COMMENT
-conscience
I
conscious?
t happens more than you might think. You wake up in the middle of the night, perspiring, bleary-eyed, crippled with guilt. The filament in your bedside lamp is blaring white-hot. It’s been doing so since you fell asleep and that was hours ago. Out there somewhere, a polar bear is weeping. The ice caps are melting into a slushy wasteland. Seas will rise. Food prices will soar. There will be fighting anarchy in the street. Facts and figures heralding the doom of our species race across your mind like ticker tape.
Number of undernourished people in the world right now: 891,741,065. Tons of food wasted around the world today: 270,307. 31 million football fields of rainforest cut down each year. You toss and turn, contemplating the enormity of the universe: “How many Albert Halls would it take to fill the hole in the Ozone layer?” But inevitably, Google provides inadequate answers to your questions. So you curl up tighter than ever. You flick the switch and go back to sleep. Fear not. The good news is that you’re not alone. The fact is that modern life makes it so easy to be ludicrously wasteful. I leave lights on and TVs blaring on a daily basis. I’m not proud of it, but hey – it’s not easy being green, right? Since when
did everything come shrouded in plastic, moved over land and sea from far-flung sweatshops in Asia for our selfish enjoyment? With such depressing statistics on offer about the way the world is heading, it’s a wonder we get out of bed in the morning. Living ethically comes down to one’s own guilt-management. Knowing that something destined for the landfill has been repurposed and reinvigorated with a new and meaningful role – be it secondhand furniture from your local Freecycle group or resurrecting a long-forsaken tub of leftovers - feels pretty darn special. Eating food in spite of its questionable covering of mould, or drinking milk past the sell-by-date is to the 21st century what the punk movement was to the 70s. So-called ‘Freegans’ who fill their fridges with the contents of supermarket bins reap a double victory – living off the back of our consumerist lifestyles without being beholden to it. It’s living off the land for the modern age. But if you can’t do the big things, the small things matter just as much, so long as they make you happy. Making the very best use of things that we buy is above and beyond the greatest way of making small changes to the way we live. Not everyone can go to the extremes of ethical living – but those who feel good about their lives will surely sleep the most soundly at night.
How important is ecology to you? Send us your thoughts at: editorial@wokingjournal.co.uk
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