Mission 025 - Where Susan tries to save the world

First off, I’d like to declare that I am a greenie. Have been for years. Hell, I even had my own tree from when I was six. I used to hug it and everything. I am also a militant recycler and, until recently, was a co-leader of the voluntary Green Team at my workplace. And I was using carbon-neutral transport to get to work long before it was fashionable.

Right. Now that I’ve established my credentials, there’s something I want to get off my chest. (It’s been festering away a good while.) Is it just me, or is all this green business (and I don’t use the ‘b’ word lightly) becoming a bit too much like a religion? Suddenly, everywhere I look, there are avid greenies milling about high streets and websites everywhere. In droves, they are buying jute bags, devouring organic broccoli and converting their cars to bio-diesel.

It’s as if they’ve been born again – and they want the world to know. Like all new converts to a religion they are overzealous; they want everyone to join them in the Church of Green; to save the world from itself.

Yet what they don’t realise is that the Church of Green has been taken over by the Church of Commerce. And membership to that is not about how green your behaviour is - it’s about who buys the most green stuff. Ironic, really, as the key principle of sustainable living is REDUCE. Then comes REUSE. Then comes RECYCLE.

Now I didn’t see CONSUME MORE STUFF in there. Did you?

It’s all very well to be devouring eco-friendly options, but only if they replace less eco-friendly ones. For example, I have no truck with people who drive 5km to their ‘local’ farmers market in their SUVs. Or people who buy designer jute bags to do their shopping in, then continue to put all their vegetables in single plastic bags to be weighed. Adopt a wider view, people.

Green is becoming the status quo – its commercialisation grows every day. It’s been scooped up into the brand lifecycle and is feverishly working its way to cash cowdom as I write. We should all know the end result of commercialisation. Commodity. Then ennui. Which will mean the death of green. Although Commerce will go on.

So to save Green, better lose the preachiness, especially if you’re not the perfect apple-hued tone (and few of us are, surprise, surprise). Stop adopting the first, new, ‘cool’ green thing that comes along. Make being green an integral part of your life, not a clip on fashion accessory. I hate to take a line from one of the bishops in the Church of Commerce here, but it works: Just Do It. Or most of it. But whatever you do, please shut up and do it quietly. You’re boring me to death.


Psssst (whispered): My latest mission is to take the stairs instead of the lift for the next week, thus conserving precious planetary energy. And firming my flubbery, blubbery thighs.