Double standard

I got (indirectly) called a hippie at a barbeque on Memorial Day weekend because I am making cloth diapers and wipes, and making a rag rug from the scraps of material for the diapers and wipes. One person asked me if I was going to start using an outhouse like a hippie after I mentioned these various projects. Everyone laughed, even me, because it was funny. It was only the next day that I realized what had really happened.

I reflected on this situation and, like I always do, thought about a question I should have asked my accuser: Would you call your grandparents hippies? Because I am only doing things they had to do in their lives.

Disposable diapers, disposable wipes, disposable nursing pads…these are all relatively recent inventions. But a lot of people don’t stop to think about what their grandparents did, and even some of their parents, did. I was cloth diapered as a baby. Our parents were cloth diapered as children. Disposable diapers only came about in the 40s, and then it was a luxury. Generations past used only what they needed, reused what they could. That is what I am trying to do…not only is it more economically sound, it is more environmentally sound. So now there is a double standard: when our generation does this it makes us hippies, but when our grandparents and parents did it, they were just doing what they had to do because there were no other options.

I fear that this lack of planetary/environmental awareness is rather pervasive in my generation, and this makes me sad for my kids and the planet they will inherit.

Treehugger

I have been called a treehugger twice in the last week. By my husband. I told him I wanted to make my own butter so we wouldn’t have to buy margarine in plastic tubs (reducing plastic use) or butter (with PFOA lining the paper—read about PFOA here), and he called me a treehugger. And not in a good way, in the usual derogatory tone that accompanies the word. This really hurt my feelings, and he later apologized, saying that he is just overwhelmed with the amount of information I have about chemicals.

In addition to trying to use products without harmful chemicals, I have been inspired to reduce our plastic use recently, so I have been trying to find ways to eliminate using things with plastic packaging, make my own stuff that normally comes in plastic, or try to find items packaged in glass. The reason I don’t want to use plastic is because it doesn’t biodegrade. Ever. And I think about the amount of plastic used in this country (it’s everywhere) and how much we consume and throw things away, and it makes me sad. Hundreds of millions of tons of plastic are in the landfills and ocean (see here). And it doesn’t biodegrade. It will break into smaller and smaller pieces over a long, LONG period of time, and did I mention it doesn’t biodegrade?

I never really thought that trying to reduce consumption, protect my and my family’s health, and protecting wildlife were bad things. Apparently, though, this makes me a treehugger. If this is the case, then so be it. I would rather be a treehugger than be an ignorant, narrow-minded, not-interested-in-protecting-the planet-that-supports-our-life {insert catchy term for anti-treehugger}. Not saying that my husband is one, because he is trying to be more conscious, but he doesn’t need to insult me about it.

Incidentally, the second time he called me a treehugger, he was being more sarcastic and joking, and it didn’t hurt my feelings.