Tag Archives: environmentalism

an ethical question

{01 September 2007}

several years ago i made a commitment (in my own head) to try and only use cruelty-free beauty products. i can’t say i’m against all animal testing; after all, i’m alive and healthy today (as are many of us) because of medical treatments developed with the use of lab animals. but i decided that i didn’t need to be beautiful at the expense of a lab animal’s pain and suffering. if my mascara was developed by repeatedly poking some bunny rabbit in the eye with a mascara wand to see if it went blind, then i didn’t need that brand of mascara quite so much after all. i don’t use a lot of products, so i don’t mind paying a premium for the ones i do use in exchange for a slightly clearer conscious.

but if you’ve ever read the labels on any random selection of products in, say, a walgreens or a duane reade, you’ll know that it’s damn hard to find stuff that’s made without animal testing. for a long time, one of my great go-to sources for cruelty-free products has been the UK-based chain Body Shop. so boy was i crushed when my roommate told me that they were recently purchased by L’Oreal.

Body Shop, of course, claims that they’re still the same company. the products they sell are still cruelty-free, they donate company proceeds to causes like campaigns against domestic violence and the promotion of sustainable agribusiness and fair trade. but isn’t that all hypocritical when the parent company, which is making the money, and ultimately, pulling the strings, doesn’t embrace those same policies for their other product lines?

help me out here, comment box: do you have a good source for cruelty-free cosmetics and beauty products? what of the moral dilemma facing me? should i boycott Body Shop?

three items:

{25 May 2007}

1. the most expensive gas in the nation is in our own chicago. snapped this morning while i was forking over most of my paycheck for gas:

less driving, more biking!

2. maxim rates lilo as the hottest woman in the world. seriously. seriously? seriously.

3. http://www.randomkittengenerator.com i knew the internet was capable of great things.

baby steps

{09 May 2007}

i’m a big believer than a woman should own her own tools. i’m not talking about a circ saw or anything, but just the basics, whatever basics mean to you. it means that when you want to hang a picture frame you don’t need to guy down the hall to come over and do it. i hate feeling helpless, and as a rule, i try not to.

i was feeling good about such things today when i fixed a few bits on my bike that had come loose. my folks gave me a bike for my birthday earlier this spring, i picked it out and overall it’s a nice sturdy used bike in good shape, but after a couple of weeks of riding it there were some minor things coming apart – the kickstand fell off, the seat was wobbly, the front reflector hanging loose. i had been meaning to take it by the bike shop where i bought it, thinking that they’d probably tune it up for me if i asked nicely. but i got home from work today and wanted to use it this evening, and didn’t relish the thought of riding all the way to the bike shop without a seat. so i dug out a crescent wrench, some hex keys, a screw driver, and managed to put things right, and was pleased with myself for the effort as much as the result.

lately i’m making a concerted effort to drive my car less: still commuting cross town to work, but leaving it parked the rest of the time, and taking public transit or, even better, my bike. the nice weather is making such a resolution much easier to keep, and i’m quickly getting bolder about biking in traffic, a thing that a few weeks ago i was totally scared of doing. the not driving plan, like not eating meat, is born of a variety of reasons rather than one particular conviction.

1) financial: with gas at $3.50/gal in the city, driving less is kind of essential for financial reasons, plus my car, with 92,000 miles on it, isn’t getting any younger and i am a long way from being able to make payments on a new one.

2) environmental: i jog these city streets nearly every day and when the wind blows just right, choke on the smog and fumes. one of the best features of a city is that everything is close together (relatively) and linked by public transit. driving everywhere seems like i’m missing the point of living in a city.

3) sanity: i am not a nice person when i’m behind the wheel. i’m generally pretty patient when it comes to public transit; it’s all out of my control, whether it runs on time or not, so i just sit back and do my crossword or read and get there when i get there. but i’m the opposite when i’m driving my own vehicle. perhaps because there is the illusion of control, i’m constantly looking for the fastest lane, the most efficient route, the way to make the stoplight at ravenswood and irving park turn just a little faster. and then parking? don’t even get me started. i hate feeling like my vehicle owns me. i never, however, experience that sort of incredible hulk rage when i’m on my bicycle even tho it takes longer to get where i’m going.

4) political: one could argue that politics are pretty deeply entwined with the issue of environmentalism and lump these two items together, but given that our country has been fighting a war over oil for the past five years i think this gets its own item number. there’s a girl i see biking around campus a lot with a sticker on the back of her bike that says, “it doesn’t take war to power my bike.” given that i don’t bicycle exclusively or anything, i don’t think i can really get on my high horse like that, but i like her message. and she looks like she probably does echew petrol-based private transportation all of the time, so good for her.

for me, it’s baby steps. it’s karma, it’s the golden rule: i want to live in a better world so i have to start by reforming my own habits, one tiny step at a time. most of us, myself included, don’t have what it takes to make revolutionary changes in our lives. and i find it really easy to feel helpless in the face of something as huge as global warming or thousands of innocent civilians dead over oil prices and legislation for clean energy DOA in congress. but, at the risk of turning this whole post into a cliche, this is what marathon training is teaching me. the thought of running 26 miles isn’t just impossible, it’s absurd. i don’t spend very much time thinking about the upcoming race, in fact, because it’s just too daunting. instead, i get up every morning and i tie my shoes and i go out for 4 or 5 or 6 miles. at the end of the week i’ve run 20 miles. at the end of the month i’ve gone 80. by the time i get to marathon day, i’ll have logged almost 700 miles. and what’s 26 more in the face of 700? that’s how we accomplish big things. in small, unremarkable steps. so: i ride my bike on weekends. i don’t eat red meat. i buy cruelty-free beauty products. i recycle my kitchen trash. baby steps. maybe next year i’ll bike to work once a week, go completely veggie, use biodegradable soaps or start a compost heap. things i can’t do this year will no longer be out of my grasp.