A matter of convenience

Back in 2006 I watched, An Inconvenient Truth .   The movie helped me understand how our world is interconnected.  It resonated with me; but didn’t really fully grasp the meaning of the word ‘convenience’ in the context of climate change.

Fast forward some 15 years later and as someone who has gotten slightly older and (don’t laugh, I’d like to believe) wiser, I recently saw the sequel to that movie – An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.   I can now say I understand the significance of the word ‘convenience’.  If life was a cartoon, a light bulb that would have gone on above my head after I finished watching that sequel.

I  believe that humans are creatures of habits, when we figure out one way that things work, we stick to them.   If there is a disruption to the routine, it causes ‘inconvenience’ and an internal struggle begins to get back to that old routine.  After watching that movie, I decided I would disrupt my own routine and understand my own actions.

I’ve lived all my life (along with the billions of others on this planet) doing everything that I could to make my life convenient for myself.  If I needed to get somewhere, I’d get into my car and drive.  I never gave it a second thought about the One-time use things I had in my life – zip-lock bag, straws, coffee cups, plastic bags,  etc.  All these things made my life more convenient.  Not having them would mean I have to carry my whole house with me wherever I went.  Just like everything else in life change has to be done slowly.  Once I realized I need to shift my way of thinking to more of a sustainable way of thinking, I began to make small changes in my life where my life is a bit inconvenient but reduced my guilt.

All this inconvenience must have led to some sort of savings to the environment,  if I had a scientific mind, I’d calculate it but for now here are some things I’ve done.

1. Transportation- This one is an obvious one.  We all have heard about the green-house effect of cars; between my husband and I we only own 1 car.There are days where this decision really adds to my inconvenience because I share a car with my husband and we have to coordinate our errands and we really have to plan well in advance.  There are weekends where I don’t get to grocery shop because something has come up where we can’t split up and do the errands because we only have one car.  There are days in the morning where I have to wait for him and there are days where he has to wait for me.  Those have not been fun mornings.  We’ve been doing it for years and through careful planning, it has worked for years. I’m at a point where we can even give up our one car in a few years as we will be moving closer to a transit station.
2. Agriculture-  The 2006 report Livestock’s Long Shadow, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, states that “the livestock sector is a major stressor on many ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. Globally it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) and one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, and in developed and emerging countries it is perhaps the leading source of water pollution.”There are plenty of places I can’t go to eat where there are limited or no vegan options.  I’ve been to restaurants with friends and family where I simply attend for their company.  I don’t eat anything.  I go, enjoy their company and come out.  It has also made it inconvenient  that I can no longer order food in as often.  Vegan restaurants seem to close early and they are always closed on Sunday which is the day when I don’t usually feel like cooking.  This can be an inconvenient at times but for the planet and my health, I am continuing.
3. Plastic bags –  “It is believed that 90% of all rubbish floating in the ocean is made up of plastic.”  SPREP.orgYou know when you go grocery shopping and you are buying limes you have to put it in a plastic bag to keep your bunch of limes together,  I’ve stopped using those plastic bags.  I let my limes roll freely in my grocery cart. The cashiers always look at me and collect the limes as they roll all over the place.  I say for that moment of inconvenience, lets just have some fun chasing limes on your counter :).
4. Recycling –   I recycle everything that comes into my house.  Cardboard boxes, glass containers, styrofoam, plastic containers, paper, plastic bags including zip-locks.  I live in the a city has a great recycling program where I’m able to recycle all these items.  You have to go drop off some of the items at their centers which can be inconvenient because I have to collect it in a  corner of my house.  So I have a garbage pile that grows for a couple of weeks until I make time to actually go and drop off the items.  It is a minor inconvenience that I take just because I know it is for the planet.
5. One-time use things – I no longer use zip locks, plastic spoons that aren’t organic.  If I have to pack a take away lunch for myself, I make sure the containers are coming back home with me to clean.  Sometimes I have forgotten those containers in the car – not for a day or two but for a month or so.. it wasn’t a very pleasant science experiment when I opened those containers to clean them.    Either way, I did clean them rather than throwing them away and they were perfectly fine.

I”m always looking out for new methods to make my life more inconvenient much to the dismay of some people around me because then I like to share my lessons :).  One of my favorite pod casts is Bill Nye’s Science Rules.  Bill Nye as we all know is a climate advocate and a lot of people call him on the show and ask him about if the little things that we as individuals can do actually help.  His response to that question (and I’m paraphrasing) is that we should all vote and have dialogue with one another about the planet.  The change will come with awareness.   So here I am following that principle and talking about these things.  These aren’t easy conversations because as I said, I believe humans are creatures of habit and are resistant to change.  Maybe if we bring it a little bit at a time maybe it won’t seem so inconvenient.