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It's not easy being green. Nor cheap.

Originally published 10/18/06 on Cadet Spiff's Deep Space Log

Desperately searching for some appropriate bathroom material this morning, I happened upon a catalog that the Redheaded Hippie Chick received sometime last week. She's started receiving something called "Gaiam Real Goods" as part of her membership though an environmental co-op.

Allow me to provide a little background. While I like to think I am environmentally conscious, I'm pretty certain I fall into that majority that looks at problems the world faces today, shakes its collective head and sighs, "Ain't it a shame." The Redheaded Hippie Chick, on the other hand, is one of the small minority that takes its environmental consciousness and actually does something about it.

Her kind is obviously the target market for the "Real Goods" catalog.

As I flipped through the pages, I noticed the standard items you might expect to find in such a publication. There was a star-charting eyescope; a dynamo flashlight; handmade wooden toys. I also saw a countertop compost bin; toilet tissue made from recycled paper; and any number of items that you might see in the Haight-Ashbury location of Brookstone. But once I got past the nifty gifts, camping gear, and organic gardening offerings, I noticed some pretty significant big-ticket items, such as plumbing fixtures with filtration, composting toilets, and for-real-serious solar power equipment, including wind and hydroelectric turbines.

It's a serious catalog for serious tree-huggers. And the prices are serious, too.

Then it occurred to me that people who are serious about the environment need to think on smaller scales. The problem with environmental awareness is that many people -- myself included -- find that "doing something" about the issues requires thought and effort, not to mention relatively large expenditures.

We're Americans, for god's sake. We don't think and we don't put forth effort for anything that doesn't affect us directly. Things will never change at this rate.

However, if someone could come up produce everyday items using "green" materials and manufacturing technologies, at prices competitive with other goods, I think you would see changes for the better happen almost immediately.

We've got technology; why don't we use it? Why haven't we come up with a building material with all the properties of wood, but comes from a more rapidly-renewable source? Why aren't we using more hemp fibers in our clothing? Why don't we have, for lack of a better word, natural "plastics" by now? How come ethanol isn't more prevalent in our driving?

I think, and I'm sure someone out there has facts to back it up, it is because there's no money in being green.

And until someone finds a way to make things cheap, disposable, and earth-friendly, there won't be.

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