Sustainability Now

Global pandemic + baby = impossible zero waste

What does sustainability look like for me right now? It looks like disposable diapers, plastic shopping bags, and lots of packages at the door. Admittedly, I’m using Amazon more than I ever have (I don’t know where else to buy Vitamin D drops for infants). I’m buying plastic-wrapped items at the grocery store without reusable shopping bags (our store stopped allowing reusable bags due to COVID). My water usage has increased significantly given the additional laundry, bottles, and pump parts to wash. It feels like my pre-COVID, pre-baby zero waste efforts have gone down the drain.

Actually, my sustainability journey hit a bump in the road when I started getting really nauseated during the early weeks of my pregnancy - about a year ago. The only things that made me feel better were carbs, crackers, and cheese. And they usually came wrapped in plastic. Then came the doctor’s visits. Each appointment, blood draw, and ultrasound created some form of waste. When I actually delivered the baby, I can’t even begin to list all the single-use plastic used during my hospital stay.

Once the baby was born, people felt the need to send lots of gifts. I mean, lots of unnecessary gifts. Not only did I feel stress and guilt over the plastic I did buy, I felt stress and guilt over the plastic I didn’t buy. Not to mention all the time, energy, and waste used to disinfect everything. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s just how I feel.

Sigh. Sustainability seems impossible. Zero waste seems impossible.

I’m doing the best I can. I try to use reusable diapers, but the disposable ones wick away more moisture, which means a less fussy baby. I try to only use reusable wipes. I try to use rubber pacifiers instead of silicone and plastic ones. I try to only buy wooden or rubber toys. I’ve only purchased three new sleepers for the baby; the rest of his wardrobe is secondhand. His crib and mattress are secondhand. We use bar soap, are eating a more vegan diet, and avoid synthetic fabric as much as possible. We’re not driving as much as we used to. 

But, I know this is not nearly enough. There’s so much more I want to do on the community level, the political level, the corporate level.

Simply put, there is nothing sustainable about having a baby. Well, aside from the notion of sustaining one’s lineage. Having a baby is literally the opposite of reducing my footprint. In fact, it’s creating even more of a footprint on this earth. Before we decided to have kids, I struggled with the idea of bringing a child into this world. Our natural resources are already depleted, the planet already overpopulated - why create another mouth to feed? 

Amidst deforestation, climate change, and pandemics, I don’t know what the world will look like in the next ten years. With COVID, I don’t know what the world will look like tomorrow. It’s a terrifying time to be alive. It’s a terrifying time to bring a baby into this world.

My husband and I have had long discussions about how we’d try to make growing a family as sustainable as possible. We want to teach our children how to be sustainable stewards of the Earth, to be a voice for the voiceless. We want our children to be better humans than we ever were. In a sense, we want and need our children to right our wrongs, to pay the dues of past generations.

And yet, it all seems so selfish. Children should have no obligation to us. We brought them into this world. They shouldn’t be pressured to save it.

At the very least, we need to teach our children about respecting our environment, about how our wellbeing is inextricably tied to the wellbeing of our natural world.

Sustainability now? It doesn’t exist.

Eco-anxiety

“All living beings deserve clean air, clean food, and clean water.”

“Would you care for any dessert?” our waitress asks. “No dessert, but we’ll take another order of appetizers,” I tell her. I’m 31 weeks pregnant, it’s the evening of Valentine’s Day, and I’m fully enjoying a night out with my husband. I order my post-dinner snack just as the restaurant is getting busier and our appetizers take a little while to arrive. This is usually no problem, except that I irrationally blamed it on a series of unfortunate events that occurred afterwards.

We’re parked two blocks away from the restaurant and just as we’re about to cross the street to our car, an old RV accelerates at the corner. I freeze. My ears are always on high alert for the sound of loud vehicles. I don’t know much about automobiles, but my brain thinks that the louder the vehicle, the more exhaust it leaves behind.

I can’t decide whether to hold my breath and run to our car or turn around and try to flee from the invisible cloud of choking gas the RV leaves behind. I step into a parking lot only to find a parked pick-up with its engine running. I literally can’t get away from breathing in poison. I frantically change my mind and decide to walk towards our car. The thick smell of carbon from the RV fills my nose and seemingly every cell in my body. I want to cry. The RV is blocks away now but its vapors remain thick in the air.

We get in the car and my sadness turns to anger. Why did I order the extra appetizers? Why did the RV have to be at the street corner just as we were? Why does air pollution exist? Why was I in the wrong place at the wrong time?

I burst into tears and sob uncontrollably. My catastrophic thinking snowballs. I’m worried about the effects of air pollution on me and my baby. I’m depressed because I can’t seem to get away from it, no matter how hard I try or where I am. I’m sulky towards my husband, who experiences the brunt of my anxieties. I feel guilty for not being able to control my emotions. 

This is what eco-anxiety can look like.

I’ve struggled with anxiety for a long time but over the past few years, it’s morphed into eco-anxiety. My phobia of air pollution is what I struggle with most. To me, my phobia is akin to someone who is an arachnophobe. When I see semi trucks, crop dusters, or cigarette smoke, I literally freeze with fear. It’s like throwing an arachnophobe into a pit of spiders. Whether rational or irrational, my perceptions are my reality.

Sometimes I wonder if ignorance is bliss, whether I’d be happier not knowing about toxins and their health effects, about climate change and environmental destruction. There is probably some truth to that. But, I also think ignorance is bliss until someone gets hurt. It’s all fun and games until cities like Bakersfield, CA become unlivable due to air pollution and fire season becomes more common in more regions. Once I saw air pollution (or smelled it), I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t un-breathe it.

Having anxiety, worrying about the Earth, stressing about environmental hazards - it’s exhausting and can be all-consuming. These things leave little room in my mind for positivity, creativity, self-care. I wonder about all the hours I’ve wasted feeling anxious and depressed.

The silver lining with anxiety is that it spurs me towards action. Mentally, I’m trying to focus on what I can control, on improving my negative mindset. Physically, I’m trying to walk or bike instead of drive, to educate those around me about VOCs, to petition to legislators for cleaner air. Though much easier said than done, I’m trying to channel my fears and anxieties towards something productive. I suppose the theme here is the word try. Trying to thrive in life than be terrified.

---

What has helped with my anxieties

Over the past year, I’ve learned some coping mechanisms that have given me some comfort:

1. Seeking help. I share my fears and anxieties with my therapist. Together, we discuss practices that might help me feel more calm: meditation, exercise, grounding techniques, journaling, taking a walk. What’s difficult is that deep breathing is usually a good way to relax but with this phobia, my issue is that I’m afraid to breathe.

2. Facing worst case scenarios. When I’m afraid to leave the house, Steve and I talk through my worst case scenarios and we devise a plan for if those scenarios were to actually happen. It makes me feel better knowing that the person I’m with has my back when I step out into the world.

3. Thinking positively. While I have a plan for my worst case scenarios, I’m also working on training my mind to think best case. For me, this takes a lot of energy since I’ve spent most of my conscious life being doom and gloom. I constantly need to remind myself that the Universe isn’t malicious, that the Universe has my back.

4. Getting enough sleep. I’ve found that sleep deprivation makes it harder to fend off scary thoughts. Especially with a newborn, sleep can be hard to come by. But when I get 6-8 hours of sleep in a night, I feel mentally stronger.

What we can do today about air pollution

• Sign up for the Moms Clean Air Force newsletter.

• Write to local officials asking them to support environment-first legislation.

• Don’t idle vehicles.

• Cut back on VOCs, many of which are found indoors. VOCs hide in:

  • Air fresheners

  • Carpet

  • Cosmetics (including hairspray and nail polish)

  • Diesel emissions

  • Dry-cleaned clothing

  • Fabrics

  • Furniture

  • Gasoline

  • Industrial emissions

  • Office printers and copiers

  • Paint

  • Pesticides

  • Tobacco smoke

• Avoid products enhanced with chemical fragrances, such as perfumes, cleaning products, candles, air fresheners, and plug-in scents. Switch to essential oils instead.

• Buy less; buy local. Trucks transporting goods and factories creating goods are significant contributors to air pollution.

• Compost. If there isn’t a municipal composting program available, consider composting at home or supporting a private composting business (such as WasteNot Compost). Food waste is the biggest contributor of solid waste in landfills, where it releases methane into the atmosphere.

• Reduce plastic usage. Producing plastic and incinerating plastic waste in landfills and open fields create toxic fumes we all breathe in.

• Eat less meat, especially beef. Livestock is responsible for about 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

• Offset carbon emissions by donating to organizations that focus on carbon offsets and/or fight deforestation.

What we can do in the future

• Purchase an electric or hybrid car to cut down on fossil fuels.

• Replace gas-powered lawn equipment with electric versions.

• Power homes with renewable energy (such as solar panels or CleanChoice Energy).

• Walk or bike instead of driving or taking an Uber/Lyft.

• Take vacations that don’t require flights.

The Air I Breathe

I remember the dark exhaust spewing out of an old beat-up car on Division Street in Chicago. The two people in the front seat seemingly not knowing the pillows of poison they left behind as they sped away. That image has stuck with me ever since.

I hold my breath a lot these days. When I’m passing someone smoking a cigarette outside a building. When a semi-truck is idling near me. When I’m standing in a windowless parking garage. I think of the dangerous fumes entering my lungs.

Last week, I walked near a construction zone and felt the dust blow into my eyes, nose, and mouth. I felt violated, contaminated, dirty. Both inside and out.

Air pollution is a silent killer. It seeps into every nook and cranny. Like a ghost, particulates are invisible when they enter our lungs. They are all around us when we om and ah in the yoga studio and when we put our little ones to sleep. Air pollution feels inescapable.

Today, San Francisco is suffocating from a devastating wildfire. Though the fire is more than 150 miles away, the Bay is covered in a thick smoke and the air quality in the city has become worse than Beijing’s. I’m confined indoors and when I do venture out, I wear a mask. Every inhale is short, heavy, calculated.

The issue of air pollution gnaws at me. Physically and figuratively. It sits on my shoulder when I work. It wants my attention when I walk outside. It shakes me when I smell exhaust or burnt plastic. It screams in my ear when I read the news. I am overwhelmed by it, this systemic issue that I can’t fix on my own.

I’ve been called crazy and neurotic for voicing my opinions. But, I can’t deny my instincts when they tell me something in the air is wrong. Every human being and creature has the right to clean air, clean food, clean water. The very basic necessities in life. I need to do more…always more.

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

BYOC (Bring Your Own Containers)

I went shopping at The Dill Pickle Food Co-op and the only plastic I used was my credit card. I think I was on cloud nine. It was a huge accomplishment for me and in some small way, I felt like I was contributing to society (and the polar bears).

Before I went to the store, I gave them a call to see if I could bring in my own containers. Some stores, including Whole Foods, don't let me. Not only did The Dill Pickle encourage me to bring in my own containers, they explained that they try to be a styrofoam-free store (that is serious goals for a grocery store). "Do you think they'll let me live there?" I wrote in an email to my husband.

I ran to the kitchen, where I keep my hidden stash of glass jars and plastic yogurt containers. I've been collecting them for years, reluctant to throw them away and convincing myself (and my husband) that I'll find a use for them. Finally, my hoarding tendencies are paying off.

When I first got to the store with my containers, a lovely store clerk weighed each one so she should calculate the tare. She then wrote the tare on the container for reference later. A tare is essentially the allowance made for the weight of the container in order to determine only the weight of the contents later (thank you, Google). For instance, I brought in a heavy glass jar that used to hold maple syrup. I filled it with almond flour at The Dill Pickle. When the store clerk rang it up at the register, she only charged me for the weight of the almond flour.

I must have spent a good 45 minutes in the bulk foods section. The Dill Pickle had different types of flours, nuts, teas, spices, and snacks. They even had honey, olive oil, and canola oil in bulk. In other parts of the store, they had bulk soap and bulk kombucha.

The Dill Pickle is a game-changer for me. Literally and figuratively. Grocery shopping is now a fun game for me to see how much I can reduce and reuse.

Thank you, Dill Pickle! I was in a dilly of a pickle before I met you (sorry, I couldn't help myself).

The Struggles of An Environmentalist

My heart broke this week when a photo taken by Paul Nicklen went viral. It was a photo of a starving polar bear, a victim of global warming struggling to find food on an iceless island. I just sat there, crying and heartbroken. I felt so helpless and hopeless. To me, the image symbolized our dire future and the extinction of a magnificent species that did nothing to deserve its fate.

Literally everything I do furthers global warming. My very existence on earth impacts the resources of other living beings. A depressing concept, I know. Sure, I can reduce my carbon footprint and use less plastic. I can offset my carbon emissions and become a vegan. But at the end of the day, we each need to do our part. We need to make changes on the global level, and it starts with each individual. We each have the power over the products we choose to purchase, the companies we choose to invest in, and the voices we have against climate-deniers. 

Sometimes I wish I cared less about the environment. It would be so much easier for me if I didn't have an eco-conscience. But, I can't deny the fact that I'm drawn to this issue, like moths to a flame. I think about it all the time. It's like an obsession. A strange desire to care for Mother Earth.

I also can't deny the fact that one of the biggest struggles for me as an environmentalist is that I often feel like a hypocrite. Like I said, everything I do impacts the environment. The computer I'm typing on contains toxic substances, my winter coat is made of perfluorocarbons, my leggings are made of polyester microfibers. I could go on.

Here's what I know and what gives me hope. There is still so much beauty and good in this world. I just want to preserve it for as long as I can.