Week 32
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Pringle Creek Community, a sustainable community living facility being built in Salem, Oregon, only about 20 minutes from our home. A visit to Pringle Creek Community is built into the Master Recycler program, but I missed the visit due to illness. So, I tagged along on the current cohort’s visit and found an experience I wouldn’t have wanted to miss.
It’s a little hard to describe. At its heart, Pringle Creek Community is a 32-acre plot of land, and the people who own and operate this land have vowed to make the community that will be built upon it a model of sustainable living. How this is actually accomplished is a but more complex. Like spokes on a wheel, the sustainable aspects of Pringle Creek are many, combining into a sort of Green Mecca.
You drive into Pringle Creek Community and notice an immediate difference – the roads are narrow and the sidewalks are wide. The message is clear – this community has deliberately been designed to be pedestrian friendly. Later, I would find out that the roads are made of porous asphalt, aiding in delivering rainwater back to underground aquifers without all the road runoff contamination. There is a community center greeting visitors, and here we watch a PowerPoint presentation about the myriad innovative, yet really quite simple, green changes that have been made.
Anyone is welcome to buy a plot of land inside the community and build on it, as long as they adhere to strict green building standards. Many of the buildings have solar panels, and one even has a green roof – 8 inches of soil planted with native plants, asthetically pleasing and, again, aiding in collecting water before it can overflow the storm drain system. The water in the buildings is heated geothermally. Several green houses loom in the distance, newly restored. Community fruit trees and picnic benches are scattered throughout. It’s a work in progress, but it was marvelous to see.
My visit to this community was both encouraging and frustrating, because on one hand I got to meet with people who are passionate about the environment, but I also realized firsthand how little green technology our society is embracing on a widescale basis.
The thought process goes a little something like this: If porous asphalt is better for the environment, and we have the technology to install it, and it holds up as well as regular roads, why aren’t all roads paved with this? Or, if solar panels are an expense upfront, but they ultimately pay for themselves, why aren’t they on every building? In other words, instead of thinking grandly on a national scale, why aren’t we implementing these green solutions everywhere, on a local and individual basis?
Oh, I know a lot of this boils down to money, but it’s not as if the government isn’t already spending money on green building and alternative energy. The thing is, the technology is already here and we know it’s better for the planet. Why can’t we move beyond the knowledge stage and get this implemented?
This led me to think about dish soap, of all things. Dish soap has long been a pet peeve of mine, and it’s a tiny example that encapsulates my entire frustration. Here’s the scenario: You go to the grocery store because you’re out of dish soap. You want a soap that costs a reasonable price, that smells good, and that cleans well. Why is it, that when a majority of people get to the dish soap aisle, they buy a brand-name soap when the green variety costs the same amount, cleans just as well and smells nice, too?
There is no reason not to make this switch – not cost, not effectiveness, not smell, not hand-softness, nothing. So why aren’t all the other brands out of business by now? Of course, it boils down to product loyalty and advertising budget, but that’s just plain stupid. It shouldn’t take an act of government to get chemicals out of our dish soap when we know they are bad for ourselves and the planet. We as consumers should be making this happen. The same argument can be made for solar panels and green roofs and geothermal water heaters and porous asphalt and a host of other proven and comparable green changes.
My visit to Pringle Creek Community was uplifting, in the end, because I realized anew the power of the individual, which is really the reason we are doing the Green Garbage Project in the first place. In the end, grassroots organization is what is going to make these green changes possible.
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I used to buy the green products for dish soap. But the name brands are now phosphate free too. Is there any other concern about dishsoap that I am not thinking about?
I think this is the crux of it:
The real problem is we’re stuck in a society that doesn’t have answers to these problems yet. As a consumer trying to do the least harm possible, I’m asking the wrong question: “What is the least harmful product to buy?” when maybe the question I should be asking is “How can I not buy this product at all?”
We shouldn’t have to choose between milk in a plastic jug or a wax paper box. In Delhi, we still have the milk machines that let you get the milk in a stainless steel container. But I’m not sure that will last forever. The problem is the world needs to be reorganized in a fairly significant way in order to become sustainable. Kind of depressing, when you think of it.
I just had to comment on the dish soap. I’ll just say it’s ignorance. I myself had not tried a “green” dish soap until just by chance my Mom bought some Seventh Generation dish soap. It works better than the other brands I have used and actually lasted longer.