What price environmental virtue?

On the continuum of environmental virtue, I’m in an okay place.

I walk a lot. And use public transpo. But I also take Uber. And a couple of weeks back, when I had to rent a car to get to a wedding in the mountains of NY, I turned down a hybrid. Nerve-wracking enough that I had to cope with that antler dance in Hartford where I84 disappears and you have to take I91 and I691 and, I swear to God, I ended up passing through Hartford twice. But having to cope with that weird gear-shift dial. Let alone having to worry about plugging in. Ugh! Maybe if I ever get another car (speaking of ugh), I’ll get an electric or hybrid. ‘Til then.

I recycle. Religiously. And take care of all the catalogues and other junk mail that all the other residents in this building get but leave on the hall table. I bring my own shopping bags to the grocery store.  I recycle unusable clothing at H&M, and worn out sneakers at Nike (which takes mine even though they’re never Nikes). I try to avoid buying water bottles. And, back in the old days (i.e., last summer), when I was still buying 6- or 8-packs of Diet Cokes, I would snip the plastic holder into pieces so that no duck would end up wringing its neck on one. I’ve mostly moved away from disposable containers. But I don’t get the environmentally-friendly paper towels from Whole Food. Because they just don’t absorb anything that’s remotely liquid. And, yep, I sometimes use panty shields.

I put on a fleece when I’m cold. And take off my sweater when I’m warm. But I’m pretty liberal with the heat and AC when going without in winter means wearing mitts and blowing on my fingers every five minutes, and when going without in the summer means not getting any damned sleep.

So I don’t give myself a gold-star A+ for being a an environmental goody-two-shoes. But I do give myself a B, maybe even a B+.

There are, however, folks who’ll go to what I consider environmental extremes. Like the woman in Australia who avoids using Glad Wrap, or even those reusable plastic covers you can get from Vermont Country Store that look like something straight out of the 50’s. No, Dana Sluka tried her hand at making:

…her own wax-covered cloth for covering dishes. An online tutorial explained how to melt beeswax in a double boiler and brush it onto a piece of cloth. Ideally, the wraps can be reused for a year or so. (Source: WSJ)

Wonder if she’s ever considered using a Pyrex bowl, one that comes with its very own cover that can be reused for, like, forever. Especially when you factor in the time and the risk entailed in making your own version of Glad Wrap:

It sounded simple enough. Then Ms. Sluka accidentally dribbled hot wax all over her laminate counter. “It was sticky and I couldn’t clean it off,” she said. An idea came to her: She reached for the kitchen torch that she uses to make creme brulee. Using the hottest flame setting, she began warming up the globs of wax on the counter. The heat caused the counter to crack.

That doesn’t seem quite worth it to me, but Sluka has devoted some not-inconsiderable amount of time to achieving eco-friendly perfection, and she’s selling her products online. (Because data centers and shipping stuff don’t create any bad enviro footprint…)

Sluka is not, of course, the only one trying to come up with more environmentally-friendly products.

Some women are making their own straws.

Dedri Uys:

…starts by rolling strips of paper into tubes. To get the paper to stick together, she uses either homemade cornstarch paste or gelatin glue. She has tried sealing the paper with wax from soybean oil, but those straws were “barely usable,” she said. “If you squished them, bits of soy wax would fall off from the inside.”

Paraffin wax was better, though on her first try the wax didn’t melt completely and coagulated within the straws. Other straws ended up too fat.

I was going to say ‘no comment.’ But I’m going to comment:

Wouldn’t it make more sense to just cut down on the number of straws you use? Or buy yourself a reusable glass or aluminum tube?

Sheesh. Making your own straws.

I will admit to using an occasional straw, mostly when I have an iced coffee from Dunks. I suppose I could refuse the straw, but it’s pretty difficult to drink an iced coffee without one. Unless you fancy iced coffee running down the front of your shirt. Of course, I should be bringing my own container to Dunks rather than taking their terrible, assault-on-the-environment cup. But, hell, it’s not like I’m guzzling iced coffees morning, noon, and night, and tossing the empties out the window of my gas-guzzling clunker as I speed down the Mass Pike.

Maine’s own Lindsay Weirich’s is also a paper straw maker.

…she recommends using canning wax, a food-grade paraffin that is used to make candy.

She warns fellow crafters to be careful when heating the flammable wax that “you don’t ignite it.”

Another English woman uses slender bamboo shoots to make her straws, “using sandpaper to smooth the rims.” 

Then there’s the woman in Philadelphia who coated her canvas tote bag with wax to waterproof it.

Note to Rebekah Bussom: grocery stores in Boston actually sell waxy-coated tote bags that last a few months, if you’re not carrying sharps or heavy cans of stewed tomatoes in them. I suspect that grocery stores in Philly do the same.

Perhaps these women – and, yes, everyone mentioned in the article was F – are such dedicated crafters that this is just a natural (literally and figuratively) extension of their craftiness. Perhaps they’re just grand eccentrics.

Me? I’m all for being environmentally aware, eco-friendly, etc. But I didn’t live with an economist for all those decades without learning about the concept of opportunity cost of their time. Don’t any of these women have one?