agonyaunt | (no subject)

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My girlfriend has gotten really into zero-waste living. I think it’s great that she’s thinking about the environment, and I’ve tried to go along with everything she suggests. For instance, she brings glass containers when we go to restaurants to take the leftovers home in, and buys products with reusable packaging. The last thing she got rid of was paper towels in favor of fabric squares that stick together. I’ve joked to her that I live in fear of the day she turns against toilet paper, but I wouldn’t say I’m completely joking.

She watches zero-waste influencers for inspiration, and on top of the environmental benefits, she’s also very interested in the “look” of zero-waste living; imagine clean, beige spaces filled with natural materials. I suspect she might even be more invested in how things look than in actually helping the planet. She asked me to replace some old yogurt containers that I use to store food, but as far as I’m concerned, using those containers is more environmentally friendly than going out and buying new ones. How do I get her to acknowledge that maybe it’s not just about saving the planet?

If someone does a good thing for their own reasons—even for selfish reasons!—it doesn’t change the fact that they’re doing a good thing. Even if your girlfriend was getting into low-waste living purely for how it looks, and she actually didn’t give a darn about the planet, you know what? She’d still be producing less waste. Imagine a world where everyone got into sustainability just for appearances, and, hey, corporations cut back on emissions for appearances, and politicians passed great laws for appearances… We’d have a world that looked a lot better, for one thing. But the reason it would look better is because it would be better.

Are there times when doing things for appearances is harmful? Sure. If someone fixates on appearance regardless of impact, or diverts attention and resources from where they’re needed, that’s no good. But that doesn’t sound like the situation here. Maybe it feels weird to see your girlfriend going on about low-waste living when she was obsessed with styrofoam plates six months ago, but that doesn’t mean she’s being fake. It means she has a growing interest, and every interest has to start somewhere. Also, it’s not like she’s just pretending to use sustainable materials; she’s genuinely incorporating them into her life.

Sure, maybe she’s also using her new interest in sustainability as a reason to go shopping and buy some new things—and yes, buying new glassware creates more waste than using the same yogurt cups forever. But the things she’s buying are reusable, so she’ll probably end up buying fewer products in the long run. It’s a self-limiting shopping spree. At some point she’ll have the glass and wood and fabric items that she wants, and she simply won’t have to replace them anymore, at least for a long time. Also: she likes them. They make her happy!

I wonder what it is about this that’s getting so under your skin, and I can’t quite parse it from your letter. But I do have a few theories, and maybe one of them will ring true.

1. It’s jarring to see a loved one change, even in positive ways, because change is stressful. And maybe in this case, you feel like your girlfriend is judging or shaming you for a standard that she didn’t even care about until very recently. This is your home, too, and it needs to be comfortable for both of you: if you love your yogurt cups, you should be able to keep using them, just like your girlfriend can store food in whatever containers she prefers. Know that you can encourage her efforts for sustainable change and still have boundaries about what you’re comfortable using. There’s not a lot we can control in this world, but I promise, you reserve the right to wipe your ass with paper if you want.

2. Few things are as annoying to people as other people’s inconsistency—or worse, hypocrisy. Even a dash of hypocrisy can be supremely irritating, and maybe you’re seeing a tiny bit of it in your girlfriend’s actions. But here’s the thing: we’re all hypocrites sometimes, because we’re fallible, and our actions don’t always fully meet every single one of our ideals. In fact, part of the vulnerability of getting really close to someone is allowing them to witness our own inconsistencies and the ways we fall short. The important thing, I think, is that we keep aiming for those ideals, and we help our loved ones do the same. Just because your girlfriend loves no-waste living but doesn’t do it perfectly yet doesn’t mean that she’s not genuinely moving more in that direction.

3. Bear with me on this one; try to hear me out. I’m seeing a bunch of themes come up—homemaking, shopping, appearances, influencers, frivolity—that are often associated with women, and whenever multiple things come up that are stereotypically linked in that way, it’s worth taking a moment for self-examination. Is it possible that, on some level, you have some deeply ingrained preconceptions (about, say, your girlfriend’s role in maintaining a home) that are causing this to bug you a little more than they would otherwise? If not, great. But if so, it’s not the end of the world, either; noticing these things gives us a chance to work on them.

I really wanted to end this with a pun about how, even if her enthusiasm is short-lived—if, in another six months, she gets really into CrossFit or cross-stitching instead—it still won’t have been a waste. But I can’t think of a good one, so I’ll let you insert your own. In the meantime, just imagine you have a personal interior designer who’s helping the planet and making your house vaguely spa-like at the same time. It may not be exactly your style—but on the other hand, you also don’t have to do any of the research or design work yourself, either. As much as you can, try to encourage her and enjoy.

https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/love-humor/relationship-zero-waste-living/

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Just pulling a few things out of here:

a. Bidets are awesome and, if nothing else, allow many people to reduce the amount of toilet paper they use. I really, really wish we'd gotten a bidet before my mother got old enough to need one. Being able to clean herself without having to ask for help would've vastly improved her health and quality of life these past few years.

b. There are a lot of plastics that are more or less okay for short-term storage of food, but not for long-term or for reuse. That's why they're disposable. I don't know if LW's yogurt containers fit into that category, but I don't know that they don't either.

c. Why the heck does LW think it's sooooooo important to make GF "admit" that it's not about saving the planet? Where the heck does this jerk get off!? FFS.

d. Ugh.

There are a lot of plastics that are more or less okay for short-term storage of food, but not for long-term or for reuse. That's why they're disposable. I don't know if LW's yogurt containers fit into that category, but I don't know that they don't either.

Yep. I replaced some plastic bottles because I found out they were made of the kind of plastic that isn't designed for long-term use.

Edited 2022-10-27 09:30 (UTC)

I mean, I think the people who get obsessive with the aesthetic of zero waste living still typically believe it's about saving the planet. If her conscious intentions are about reducing waste, then there is nothing for her to admit, except possibly in therapy. Also, it's not impossible, technically, to be invested in both, though the aesthetic in itself is pretty insufferable and that is usually what I suspect people are reacting to with hostility (except that in his case, as the answer already says, signs point to misogyny). That doesn't mean there's anything to be gained by anybody admitting anything, though.

Tragically, though, as with issues like water usage, the private consumption of packaging etc is not that significant compared to industrial, and the movement itself is essentially a con shifting the focus from systemic change and regulation to personal responsibility. Trying to personally create less waste and consume more sustainable products isn't a bad goal, obviously; but it's more an expression of one's own anxieties than a meaningful movement for change.

It's absolutely true that there are some people who are into green aesthetics, and it can be harmful, when it leads to the NIMBY-adjacent mindset that exists everywhere that "we can't cut down that ailing/dying/harmful/invasive tree, because that would damage the environment!" Also seen in "we can't put a recycling plant where that pond is" or "we can't remediate that pretty meadow back to swampy wetland." I understand that the retail choices the girlfriend makes absolutely are irrelevant to the environment, but personally if I were dating someone into green-as-insta-aesthetic -- so into the aesthetic that they badger someone else to buy an unnecessary product -- I would wonder how much it was going to trend to the more systemic problem.

(Personally I also find the aesthetic pretty insufferable, but the trend to see greenness as marketable aesthetic is pushed on us really, really hard by companies. Greenwashing gets into everyone's brains. But that's separate from liking green as aesthetic.)

LW, why do you want to *make* your girlfriend admit anything? Why do you want to assail her ethics? Would that make you feel better? Why?

That said, I personally couldn't live like this. My first exposure to environmentalism was my bunch of high school classmates who wore T-shirts that said "plants and animals died to make room for your fat ass" and made sure I knew they were referring to my fat ass personally, and who told me plagues should sweep through Africa and Asia to decrease overpopulation, and I've seen enough reason across the years to keep those impressions on file.

I do wish a bidet were practical for my household, though.

I do wish a bidet were practical for my household, though.

Is it an installation issue? If that's the case, you may find it useful to get a travel bidet, which I can be a little strident on the subject of because it makes my periods sooooooo much more pleasant so I just want everybody to have one.

Thank you for the idea, a LOT. :)

:)

I'm glad I didn't overstep there - it's sometimes not so easy for me to tell. If you get one, I hope it helps you a lot and you love it.

Travel bidets are a thing? OMG. This is amazing.

Also:

made sure I knew they were referring to my fat ass personally, and who told me plagues should sweep through Africa and Asia to decrease overpopulation

Well, I don't exactly hope they died in *this* plague, but if they did, I'm not weeping for those racist jerkfaces.

Yeah, there are a lot of enviromental things I wholeheartedly support

but "Disabled people can't have plastic straws, even if without them they can aspirate fluids into their lungs and get pneumonia and die"

isn't one of them

Disabled people online have written many thousands of words about how for some people, bendable/positionable plastic straws are essential

and how for some people paper straws, glass straws, metal straws, silicone straws are not safe alternatives

A thousand percent this.

I am currently using extra-long bendy straws to slip into the side of my KN95 mask when I'm out, because I have terrible medication drymouth and get dehydrated easily, but I'm immunocompromised and am not going to take my mask OFF around other people.

(Fits into my 1-liter water bottle, and has been a lifesaver! I use each straw for a week or so, then dispose of it, bc there's no really good way to keep them long-term reusable.)

I have a problem with dry mouth and my dentist recommended that I use Xylimelts at night (the box says use two at a time, but my dentist said one was probably plenty, and so I have found). They wouldn't fix the dehydration problem, of course, but might be worth trying for comfort and tooth health, if you haven't already. (And as long as I am giving random unsolicited advice, I will throw in that xylitol is dangerous to dogs, so people with dogs should keep Xylimelts in someplace like the medicine cabinet that dogs can't get into.)

Ooohh, I haven't heard of this brand!

I use xylitol-based Ice Chips candy (bonus: they come in nifty flavors like clove) and ACT Dry Mouth Lozenges (which last longer), and they really do help.

Thank you for the suggestion! :)

I also recommend the sort of bidet that mounts to the toilet. I know there are self-cleaning models, but I don't have direct experience with them. (The trick to the toilet mounted under-seat sort is that one only operates it when one is seated, otherwise they can spray merrily everywhere.)

+1 - I got one for about $25.

Alas that’s the kind which isn’t practical for my household at the moment. One day…

The whole bidet/"family cloth" thing is such an interesting psychology exercise, because some people react SO STRONGLY to their investment in wiping with paper. (We also have one of those inexpensive bidets that gets hooked into the toilet, and frankly I think it was a terrific investment, and also I washed a reasonable number of cloth diapers and don't really see the difference, so I'm biased.)

I get the OP's wariness on some level; there definitely can be problems with the zero-waste movement, and the thing where there's an ~aesthetic~ annoys me too, but I definitely see the same whiff of misogyny the columnist pointed out and I hope he takes the advice pointing that out to heart.

Also I'm very much an out-of-sight-out-of-mind person and replacing my motley collection of yogurt containers and old tupperware with glass has improved my actual USE of leftovers because I remember they exist.

I think I know what the letter-writer may be getting at - there's a way of dealing with things like anxiety about the environment by trying to do everything right, like the people who think they can be perfectly healthy by eating exactly correctly (orthorexia, it's sometimes called) and doing the exact right kind of exercises. And yeah, it can be emotionally unhealthy, especially if they get upset about someone else having different ways of coping with stuff. I am positive, too, that there are people who do stuff like buy glass containers for everything to Save the Planet, and then they get tired of that and go on to a different aesthetic, so I wouldn't be so sanguine that all such impulses always result in less waste.

There are also people with hoarding tendencies (or just people who are somewhat disorganized and not good at getting rid of things they don't need) that Save the Planet worries can make worse. I think part of the impulse toward minimalism is trying not to be one of those people who saves all the yogurt tubs forever. (I say this as a person who has a fridge full of quart yogurt tubs with anything from jam to soup in them, and the actual current yogurt has to live on a particular shelf so that it is findable. But I do refuse to have more than one drawer taken over by old yogurt tubs, and rejoice when someone on Buy Nothing needs a dozen yogurt tubs for a kindergarten project.)

I am in fact absolutely in favor of reducing waste (and if I were the only person to consider I would probably make my own yogurt so as not to accumulate the containers). I use toothpaste tablets (having finally found a fluoridated version) and laundry sheets (having finally found an unscented version), for instance, and I've always bought a lot of secondhand clothes and worn all my clothes much longer than most people apparently do. But when I see stores and stores full of brand-new products for people who want to "reduce, reuse, recycle," I have to admit I get a little cynical about how much use some of the products are actually going to see. That said, it makes me quite happy when someone starts selling a product I have seen the need for but have not previously been able to get. Still trying to figure out why you can get new mop heads, but not new broom heads.

Yeah, that was my first thought here - often, going out and buying a bunch of trendy products (very likely shipped halfway around the world multiple times, and with all kinds of hazardous chemicals involved in the manufacturing no matter how "sustainable" the material is supposed to be) is not actually better for the world than just using the paper toilet paper or keeping the yogurt cups.

Especially if you get rid of them and buy different ones once they're off-trend or an influencer finally points out the hazardous chemicals,.

I will admit that the phrase "zero-waste influencers" gave me the heebie-jeebies all by itself, but anything that combines zero-waste with minimalism is almost certainly just greenwashed consumerism. If you're really concerned with reducing what you use and throw out, you hang on to stuff in case you need them later. Sure maybe those yogurt cups aren't ideal for leftovers, but ideal is the enemy of making do, and anyway even if you're afraid of plastics touching your food you could still use them to start plants! Or sort office supplies! It's really obvious in this letter that LW's girlfriend isn't actually thinking in terms of reducing wastefulness, just thinking in terms of scoring points, and the answer misses that entirely.

Like, a friend of mine is trying to go low-waste so they have sworn off Kleenex, so they ordered some cheap cotton handkerchiefs mail-order from China on the internet. I know this because I was at their house to pick up a bunch of old pillowcases they wanted to get rid of. You have scissors? It's really easy to turn old pillowcases into handkerchiefs, and that doesn't involve shipping anything halfway around the world?

Edited 2022-10-27 21:32 (UTC)

Hemming handkerchiefs is a pain, though. I can see myself planning to do that and then saying actually, no, I will never do that, just get these damn things out of here and off my mind. Especially if the old pillowcases had been sitting around long enough that I now loathed them. But I would try not to buy ones that had been shipped a long way. Boxed handkerchiefs turn up fairly often at secondhand stores, because people get them as presents and then don't use them.

Hm. I still have a half-cut-up sheet sitting around from my mask-making days...

It's true that giving them neat rolled hems is a pain, but consider: you don't have to! If the goal is "replace Kleenex", not "have an Aesthetic", you don't really need to hem them at all, even if they only make it through the wash a few dozen times before they get too ravelled, it's a win on both using kleenex and throwing out the pillowcases. And just doing a quick-and-dirty hem will make them last basically forever.

But yeah even if you are *also* in it for the aesthetic, every antique store and vintage seller has a drawerful of nice linen ones.

At first I thought "How do I make her admit?" meant "How do I win this argument?" -- but even that might ultimately mean "How do I avoid joining her in an unwinnable anxiety spiral?"

I've got an anxious relative who used to spiral about disaster preparedness. And the thing is, you can't say, "You're wrong, we will never be faced with a disaster we need to be prepared for" -- but for an anxious person, you can never possibly be doing enough. You have bottled water, but what if there's no food? You have water and food, but what if there's no heat? No meds and no way to replenish them? What if someone's injured and needs first aid?

All these things are possible. You can't say they're not possible. But there is no ENOUGH that will soothe the anxiety. The anxiety itself is unrelated to the ostensible content of the anxieties -- fix one and another one appears.

Only vaguely relevant aside: I think I have found a source for corn broom heads! Have ordered one to try.

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