working far from home holds great hope for really cutting down on carbon emissions. It also strengthens the bonds of family. Commuting long distances to faraway workplaces simply does not. In fact, it tugs on the history of human evolution: usually going far away from home meant going off to war for our ancestors.
True: Explorers ventured beyond the village to map the world. Our job now is to map a way to humanity’s survival, while hopefully not taking down every species that struggles beside us.
We choose to live some place beyond the scope of our work, for the most part. It is a quality of life concern. However, it is woefully short-sighted. I would like to see the majority of Earth’s people working at home or in their neighborhoods.
The choice of working well beyond home can weigh heavily upon our collective responsibility to the Earth.
If you drive a hundred miles a day to make a living, you would have to use a truckload of green products to make up for that wasteful commute. Using an organically sourced, fair-trade lip balm is still good, but in your big picture, it is just a baby step.
So, I am really here to help you think about your choices, about damage control, about where you fit into the grand plan of our collective survival.
It is time, well beyond time, to take those giant steps.
Copyright 2016 by Maria Jacketti