Go green. Sustainable living. Organic. Natural. Eco-friendly. Environmentally sound. Renewable. Carbon footprint. Buy local.
There are many catch phrases that have seeped into our daily lexicon over the last 10 or even five years. The word “green” means more these days than just the colour or feeling sick. There is a cultural movement underway that is rethinking how we consume and redefining our relationship with our environment. The movement is already large and continues to grow.
Here in Powell River we are on the cutting edge of this movement. Our relative isolation has long created a sense of needing to take care of our own and making sure we can make do with what we have locally. Maybe that’s the reason so many young farmers are coming to the area and why so many locally run grassroots organizations supporting sustainability can be found here, from the Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative to Routes to Roots Edibles to the Powell River Cycling Club and beyond.
As Kermit the Frog once said, it’s not easy being green. It takes effort on the part of consumers to seek out choices that will make their voices be heard. We have built up a commercial system over the past 50 to 100 years that makes the easy thing to do typically not the most sustainable. Most would agree it’s easier to swing by the supermarket at your convenience than it is to make a special trip to the farmers’ market or seek out farm-gate sales or, even more so, to produce your own food.
We’re getting the point, and society is changing in such a way, that the harder choice is more often becoming the right choice. There seems to be no good reason not to support local green initiatives. Everything from building environmentally-sound buildings to purchasing locally-produced food to shopping with reusable shopping bags, helps make the world a cleaner place while supporting the local economy.
There’s no point in being militant about it. The change is going to happen slowly. Most of us still do the majority of our shopping in supermarkets; most of us still put out a garbage bag or two of packaging each week; most of us still eat food that has travelled hundreds of kilometres to get here. That’s the world we live in and it will take time to change. But all change starts small. It starts with growing a tomato plant or starting a compost or buying a locally made, recycled paper birthday card. It starts with thinking things through daily and making more and more choices that support that change.
People doing what they can, when they can, will make a difference. Perhaps more than having our voices heard is the importance of having our money heard. Economics built our current system of consumption and economics will be what forces it to change. By making purchasing decisions that support sustainable practices we are telling the world that that’s what we want, that local and green matter to us, that we can’t keep doing things like we have been.
The catch phrases can get tiring and it’s easy to tune them out from over-saturation. But the fact that it’s becoming commonplace is a good thing; it means we’re listening, that it’s catching on. There’s no reason that Powell River can’t be leading the way. We’ve got the resources, the energy, the ability and the spirit. So let’s go green.
