But sometimes things can go a little bit too far.

When you’re passionate about something, it’s easy to get carried away with your enthusiasm. And, from the other person’s perspective, our behaviour can end up being downright strange!

Going green is one of those risky areas where rational behaviour easily pops out of the window for a cup of organic herbal tea with the fairies.

Going green is supposed to be about caring for the planet, reconnecting with the seasons and generally being what used to be called a “good egg”. For some of us, though, our desire to nurture the environment can be a fast track to losing friends and alienating people.

It’s all too easy, when we care deeply, to become an evangelistic activist, critical of “non-believers” and changing our personality, along with our behaviour. It’s as though our “greenness” has taken on the form of an extremist religious faction. Though, of course, we’re happy as a pig in the proverbial brown stuff, munching on our home-grown veggies and Fair Trade chocolate. Or are we?

From a psychological point of view, there’s a fine line between being committed to a cause and becoming obsessive about it.

So how do we stop ourselves from accidentally leaping over that precipice?

My top advice is to laugh at yourself.

Catch yourself out when you’re preaching. Have a giggle about any extreme habits you’re in the process of developing. Give yourself a break and accept that 99% is more than good enough. Planet Earth isn’t asking us for perfection.

Those of us who already run self-critical, semi-perfectionist patterns (hands up, everyone – I’m in there with you!) are most at risk of taking going green too seriously.

Yes, the planet needs our help. Yes, we need to make radical changes to the way we live. Yes, it’s vital that we all do our bit. But it’s also essential that we never, ever take life so seriously that we stop enjoying it. Or that we allow ourselves to waste time feeling angry about those who don’t feel the same way we do.

Mother Earth needs our love, not our anger. She needs our hope, not our despair. She needs our laughter, not our tears.

So, just in case you fancy a bit of a giggle, how about sharing some of the early warning signs in your life, that might show you things are going too far?

Here are some to get you started. You know things have gone too far when:

• Your major food source becomes nettle soup.
  A German friend of mine was telling me about a French family she stayed with last summer, who ate super-bland nettle soup with a compulsive frequency – from their own, organic nettles, of course.
• You give up washing.
  Another friend was telling me last week about a guy who hasn’t showered for 10 years, to save water. Unfortunately his thrice-weekly wet flannel affair means no one wants to sit next to him any more.
• Your Twitter / Facebook status have been about nothing but green issues for the last 3 months.
• You refuse invitations to go to friends for a meal because the food might not be organic.
• You can’t even chit chat about the sunny weather without commenting on the impending global warming doom.

Mine?

What are your early-warning signs that things might be going too far?

It’s not too late to take action!

After returning from a lovely holiday in Nice this week which included watching my sister compete in the Iron Man France  competition which involves a 4km swim followed by a 180km bike ride topped off with a marathon. (No I’ve not made a mistake with the numbers and distances they really do make them run, swim and cycle that far) I was pleased to see that the organisers had taken some measures to address their eco-responsibility.

As soon as competitors entered an expo area to register for the race there were stands which had information about the recycling facilities available and the importance of the flora and fauna in the region along with other related info. Each competitor was given a pack which included  a supplement about the green aims for the race. I wont list all their efforts but those of you who are interested can read more about their mission here.

With over 2,500 competitors eating energy bars and drinking water on the move it was estimated that the level of waste would be no small matter. Along with almost 70,000 spectators in Nice and in many of the villages along the cycle route litter was also an issue that had to be tackled.

Although there could have been other strategies I’m glad that the organisers had a green policy in place and that they made a great effort in their first attempt at making the event sustainable. They had to start somewhere and I’m hoping they will build on this years race to make the next competition even more of a low impact affair.

Lets hope other sporting events take their lead as vast amounts of energy and waste could be saved not to mention the potential for engaging the public in being greener.

Set amid the breathtaking splendour of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in leafy Edgbaston, this exclusive wedding and home event will bring together the very best the UK has to offer in green & ethical weddings and living.

Everything an environmentally conscious couple could wish for will be laid out in one stunning location. Dresses, occasionwear, accessories, photography, flowers, gifts, honeymoon destinations, venues, cakes and much much more. It will be the perfect opportunity to see, touch, taste and try before you buy all the essentials for your Big Day. On display will also be eco friendly homewares, linens and the ultimate in eco chic interiors.

We thought it would be a good idea to bring together the wedding and home elements to show that going green isn’t just about one day. Whether couples are living together already or setting up home for the first time most see their wedding as marking a new beginning with the chance to make some new changes to their home and lifestyle.

We would love to invite everyone to the show so whether you are getting married this year or next or would like to make your home greener please visit the show website for more details. If you are keen to attend more green and eco events in 2009 then see our green event listings page.

If you’re celebrating over the next couple of weeks here’s a look back at some 2008 Green Girls Global articles to help you have a greener Christmas….

January – Junk Yard Challenge
Get creative with your holiday waste.

February – Going Green on Love Products
Treat someone special with this green gift

March – Eco Sins
This time of year often leads to over indulgence. Reflect on your eco sins and repent!

April – Big Green Purse Review
Shopping, shopping, shopping! Make sure your purse is a brighter shade of green.

May – Balloon Litter
We love the colours and glitter of the festive decorations but don’t make nature pay for them.

June – In the Closet :: Know your Clothing
Searching for that perfect party frock? Get familiar with the labels.

July – Are you doing bokashi?
What do do with all those veggie peelings from your Chrimbo dinner? Bokashi!

August – Downsizing for the Environment
Think twice before you ask for more prezzies.

September – 7 Eco Tips to Beat the Credit Crunch
If you’re going to feel the pinch its at this time of year. Use these tips to help you through/

October – A Hand Made Statement
Try making some gifts by hand and create your craft manifesto at the same time.

November – Discover your Local Country Market
If you really must buy brussel sprouts, get them from your local farmers market

December – Breathing Spaces Christmas Song
Take a moment to think about the wildlife and do your conservation bit.

Have a good one!

Living a green lifestyle and saving money in my view has always gone hand in hand so I have picked 7 ways you can cut your carbon footprint and your budget at the same time.

1.Buy ‘preloved’

Find your nearest furniture reuse centre, tip shop, car boot sale or local charity shops and get your hands onsome great preloved bargains. Buying clothes, books, cds, furniture and household items second hand is a great way of recycling and saving money.

2.Ditch your motor and join a car club

Car clubs are growing in popularity and schemes exist mainly in bigger cities down south, although hopefully it won’t be long before they spread nationwide. If you are a city dweller, ditching your car and joining a car club can save you literally thousands of pounds a year. It is estimated that for every member that joins a car club they reduce their car usage by 50%

3.Work from home

Working from home not only saves you time and money it’s often greener too. Cutting transport time and petrol costs are the main benefits but there are many more reasons why its greener to work from home.

4.Grow your own food
Growing your own fruit, veg and herbs not only saves you money but also reduces food miles and waste packaging. I love gardening myself and find it a great way to relax, breathe in the fresh air and unwind after a hard days work.

5.Cycle to save money

Cycling to work or nipping into town on your bike has so many benefits. Parking is free, it’s great exercise, zero emmissions, cheap as chips and fun to boot. If you don’t have a bicycle, post a message on your local freecycle group or check out your nearest tip shop for a preloved one

6.Embrace the Downshifting Movement

Downshifting is about slowing down your pace of life and finding a better worklife balance. This means embracing living with less and leading a simpler cheaper, greener and happier life. Perfect for those of you out there wanting to save cash. To learn more about the movement visit the downshifting website and for some easy downshifting tips to get you started visit this link.

7. Plan a weekly menu

Even Gordon Brown has warned us about the amount of food we waste and it is estimated that an average household throws away a staggering £420 worth of food every year. Plan your meals for the week, make a shopping list and stick to it when out shopping. Check out the Love food, hate waste campaign for more ideas.

If anyone has any other ideas or tips for ways of saving money and being green I’d love to hear them.

Kate

GreenFinder

It’s a new term I just read about – it stands for Socially Conscious, Upwardly-mobile person, a term coined by Chuck Faila, president of a Manhattan based financial planning firm.  He says he’s tired of being called a yuppie and hopes this new term will take its place in the American lexicon as the natural progression from Hippie-Preppie-Yuppie to Scuppie!

These days, more Americans not only want to live well, but want to also do good (or at least do no evil). They still love money and conspicuous displays of affluence. But now, the way to achieve status is to trade in the Beemer for a Toyota Prius, spend $50,000 putting solar panels on the roof, shop at Whole Foods for $7-a-bunch organic endive, and acquire a chic new wardrobe fashioned entirely of hemp, soy fiber, and recycled tires, Failla says.

He hopes to get the word out through a national promotional campaign and he is also writing a guide: “The Scuppie Handbook: A practical guide to living well while doing good.”

Visit the website and read “A Scuppie Believes”, it’s funny!

Before I started reading the book I already had an answer to the question myself and that is No. It has always been my belief and my experience (even as a child) that a good / happy life does not have to cost the earth. To me the simple / free pleasure are always the best for example:

* Just peacefully being with my loved ones

* Volunteering my time to help people and also the planet

*Breathing the fresh air of the countryside

*The taste of freshly picked organic food from my garden

*The beautiful sound of bird song

*Walking along the beach with my fiancé

As you may have gathered from some of my posts I always aim to consume as little as possible in life as it is my belief and the book also supports this that….

“people who consume above their fair and sustainable source of the Earth’s resources is no more likely to be satisfied with life than someone who is living within our collective environmental means”

(Quote within book and sourced from the European (un)Happy Planet Index, 2007)

The book has some interesting contributors all of whom have focussed on different areas of what makes a good life. Below you will find my favourite quotes from all of the featured contributors:

Tom Hodgkinson (Editor of the Idler): “Good lives are cheap, cheerful and will save the planet to boot”

David Boyle (Author): “Victorian economists calculated that the average English peasant in 1485 needed to work fifteen weeks a year to earn the money the needed to survive. In 1564, it was forty weeks. Now of course it is questionable whether we can manage to afford a reasonable life in
Britain without two salaries all the year round”

David Goldblatt (Author) “Step forward motor sports: Seriously, guys, yes you in the fast cars, peak oil is here or near. What are your great-grandchildren going to think a hundred years from now when they look back and see you spunking up the last precious drops of gasoline”

Phillip Pullman (Author) “Environmentalists need to know something about basic story telling in order to make their words effective”

A.C Grayling (Philosopher) “The environment has suffered in pursuit of wealth”

Oliver James (Author) “We talk of needing these things (i-pods/cars etc), but really we only want them”

John Bird (Creator of the Big Issue) “What we need today is to keep monopolies out of our life. Whenever we have a monopoly, whether public or private, you have the limitation of choice.”

Adair Turner (Vice Chairman at Merrill Launch Europe) “Population stabilization will be crucial to our long term success in dealing with climate change and other global environmental impacts”

Dame Anita Roddick (Founder of the Body Shop) “Providing for these vital human needs requires another kind of economy altogether, which emphasizes beauty, community and creativity”

Ann Pettifor (of Advocacy International Ltd) “We live in a global community that worships the god ‘Money’”

Larry Elliott (Financial Journalist) “The idea of personal thrift has gone out of the window, to be replaced by a culture in which it is not just permissible but commonplace – acceptable even – to live beyond our means”

Colin Tudge (Author) “The people who get to be in charge are the people who like power and the people who like power are not necessarily on the side of humanity”

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Writer, broadcaster, campaigner) “Buy local food and almost by definition your buying seasonal produce with a low environmental impact”

Rosie Boycott (Writer and Broadcaster) “How you live is just as important as what you say. We argued (the feminist movement) that by changing the way in which we lived, we would in time influence the larger world around us. Now, I believe that sentiment is back”

Kevin McCloud (of Grand Designs) “I think that human beings are of our own environment, we are the problem but we are also the solution: the cause and the cure of our own environment”

Wayne Hemingway (Creator of Red or Dead and the Land of Lost Content) “We cant change the fact that new things stimulate us. But if we are really to achieve sustainability, then durability is incredibly important”

Stephen Bayley (Design Correspondent of the Observer) “Man is homo faber, a divine monkey who makes tools. While saving the planet it is a priority no one should ignore, its important to remember that since we stepped out of the primeval glop on to the dry shore and started the journey that ended with reality TV, the world has been constructed by us”

Nic Marks (Founder of the Centre of Well-Being at nef) “The language of well being doesn’t rely on an economic model that assumes that more consumption is always better”

David Cameron (Conservative party MP) “The greatest responsibility in the fight to save our planet lies with the Government, which must give a lead on the issue and set the right framework”

Hilary Benn (Labour party MP) “Transforming our economy, our cities, our way of life and cherishing our countryside and wildlife is something that we have to do”

Caroline Lucas (Green Party MEP) “Whether good lives are defined as happy lives or lives of well being, the bottom line is that living a good life and sage guarding the climate are not only simply compatible, they are inextricably connected and mutually dependent”

As you can see the book really does have a wide range of contributors, each providing their own insight in to whether good lives have to cost the earth.  I found the book an excellent read as it provided different perspectives on the green movement, I highly recommend it – however to be green and frugal get a copy from the library, a friend or second hand.

If you have already read the book what did you think? If not what are your thoughts about the featured quotations? And a question for everyone ‘do you think that goods lives have to cost the earth’?

Let’s all discuss….

I can’t seem to find things that are the “100% GREEN” that I hoped for. In every process to create anything there is a flaw. This flaw can occur at the beginning, in the middle of production or at the end with distribution. Flaws are part of our recent civilization, especially with all things manufactured. I look around me at this moment my slippers, my coffee cup, my Buddha statue – each item has some sort of flaw in it’s journey to exist.

It seems GREEN marketing is way ahead of science and is caught in a process of defining terms. Regulation is not universal, what works in one field doesn’t work in another.

What is a human being to do if they want to be GREEN? Keep wishing, hoping and dreaming and please, please, please do not feel guilty!

Being GREEN is gathering information on how things are done and searching for choices within the system. A GREEN movement is to weigh the steps and determine the route of lowest impact. Each GREEN business and every GREEN person introduces their own unique changes to make things GREENER. Being GREEN is a choice.

As a creator of an item it is best to be informed. Not all information is free flowing; facts must be checked and this takes time. Also, it may require effort to sift through murky information to find the GREEN. If you conduct detailed research you could most likely annoy some people. You may be like a fly on wet skin! Becoming GREEN can be an adventure.

As a shopper one can ask questions. Asking questions motivates change. Asking questions will spawn new GREEN invention in all aspects of production. Knowing where and how things are made empowers one to make a personal and knowledgeable choice. Being GREEN is finding answers. Questioning will lead to TRANSPARENCY.

A forward-looking solution is to promote the movement of TRANSPARENCY. Providers of items can present their findings publicly. Not all details will be perfectly GREEN, yet we will respect the choices being made. This will have great influence. Those manufacturing industries with gas guzzling, chemical spewing, water dumping, labor abusing ways, will begin to change when the market shows that these ways are not only unacceptable, they are a bit absurd. By supporting the items made from those rising to the challenge of making improvements for a better world, GREEN will grow. Being GREEN is a process.

Businesses can openly discuss their raw materials and the processes used to turn them into goods, the full geographic journey, and all aspects of packaging and distribution. The goal is to seek out a combination of attributes in these areas that will contribute to the steps needed to make our environment a healthier place. If being GREEN becomes a debate about what is good and what is bad we will lose. Leaving a footprint is unavoidable, yet making our footprint lighter is attainable.

The GREEN movement is just getting started!

Important! I am not writing this post nor will I be writing the subsequent Veganism posts with the aim of converting you all to being Vegan. Instead I am writing about veganism to share with you an element of my life and also to hopefully start a discussion / debate on GGG how our lifestyle choices can affect the planet and even our health (whether in negative or positive ways)

So you may be asking ‘Why vegan? Well I personally believe in the vegan principles and ethics. Also I am now 100% committed to being vegan because it is better for the environment and also my health.

Principles and Ethics

Some may argue that we are born omnivores (meat and veg) and that eating and using animal based products is only natural. But is killing any animal (including human) ‘natural’? Is exploiting any animal (including human) keeping them locked up in pain and suffering ‘natural’?

I don’t think that it is ‘natural’ at all. Yes in the animal kingdom and in the circle of life some other animals kill other animals for food and some even ‘fun’. But these animals do not have choice – as humans we have a choice to choose that no animal including humans suffer in order for us to survive as a species. We do not need to eat animals to survive. We do not need to exploit anyone or anything including animals, humans or the planet to survive.

For more information about vegan principles and ethics then please watch the The philosophy of Vegan Values: The practice of non-violence Youtube video, go to the Veganism article on Wikipedia, or go to The Vegan Society website.

Environmental Benefits

Being a vegan is better for the environment compared to an animal based diet because fewer resources are used.

Here is a simple demonstration:

Land + Water + Energy = Crops

Land + Water + Energy + Crops = Livestock and dairy products

I could go into this in much further detail but the post would be far too long. However hopefully from the simple diagram you can see by eating meat or having dairy products additional resources are being used. So to me it makes sense to just eat the crops. Yes energy and land is needed to grow crops and I will write more about vegan farming / agriculture in another post.

If you want more information about the environmental benefits of being vegan then please check out an interesting online essay called ‘Logical Environmental Reasoning for a Vegetarian Lifestyle’.

Also some food for thought is, in “A 2006 study by Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, assistant professors of geophysics at the

University of Chicago, found that a person switching from the average American diet to a vegan diet would reduce CO₂ emissions by 1,485 kg per year.” Source: Diet, Energy and Global Warming study.

Health Benefits

As the vegan society says “How many times have you been told to eat more fruit and veg? Contrast this with how many times you’ve been told to eat more burgers…” The typical vegan will eat more fruit and veg than the average meat eater! And who can deny that an increase of fruit and veg is bad? Also people who “avoid meat also tend to have lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, and higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, and phytochemicals” Source: “Position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada: Vegetarian diets (June 2003)

A well balanced vegan diet provides a range of health benefits compared to meat eaters and even vegetarians. For further details about the health benefits and for some recipe ideas etc, check out Super Vegans – Living proof vegan diets and nutrition.

Next Post

My next veganism post will explore about how easy it is to be Vegan using organic and locally sourced food. But in the mean time feel free to leave comments about your experiences of being a vegan or your arguments for or even against the various benefits of veganism including environmental.

Indeed, I have never felt such a sense of purpose and urgency in my work–not simply that the work I am doing is meaningful, but that the work I am doing is truly part of something greater, a small contribution to things that might actually change the future of this place. And for the better.

Perhaps unconsciously, I have always considered myself to be “from” here–four generations before grew up and lived and worked in Hawaii. I am finding that I am a true Californian in ways I didn’t know, and that in me is a heart for Hawaii in a way I hadn’t expected.

Hawaii is the most isolated island archipeligo on earth. Often depicted as a place of fantasy and paradise, it is in reality a place of unique, limited, and increasingly threatened resources. A microcosm of this earth-island we all inhabit together.

I look forward to discussing with fellow green girls the problems faced and solutions offered, to environmental problems here in Hawai’i. And to sharing with you the experience of doing non-profit work here in the islands! Aloha!