The Guilt of Not Being “Green” Enough
By: Sara Badilini
Tags: Ecology, Climate Change, Environment, Vegan

I’m four, and it’s more than 100 degrees. I’m holding my mother’s sweaty hand, heading back to the car, a grey Fiat Marea, after a day at the beach.

Opening the door we get instant relief from the suffocating heat of the Sicilian summer, thanks to the fresh breeze of AC that invests us. For once, my thighs aren’t going to be burnt against the leather seats. My father had gotten back to the car before us, leaving it on for over 15 minutes, so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the unbearable temperature of the car after a day exposed to the sun.

I’m eleven, the scouts group of my hometown is organizing a hiking trip in the Alps. On my bed there’s a detailed list of what to bring with me, my empty backpack lies at my feet. One of the first items on the list says “at least three bottles of water.”

Because this is going to be a long hike, the leaders suggest that we bring plastic bottles with us, instead of our usual metal one: the plastic bottles are lighter, and they are more practical because we can throw them away once they’re empty. But one of the scouts’ commandments reads “We love and respect nature.”

I’m 16, and during a lazy afternoon I read a Facebook post, which reveals that getting rid of the oil from tuna, and other canned foods straight in the sink is extremely dangerous for the oceans. I start a short fight with my mother, trying to convince her to gather all the waste oil in a bottle that we can keep under the sink and dispose of properly once it’s full. She refuses. She doesn’t want a dirty oily bottle under the sink.

Now I’m 26 and I consider myself an environmentalist. I read as much as I can on climate change and I’m uncomfortably aware of how unsustainable my lifestyle is. Looking back, I realize how many times I’ve chosen comfort over sustainability and I’m working to reverse the trend.

Last year, after months of lockdown and documentaries on climate change, I finally won the battle with my mother, who now has a plastic oily bottle under the sink.

In the meantime, I’ve also learned that idling cars are extremely polluting — according to the US Department of Energy idling generates around 30 million tons of CO2 every year. And I’m now outraged every time I see a parked car with the AC on, even though the summers are even more scorching than the ones I remember from my childhood.

During my first year of college I started my personal crusade against single-use plastic. According to the UN Environment department, around 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced in the last 70 years and 60% of it ended up in a landfill or in the natural environment. I bought bamboo toothbrushes and a blue metal bottle. The bottle has a drawing of the planet wearing sunglasses saying “Keep the Earth cool!” and I take it everywhere I go.

Yet, I still struggle to be a persevering environmentalist because sometimes it’s just impractical, uncomfortable or even expensive and that’s enough for me to ask myself “Is it really worth the effort?”

This question tormented me even more when I first moved here in New York, in January 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, and I found out the pleasure of food delivery at every hour of the day. Every Thursday night, after a particularly long day of online classes, I got used to ordering Thai fried rice — one of the best I’ve ever had — for $ 12.99. Whenever I submit my order, I always make sure to check the option that says “Don’t include plastic cutleries and save the planet!”

The restaurant doesn’t seem to notice or consider my choice and, six months later, I have an entire drawer full of plastic forks and knives that I feel too guilty to use. The package I receive also includes multiple plastic bags to make sure that there’s no leak, small single-portions of sauces I didn’t ask for and an incredible number of napkins.

Clearly, the most sustainable alternative would be to avoid food deliveries — less plastic, less waste, less emissions — but every Thursday night I forget my commitment to the environmental cause in exchange for warm and spicy rice. And, while I enjoy my delicious and unsustainable meal, I mutter to myself. Why isn’t there an environmentally friendly option for having my food delivered?

But that’s not the only case that leaves me with a guilty conscience.

After my college roommate forced me to watch Cowspiracy, I finally adjusted my diet, including more vegetarian and vegan options.

The choice was not easy, especially because my very Italian family displayed beautiful charcuterie boards on the table at every meal, and mozzarella is the main ingredient of our diet. I started refusing meat and sometimes eggs and cheese, while my father looked at my grilled vegetables and called them “food for goats.”

But right after my family and friends got used to the idea that I was a vegetarian, I realized that some of the food I was eating was as unsustainable as meat. Avocados require an incredible amount of water to grow, imported vegetables contribute to high emission for the transport, and buying organic vegetables and meat substitutes is sometimes too expensive for a student.

Was it really worth it to give up on my beloved mozzarella, parmigiano, prosciutto, and pasta carbonara for the sake of an environment that seems to be hopeless?

But one of the hardest realities I had to face in becoming more aware of climate change is how polluting a flight is. Even though airlines are becoming more fuel efficient, according to World in Data aviation is still responsible for 1.04 billion tonnes of carbon emissions per year, a number that keeps growing at a fast pace.

I spent my teenage years saving all my allowances and tutoring middle school children for €10 per hour so I could jump on the first low cost flight I could afford. But when I read the data on flights and pollution I started to appreciate the beauty of slow tourism, biking and hiking throughout Italy.

Yet, sometimes flights are impossible to avoid or they’re — by far — the cheapest option and that’s when I experience what someone calls “flight shame,” which is the sense of guilt for taking a plane despite knowing the environmental impact it has.

I started checking the option to pay the “green fee” — money that the airlines donate to different environmental projects — every time I buy flight tickets, but that doesn’t even start to make up for it.

That’s when, maybe to get rid of the guilt of my unsustainable holidays, I started asking myself if it was right to put the responsibility to fight climate change on the shoulders of each of us as individual consumers. My commitment to the environment was based on clearing my conscience so that I could point a finger at those that weren’t as dedicated.

But do I really have to give up on flights and my favorite cheese? Is it reasonable to expect that everyone develops a commitment towards the environment to the point that they will stop eating meat or taking flights? Are we acknowledging enough the role that comfort plays in people’s decisions to lead a sustainable lifestyle?

The easy answer to all these questions is “Absolutely not.” But the real, and more complicated answer came to me in the form of my favorite Italian magazine, Internazionale, which last summer published a long piece with the headline “The myth of the ‘green consumer,’” written by the Dutch journalist Jaap Tielbeke.

The cover of the magazine was a drawing of a young man, with all the signs that stereotypically distinguish a “green consumer.” He’s leaning against a bike, the basket full of fresh organic vegetables, a metal bottle attached to the front, a cotton tote bag on the shoulders and pins and stickers to express his commitment to the environmental cause.

The article summed up, in a more scientific and articulate way, my frustration with a system that encouraged me to make sustainable choices, expecting me to give up my comforts, instead of making comforts more sustainable. One of the opening paragraphs reads, “Those who give more importance to clean the planet than to clear their conscience can only feel frustrated witnessing the ecological disaster which goes on despite their efforts.”

In other words, Tielbeke suggested, we have created a system where those who give up the highest number of comforts are considered good environmentalists, despite the fact that these choices on an individual basis don’t bring any real change, even though they’re definitely more sustainable.

During a conference presenting his article, Tielbeke confirmed that he feels he contributed more to fight climate change by reading and learning than by eating less meat. “The perspective needs to change,” he said, “the message is not that the individuals can just relax and stop making sustainable choices, but that as individuals we need to activate ourselves as citizens.”

The myth of the green consumer, said Tielbeke, was fuelled by big polluting companies. They promoted a toxic narrative that puts the responsibility of combating climate change on the consumers, as opposed to the companies.

I felt instant relief, not only because my drawer full of plastic forks didn’t seem like a huge source of shame anymore, but mainly because I finally felt entitled to write about climate change, pointing fingers at those that, according to my reporting, are responsible, despite not being the perfect environmentalist myself.

During the last year I’ve been working to become a more evolved version of my environmentalist self. I still read articles with headlines such as “How to reduce your footprint in five moves,” “Six life hacks to get rid of single-use plastics,” or “Habits that you didn’t know are damaging the planet.”

I keep looking for ways to reduce the use of single-use plastics in my everyday life and sometimes I find myself at 3 a.m. suffering from insomnia and looking at YouTube tutorials on how to make your own toothpaste, a procedure that seems expensive and time consuming and that I’m too lazy to even try.

But I also push myself to look at the bigger picture, reporting on greenhouse gas emissions and covering international environmental treaties. It’s been refreshing to get rid of the idea that, unless I was an impeccable, irreprehensible environmentalist, I had no voice on the matter.