Hallie Kushner, a self-proclaimed tree-hugger, realized her eco-awareness bordered on eco-looniness when she contemplated turning used computer paper into toilet paper.
“I am not insane in the general sense, and so I did not consider it an acceptable substitute for toilet paper to crumple up computer paper,” Kushner, a University of Chicago graduate student, explained in her blog (ecopathology.blogspot.com) shortly after the idea sprang to mind in May. “But what if I shredded the paper first, creating soft mounds of birch bark-like excelsior, which certainly sounded soft … .”
Determined not to become a social outcast, Kushner, 30, promptly nixed the idea and tossed the old computer paper in the recycling bin. But her paper-saving flight of fancy inspired the Hyde Park resident to start the blog in which she playfully documents her “ecopathology,” which Kushner defines as “an excessive concern with the rampant and pointless waste of resources … leading to behaviors that others would find odd.” (Not to be confused with the scientific definition of ecopathology, which refers to environment-influenced illness.)
Kushner’s eco-obsession dates back to her childhood, but after a year of dire warnings about global warming, a barrage of new eco-friendly products and ubiquitous tips on how to live green, more people have caught the green bug — and some are starting to show symptoms of eco-overload.
Some people have become eco-anxious, perplexed about whether to dry their hands with tree-killing paper towels or energy-wasting hand dryers (greenest solution: pant leg). Others live steeped in eco-guilt, sheepishly loading plastic grocery bags into their SUVs. Still others have grown so sick of “live green” campaigns that they’d like Al Gore to take a compact fluorescent lightbulb and shove it.
Mike Rone, 30, thinks the green onslaught of 2007 was overkill. Though Rone is eco-conscious himself — he recycles, doesn’t drive, buys recycled products and uses energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs — he felt the media was “beating our culture over the head with what we should be doing.”
“I don’t like people who get on their soapbox and tell me what to do,” said Rone, of Gold Coast. “Sometimes you feel like people are just doing it because it’s a trend.”
Some worry that the green bubble, like the Internet bubble, will burst. Peter Nicholson, executive director of Foresight Design Initiative, a Chicago sustainable design nonprofit, said the “green surge” could cause “climate change fatigue syndrome,” and people will start tuning out. Unless the government makes dramatic environmental changes, the public may view the deluge of urgent global warming messages as crying wolf.
“There’s so much talk about it, and so little significant action,” Nicholson said. “There’s a lot more smoke now than there is fire.”
Still, some people are feeling the heat. There’s even a condition called “eco-anxiety” wherein people are so concerned about the state of the environment and feel so helpless to do anything about it that they suffer depression and panic attacks, according to Santa Fe “eco-therapist” Melissa Pickett, who was quoted in several news stories.
More commonly, people are just feeling guilty about their environmentally unfriendly behaviors, as if they represent a moral failing.
Jamie Olson and her boyfriend replaced all the paper napkins and paper towels in their Lincoln Park home with cloth napkins and rags, and they carry cloth tote bags when they go shopping, but “every once in a while we’ll get caught without our cloth bags and we have to use plastic,” Olson, 27, said. “I feel really guilty.”
Others ponder their eco-sins as they sit in traffic with their gas-guzzling peers.
Monil Shah, 30, drives 45 minutes from his Streeterville home to work every day in Oak Park and said he feels a pang of eco-guilt each week as he spends $45 on gas filling up his Honda Accord.
“I loved it when I could take the Metra to work,” Shah said.
Foresight Design’s Nicholson, who feels bad when he leaves his water running in the morning as he waits for his shower to get hot, said that while guilt can be counterproductive, it’s not undeserved.
“We should feel guilty because we’re living in excess,” said Nicholson, who points to heated car seats as a particularly shameful luxury.
“If there are people in the world who cannot get good drinking water, and yet we can solve the engineering problem of how to heat our asses in the winter, there’s a problem there,” Nicholson said. Foresight Design plans to reintroduce its “eco-pardons” program this year so people can absolve their friends of their environmental trespasses (a fundraising tactic for the nonprofit), he said.
While the drone of the green message may bore some and burn out others, it’s also helping to push environmental awareness into the mainstream. The folks at tree hugger.com are optimistic that the green lifestyle will be the next to go mainstream, not because people feel guilty but because they’ll find it’s easy to do.
“We’re trying to support small, incremental lifestyle changes that don’t compromise your lifestyle,” said Collin Dunn, a writer for treehugger.com and planet green.com, a new site that focuses on green alternatives. The market of planet-friendly products has been growing, thanks to businesses that see the demand and their own cost-savings by going green. Treehugger.com’s 2007 Gift Guide featured 180 products, up from 100 the year before and 75 the year before that, Dunn said.
There’s still a long way to go before a mass green conversion. Despite the hype, environmental issues are barely on the radar for most Americans, who will start to pay attention only when it hits them in the wallet or forces them to change their lifestyle, said psychologist Paul Larson.
“Regardless of the prevalence of environmental themes in the media, when it comes to behavior, people are creatures of habit or convenience,” said Larson, professor of clinical psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
For the eco-engaged, however, there are ways to achieve eco-Zen.
Kushner, the ecopathologist, said she focuses on the “low-hanging fruits” so as not to become overwhelmed. Wasteful use of paper towels, overpackaged products, regular purchases of bottled water and what she calls the “Styrofoam menace” just about make her head explode, but she’ll still fly to Asia — without buying carbon offsets — and use regular toilet paper with impunity.
“I think it’s really important that people don’t drive themselves crazy with all this,” Kushner said. “If people get too crazy, they’ll just give up and say, ‘Nevermind.’ ” – – –
Eco-attitudes
Has heightened attention to the environment helped to spread the green cause? According to a national survey by Intellitrends, a market research company that does a quarterly poll of how U.S. consumers feel about the environment, at the end of 2007 …
58% of consumers read a newspaper or magazine article about the environment in the past two weeks;
37% had watched a TV program about the environment;
29% talked to friends about the environment;
31% bought products that conserve energy or the environment;
27% said they would definitely choose products that conserve the environment over others;
66% said they might choose products that conserve the environment over others;
8% said buying environmentally friendly products doesn’t matter.
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aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
