The Judgement

A friend of mine scolded me for wasting water because  I wash my dishes under a constant stream of running water instead of filling up the sink or a plastic tub full of water and washing the dishes in there. You bet I rationalized why I didn't need to change: I wash my dishes fast so I don't have the water running long, and the thought of my dirty dishes wallowing in dirty water is revolting to me.

As a person who is mildly insane about how clean the things I eat off of are, there is just no way in hell I am washing dirty dishes in a tub of their own filth. Sorry. You know what else? I frequently take hot showers. I eat meat. I also don't ride my bike everywhere. And I still have the nerve to call myself an environmentally conscious person.

Am I a terrible, evil person? Am I destroying the earth?

Because I majored in environmental studies, it feels like every move I make is being watched carefully. Especially by those who deem themselves "environmentalists". It's as if people are just waiting for the chance to gleefully hiss "hypocrite!" when I do something like driving my car to work at a sustainable farm.

Fun Fact: I would love to ride my bike more often to places but I'm waiting for 2 things to happen:
1. A safe passage to bike upon. I'm terrified of biking on roads, in bike lanes next to roads, or generally anywhere near cars.
2. The body parts that help me breathe need to work a little better.

Excuses aside, there is one primary thought that always nags at me everytime someone points out I'm doing something that is not "environmental": How much personal change is enough? If I, and all of the other terrible people like me, did more things like washing the dishes in their own filth, THEN would we start to solve our our environmental problems?

Maybe not so much. It turns out that our individual actions will only produce negligible impacts. For example, public water use in the United States only accounts for 11% of the total water use.  Irrigation, on the other hand, accounts for a 1/3 of the total water use. In just about every realm, public consumption is usually lower than agriculture and industries.

By placing the burden on individuals to change their ways and not on the actual gluttons of resources, we are not going to have any sort of meaningful societal change. Basically, short of killing ourselves, there is no way individual reductions are going to be enough to make an impact on issues like water scarcity, pollution, deforestation and such.

Caution! I am not saying we should completely give up on our own personal endeavors to live a more simple and sustainable lifestyle. However, we should pair this with making industries, agriculture, and the like more sustainable as well. That's where the real impacts can happen.

I'm just asking everyone to ease-up on the judgement of other people around us. If someone forgot to bring their reusable bag, don't tell them they are the reason why global climate change is happening. Afterall, we're not got to get very far if the only reason people are doing environmentally concious things is to avoid shame. Shame may cause an immediate reaction, but in the long run, it is going to drive people away from environmental issues, not empower them to be a part of the solution. People want to feel good too, not just avoid feeling terrible.

As for my personal battle between having clean dishes and washing them the "environmentally right way", there's this crazy new invention that efficiently uses very little water and energy that I just have to save my money up for: a dishwasher.

~AM