The Conscious Consumer - What does this mean?

What is a conscious consumer, and what does it mean for the environment?

Most of the worst environmental damage has come from the things we buy. A great video on this is Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff. http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Most of the consumer goods we buy have to be made. Paying attention to the way the things are made (and what they are made of) makes us conscious consumers.

Each thing we buy has an individual story, going from its beginning (materials from the earth) to its destination (our living rooms/kitchens/driveways/bedrooms, etc.). These stories can be long, sorded, and corrupt- while others are harmoneous and just. None of the things we buy have the story of how it was made written on the box, so we need to investigate and come prepared so that we don't unknowingly buy the products that caused all kinds of damage before it ended up on the shelf. Which products are which? There are a few red flags we can look out for that will help us to decide.


1. The item that makes us say "I can't believe this is so cheap!"
This is the oldest trick in the book, and people are starting to really understand just why cheap items are so cheap. There is always a cost. If that cost isn't coming out of our bank accounts, where is it coming from? The bill is generally footed by a mixture of the environment, political instability, and exploited labor in a country somewhere across either a boarder or an ocean. It's better to buy fewer things and pay the full price for each thing. When we buy something at a fair trade store, second hand store, or a small shop- the employees, the people who made it, and the environment all benefit. This because mass production was eliminated, and in most cases, we can find a product that was not mass produced (and therefore much more sustainable) in small shops, second hand stores and fair trade stores.

There are times when we might find ourselves in those big stores, it's sometimes hard to avoid. I can't seem to avoid the big Save-On-Foods that's just up the street from me. This may change -but for now I am going to be making a compromise. Whenever I find myself in these stores, I am going to try to buy the more expensive, eco-friendly alternative.

Almost every product we buy has an alternative, and it's usually sitting right beside the product we regularly buy. Laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo, food, face wash, lip balm, nail polish, toilet paper, napkins, (ladies, even tampons and pads), garbage bags, sandwich bags, coffee, tea... most of what we're looking for has an alternative sitting right beside it.

2. A paper or cotton product that is white white white.
I found out that it's really bad to bleach paper products because it releases dioxins in the bleaching process. These dioxins kill off ozone molecules, and we need our ozone layer intact! I've found that this is trickier, because the alternatives that I was talking about in #1 aren't always there for bleached paper and cotton products. I mean, they are there like, they're out there, but they're not always right there in front of our noses. Buying unbleached products takes a little planning, but we can find them. If you can't find them, you can always ask for them. You can write to the store you were in or the paper company itself and ask for an unbleached alternative.



3. Food ingredients containing words you can't pronounce.
The other day I bought a really weird container of sliced chicken. I went to the grocery store, grabbed a bunch of things, paid, got them home and didn't look at the ingredients until I took the food out for my lunch the next day. That's when I found the package of sliced chicken that I thought would literally be "cooked chicken". Oh no, when I looked at the ingredients I saw- Ingredients: chicken breast, corn syrup solids, salt, modified corn starch, flavour, sodium phosphte, carrageenan (????), sodium erythorbate, torula yeast, spices, sodium nitrate.

When chemicals (or things like "carrageenans".. which I don't know whether that is a chemical but it sounds weird and it's getting a red underline in my spell check- even my computer is red-flagging it) are created they've got to go somewhere. Food with chemicals, additives, and preservatives are created and they go through our bodies and into our water, our earth, our air.. They also come out of the factories that make them along with the nasty bi-products that they produce.

I like to think, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If it's good for us to consume and buy natural products, then it's good for everything else.



Bye for now, there will be more to come! Thanks to everyone who has read the blog, posted comments, and been supportive! Comments and elaborations welcome, people know a lot more than I do about this stuff, so please post or e-mail.