Sustainability is Like Learning Math

I write as my recent laundry load is swaying in the early afternoon sun - hang-drying as the water slowly evaporates into the warm air. Below, my plant babies extend their limbs & leaves to maximize surface area for photosynthesis. Bees buzz in the distance. And above, my hummingbird feeder hangs as a popular brunch spot for thirsty guests. Sitting at my desk I take a drink of water - *ahhh* life is good as I too quench my thirst, but not from a toxic plastic bottle - rather from my reusable bottle.

Life in San Diego is good….or so it seems. On the surface level San Diego is a “sustainable community”. We have an extensive climate action plan, hundreds of miles of bicycle lanes, city-wide recycling services, miles and miles of ocean marine reserves, and my little apartment patio flourishes in our warm Mediterranean climate.

However, all is not well….I live in the USA - the second largest polluter of waste IN THE WORLD. It’s nearly impossible to live a plastic free life here. Everything from bananas to lettuce to the plants I buy are wrapped in plastic - conveniently coated for one time use then ditched to a landfill where it will take hundreds if not thousands of years to decompose. Next up it’s our addiction to the automobile. In Southern California it’s practically impossible to live your life without a car. When cities are designed for the automobile you don’t have much choice, but to buy one. Btw, this didn’t happen by accident. Beginning in 1938, the “General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy” monopolized streetcar transit systems in a (successful) attempt to gain control and dismantle the entire system. Thus, forcing consumers to purchase automobiles and deepen the pockets of corporations such as General Motors, Firestone Tire, and Phillips Petroleum. So bye-bye light rail and hello traffic jams. Anyways, for the final bit on sustainability, I’d like to inform you about food waste. Did you know the average American throws away 250 pounds of food each year? That means about 1/3rd of the food we buy each year we toss in the trash!! Our “garbage” is then shipped off to a landfill, buried, and laid to an anaerobic rot that vaporizes into the incredibly volatile greenhouse gas methane….ouch….come on America….

BUT! ENOUGH OF THIS DOOM AND GLOOM. There is a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel! There is possible in the impossible. There’s a needle in the haystack! And besides, even if it doesn’t work out, as Bill Nye says “ We are just a speck, on a speck, orbiting a speck, in the corner of a speck, in the middle of nowhere.” So humans or not, life will never cease to exist! So, let’s get down to business and I’ll show you why I’m a “glass half full” kinda guy. Besides, my friends and followers don’t call meSustainable Shane for nothin ;)

I’m in no way, shape, or form perfect nor do I ever believe I will become a completely sustainable human. However, I do go to sleep (almost) every night feeling good about the conscious actions I took that day to minimize my impact on this beautiful planet we call home. From the top: At home, I religiously recycle, compost everything from my finger nails to kitchen sponges to dental floss and of course my kitchen scraps, I have a bountiful outdoor garden, live in an apartment complex with solar panels, and I can’t remember the last time I drank from a plastic water bottle. Financially, my investments are carbon-neutral in industries such as solar & wind, I off-set my carbon emissions at the end of each month by donating to reforestation projects, and I teach sustainability assemblies to elementary school students for a living. Lifestyle, I eat a very low meat diet (don’t agree with eating meat? Message me and I’ll tell you why I do :), ride my bicycle and take public transit whenever possible, the Goodwill and second-hand Hawaiin’s makeup my closet, and I, in the nicest way possible, constantly enlighten my friends on how they can lower their carbon footprint. After-life, I’ve informed my family/friends that when I die I’d like my body buried ten feet underground - no coffin or nothin’ - and a redwood seed planted above me so, as my body decomposes, the nutrients will help germinate and feed the redwood :)

So yah, I take sustainability pretty fu&*in seriously. I often equate sustainability to math. When you learn math you don’t start with calculus do you? No, you first start with basic addition/subtraction. Then pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, some other complicated number theory stuff, and finally onto calculus. Learning how to be sustainable is just like learning math! First you start with a basic understanding of life on Earth. Then why you should recycle, ride a bicycle instead of driving, maybe how to grow a little garden or how your food choices affect the planet, composting your kitchen scraps, and then finally onto the more complicated subjects like off-setting CO2 emissions and the implications of Fast-Fashion. See? Being sustainable isn’t hard! Like anything, it just takes a little time and patience to properly do it! Trial and error baby!!

We can’t do everything, but we sure as hell can do something and that is the essence of living sustainably. Living sustainably has made my life A LOT better and I’m confident it will do the same for yours. With time you’ll be eating healthier, growing a cute little garden, feeling better about yourself, exercising more, positively impacting our planet, making more friends, and oh yah, you’ll be saving a decent chunk of change$$$! So if you’re looking for a bullet-point list of how to live more sustainably then scroll to the bottom of this manifesto. If you’re looking for a lifestyle guide on how I live sustainably and how YOU can too, then I hope you enjoyed this quick read ;)