Green Consumerism vs. Green Guerrillas

Lately I've been ruminating on sustainability and the "green" movement as a whole, as I've been especially interested on how sustainability, or the perception thereof, has been commodified. As consumers have become especially vocal in the past few years about the dubious modes of production and distribution, many producers have made significant strides to improve environmentally unsound practices they formerly employed. A small example of this can be seen in Walmart, one of the world's largest corporations, when they pulled milk made from cows treated with BGH from their shelves due to substantial public outcry and a significant decrease in sales of milk. However, as corporations wake up to the fact that consumers are slowly becoming more informed, organized and passionate about a commitment to sustainably produced goods, there has been a growing faux green movement -- one in which products are advertised in a way that touts their environmentally responsible production with little basis to the claims. In other words, marketing a product as green has become both fashionable and profitable.

Thinking about this has been troubling to me for two main reasons. First, companies are obviously profiting from false advertising while employing most of the same damaging production practices they always have been. But more importantly, this false branding and rise in popularity of green goods allows the consumer to feel as though they have done their part toward increasing sustainability and being socially responsible when, largely, they aren't. It has also been my experience that many people thing that buy purchasing these supposedly responsibly produced goods that they have done their part, and therefore absolved from participating in other green efforts. In an attempt to try to counter this growing green, consumer culture, I've been thinking about what it is we, as a school, community and nation, can do to truly increase our own sustainability.

One great example of these genuine sustainability practices put into action is at the Oxy garden. I realized upon dropping off a load of dirt at the garden how resourceful and even guerrilla the students that organize the activities there are -- they truly practice what they preach. I'm going to quickly examine the materials used for each plant bed to demonstrate my point. (And I'm sure Elissa will correct me if I botch some of this) In each plant bed there is a mixture of soil, manure and compost, all of which is waste from other groups or materials which would not otherwise be used. The soil, which we procure from a site in Altadena, is obtained for a small, nominal fee and is dumped at the site by the city. We're taking this nutrient rich dirt from a site where it would ostensibly sit untouched for a long time. The manure is obtained from from an equestrian center near the site where we get soil -- manure being possibly the most obvious example of re-using literal waste. And finally, the compost is made possible, in large part, by the food waste of dining services and students. This practice of tapping into, and utilizing a network of various waste and excess is exactly the kind of sustainability practices I think we need to continue to foster, rather than buying into the green consumer culture.