This weekend, my world turned upside down.
A buddy from DC visited. Despite my claim to be a proud member of the fringe left (based on my coffee preferences and love of modern art) last week, my friend and I are mainstream.
I was a Chinese and marketing major. He was a finance and economics major. I work in software. He works in financial consulting. We both live in the real world, right? I'm an environmental kook, it's true, but I'm a pragmatist as much as the next girl and I've got 4 years of business education to fall back on.
More on the flip.
(Crossposted at Truth and Progress)
Perhaps you've read my previous posts. I denounced my car. I eat tofu. I'm a member of a CSA. My money is in a credit union. I shop at locally-owned businesses. I believe that small changes in my life will one by one reduce my footprint on the earth, and I will gladly help others who care do the same, although I don't believe it's appropriate to push my beliefs on others. People listen when they are ready to hear.
Enter my friend.
The day before, I realized that he wouldn't want to eat dried beans, barley, tofu, leftover spinach, alfalfa sprouts, and whatever other delicacies I had in the house. Off to Whole Foods. I paced the aisles trying to figure out what "real people" eat. I decided they must eat pears, grapefruits, cookies, crackers, chips, salsa, beer, and milk. Meat and sodas were going too far - I just couldn't do it. Pears and grapefruits are really what I like to eat but I figured my friend might like them too.
I had to drive downtown to go get him. Then drive back. Next day, back downtown for dinner and drinks. Saturday a trip downtown for the Farmer's market. Then off to the brewery for a tour. Back downtown to hit the bars. Sunday, back downtown to catch the bus. Since we left late, I had to speed, constantly accerating and breaking and weaving lanes in a gas-inefficient sort of way. It was killing me.
He didn't like that my house was 57 F so I turned the heat. He turned on all the lights. He used the dryer nonstop to heat his already-dry clothes before putting them on because he likes to put on warm clothes. He wanted to do a load of laundry of only a few shirts and then dry it in the dryer. And he kicked my cats. Half a tank later, he got on the bus and went back to O'Hare.
Don't get me wrong - I loved seeing him. I wanted to show him a good time. Taking public trans (in a city not designed for public trans) and eating rabbit food doesn't factor into most people's idea of a good time. If it sounds like we did nothing but drink beer - you're not incorrect, although I made sure he got some cheese too. It's Wisconsin. He came here liking Budweiser and Guinness. He left after trying Crop Circle Wheat, German Pils, Fat Squirrel Nut Brown Ale, Emerald Isle Stout, Island Wheat, Bavarian Lager, Special Pilsner, Fest, Maibock, Munich Dark, Wisconsin Amber, Black Earth Porter, and more (I lose count after that). Let's just say we did Homer Simpson proud.
Friday night, he asked me what I thought of Wal-Mart. I had my answers ready (thanks JR Monsterfodder). I listed off their evils from memory. They kill mom and pop stores, their distribution scheme (and all global brands distribution schemes) wastes more oil than buying locally sourced goods, they like to build their stores on large, previously undisturbed areas instead of building them in already-developed areas (I don't have a source on that, I heard it somewhere), they cost taxpayers a great amount in food stamps, medicaid, etc, they use illegal immigrants, they lock employees in stores, they force employees to work off the clock, and they are known to discriminate against women. Just to name off a few things. On the good side, they did just eliminate PVC plastic in their Wal-Mart brand packaging. I'll give them that.
I gave him that list, with about 10 website as sources. Then he said, if Wal-Mart can work with a successful, efficient business model that gives you as the consumer low prices, why would you prop up the inefficient Mom 'n Pop store that charges you more?
He didn't buy my answer. I said that if I weighed all of my values, including low prices, the local stores win. To me, I'm not propping them up out of charity or otherwise. I value reducing our dependency on oil, enriching my community, and patronizing businesses that are unique to my hometown and responsive to the local culture. I value knowing the people I buy from. Peeder asked me if the ramps I ate this weekend were sustainably grown so I emailed the farmer that grew them. Less than 24 hours later, I had an answer (The answer is yes, peeder).
Fast forward. Saturday night we met a few friends at a cute little Laotian restaurant on the east side. We got there early and he wanted to check out a leather store. I figured if he dragged me into a leather store, it was fair game to drag him into a hemp store. He watched, appalled, as I bought a pair of cute hemp cordoroy pants for $86. (Later, while at an indie coffeehouse getting a cup of tea from a local brand, I bought a piece of art from a local artist, framed in weathered wood. Karateexplosions, I bought a picture of a cat.)
UPDATE: People kept commenting on how much I paid for the pants. And I've been sitting here thinking "I'm not rich. Why did I pay so much for pants?" I remember now. When you are a girl with a fat ass and you find pants that fit, you buy them. Don't look at the price tag. Just buy them. And if they are a deal, buy 2 pairs.
I've been wondering (and annoyed) for a while that organic hemp is prohibitively expensive and many of the clothes in this store, which I would love to patronize, are UGLY. I asked the owner of the store about this. He said that since he was so small scale, he couldn't meet the minimum purchase quantities of the bigger suppliers. He had to go through a middleman, and since he couldn't make his money on volume (and neither could anyone else up the supply chain) they had to make their money on markup. If he could grow his store, he could take advantage of economies of scale.
As for the ugly-factor, he's an environmentalist, a hippy, and a hemp enthusiast, but he's no expert in women's fashion. He says he's had some female help lately. I tried to give him what advice I could before heading to dinner (for example, elastic wastebands on pants are not cool).
As we left the shop, my friend asked, why hemp? I said it was sustainable. It's easy to grow. Cotton, on the other hand, takes about 3 lbs of chemicals to make one T-shirt.
If it's so sustainable, then why isn't it all over the place? Why don't all clothing manufacturers use hemp? Why isn't hemp produced more cheaply than cotton, and why isn't it more cost effective for clothing manufacturers to buy hemp instead of cotton?
I'm actually not much of a fan of 100% cotton in most clothes. I don't like the way it feels. I like the feel of acrylic. I like cashmere (who doesn't?). I like the way rayon looks (although it's unsustainably produced so I won't touch it). I like the way a little bit of Spandex can add shape to any piece of clothing. Part of selling clothes is making the end product marketable to consumers. Are hemp clothes unattractive to shoppers? If you saw my new cords, you'd swear I got them at Express.
Sunday morning, my friend had been mulling this over for a while.
Why? he asked while flipping through my Mother Earth News magazine. Why do I do it?
He said he gets valuing conservation, but it's JUST ME. What difference do I make? I said that Wal-Mart won't miss me as a customer but the local businesses WILL notice me and appreciate me. It takes a lot of people to put the big boxes out of business, but it takes just a few people to keep the local places going strong and serving the community.
I said that it wasn't just me. It's a movement. Especially here in Madison. The UW Saturday social event might be drinking on State St, but for my friends and me, we wait all week in anticipation for the Saturday morning Farmer's Market on the Capitol Square. I'm not the only one who loves the vegan coffeehouse and its live music. I'm not the only one with an affection for the local natural foods coop. And I'm positive that the little coop that provides my healthcare is the best place to get my healthcare, especially after reading nyceve's exposes. My health insurance through the coop even covers massages.
I showed him Buyblue.org. I checked their site counter (they average 2400 or so hits per day). I showed him the Responsible Shopper site. I said that when I buy something, I first ask if I need it, then I find out if I can buy it used or locally, and then I check Responsible Shopper and BuyBlue to see which big retailer is the best/least offensive to buy it from.
He said he doesn't care if it's 1 person, 10 people, or 1000 people. He doesn't care how many people. Conservation is fine, but that's not the point. If an organic strawberry that was grown in Mexico and shipped here was STILL sold at a lower price than a local strawberry, no matter how many of us with consciences buy the local strawberry, it still does not answer his question. We defy the principles of economics.
I would argue that if we defy economics, someone needs to come up with some new economics.
I asked him about premium brands. What is better about Victoria's Secret than Target? Victoria's Secret undies cost less than $.10 to make. I think the pair on my ass right now was made in Indonesia. They cost the same, they are both equally crappy quality. Why do women pay more for Victoria's Secret? People go against the rule of "Always the low price. Always" all the time. Their perception of a product adds value to it and justifies a higher price. How is that any different from my perception of my CSA veggies or my Fair Trade coffee?
That's about the time when I decided it was time to put him on his bus. When we parted, I still believed my side, he still believed his.
This isn't the diary I planned to write. I planned to trace the history of cotton and hemp in America through the 20th century. I planned to find other examples to illustrate my point. Unfortunately, there seems to be no history of cotton since the cotton gin, and hemp was used widely in past eras, so I can't for the life of me figure out why cotton won out over hemp.
Why hasn't the green economy gone mainstream yet? If it's really better and more efficient, why aren't mom 'n pop stores and CSAs our main sources of goods? Why aren't our clothes made from hemp?
Before the Wal-Mart era, Mom 'n Pop stores were just called "stores." Prior to the development of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and GMOs, organic food was just called "food." We didn't need a movement. There were no alternatives to the stores and products we now have to seek out to find.
It reminds me of the book, My Antonia. My English prof referred to the book as "a myth of America." The main character marches towards progress - from the farm to the city to his Nebraska university to Harvard - always looking ahead. At some point, he realizes he's gone too far. What was the right point in time where he should have said "Stop - this is perfect"? No one will know. At the end of the book, he looks back nostalgically on his life on the farm, but the truth is, he wasn't entirely happy when he was on the farm.
Is that where we are? Progress happened, and now we are looking back. Where should we have said "Stop"? We want modern medicine, but not Medicare Plan D. We like the freedom of our cars, but not their pollution. Women's lib is okay. The Depression was bad. I'd like to snap my fingers and make the McDonalds, Big Boxes, and Superstrips (one step worse than strip malls) go away. I like computers, but CRT monitors give me migraines every day of my life. I'm not giving up my birth control until they pry it out of my cold dead hands - or until menopause, whichever comes first.
Why is the green economy still in its baby stages? Why isn't it decades old and mainstream at this point? We didn't realize we needed it until we created the monsters that are ruining our communities and our environment and we took a look around. Some of us can look ahead and see where it will leave us (and future generations) when peak oil and global warming hit.
I still don't understand why we wear cotton instead of hemp. Ben Masel, seriously, can you help me out here?