It’s Talk About Tough Things Tuesday so repeat after me:
Zero waste living is pointless if we don’t understand that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism
A common stage of the zero waste living journey is hitting the point that you think you’re going to buy everything ethically and perfectly and it’s going to be grand and glorious and you’re going to save the planet by being self-sustainable!
No. You’re not. Give up on that now, please.
Of Course – Do Your Best!
I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to do your best by making more ethical consumption choices – please do! Working past runaway capitalism’s Buy More for Less and toward Zero Waste’s Buy Less that’s Better is awesome!
But even that isn’t the end goal.
The end goal is realizing that sustainability is not about you. Or your choices. Or your personal waste-reducing actions.
That conditioning is even harder to set aside than the marketing stuff.
Realizing that your individual intentions, as noble as they may be, are on some level still rooted in an individualistic culture rooted in white-saviorism and colonization? Welp… that’s just a big ol’ mess that makes you feel kinda shitty and hopeless.
It’s not your fault those ideals exist at the root of our culture, so how the frickin’ frackin’ fudge can you change them?
First, you have to acknowledge them. I wrestle all the time with whether or not what I do is just white-saviorism packaged up neatly with a recycling logo. Am I the human embodiment of greenwashing?! Sitting up here in my nice middle-class house ranting into the void that folks should jump through hoops to make better choices even though it’s not really their fault that all the choices are pretty shitty in the first place?
Where I Land
Usually, my internal debates wind up here:
If I thought that what I do is the singular key to suburban sustainability, then yes. If I thought to myself, “If everyone makes choices as responsibly as I do, then the planet will be saved!” I would be a naive and arrogant craphead.
But that’s not what I think at all.
I think of myself and my role in this world of weirdness as more of a domino. I want to be one of many dominos that tip over some other dominos that eventually make a big mess.
I’m certainly not the first or the last one. I’m simply a domino. Hanging out in a community of dominos that are all trying to knock over as many dominos as we can.
Some of us can do lots of dominos. Some of us just a few. But the dominos all go into the same pile.
Your Turn
Today, if you’re still stuck somewhere in the delusion of I can be perfect or I have to be perfect and that’s how climate change will be solved….
Let it go. Throw it faaaaaaar away.
You’re just one domino. If you try and do it all yourself you’re going to get very frustrated very quickly because your pile of dominos is very tiny.
Or you’re going to turn into that annoying person that still has a fairly small pile of dominos, but shrieks endlessly at Indigenous folks for not going vegan, or a family of 8 for not living in a tiny home, or a single mom who feeds her kids ground beef from a plastic package because that’s what is available to her.
Community is key. We are all working collectively toward community sustainability, not self-sustainability.
So give yourself grace and go find your dominos.