These days it’s no secret that it’s easier than ever to be green. Just last night our half-veggie-half-pepperoni pizza was delivered with a special note about composting and harnessing kinder, gentler energy sources. Once your local purveyor of fatty indulgence starts talking about sustainability, it’s time to listen up.
When trying to figure out what all the fuss is about, it's helpful to see what the kids are doing on the Internet. Perhaps you’d be interested in updating your Facebook
profile to include your eco-friendly efforts while viewing Ben
Affleck’s ethanol-rich "flex-fuel" PSAs and searching for
sustainably grown food near you? Green sites are popping up all over
the web, including the always trendy Treehugger, which
not only implores its visitors to "get informed, interact and take
action" in their communities, but to also make their daily lives as
sustainable as possible, right down to the, ahem, more personal
products they utilize.
From the glow of our monitors to the sparkle of the big screen, last week we were fortunate enough to attend a showing of The Real
Dirt on Farmer John, a documentary exploring the lifetime struggles of Midwestern farmer John Peterson to heal and enrich his community. The fruits of John's labor turned into Angelic Organics, a successful CSA bringing fresh, local vegetables to the people. In case you haven't heard, community-supported agriculture is en vogue, due in part to the efforts
of many, many small farms like John's.
In a post-screening Q and A, John's longtime
friend and director Taggart Siegel noted the fact that while his
documentary has been around for a full two years, the climate (pun partially intended) simply wasn't right to receive the film until just now.
Talking to John, you can see that all of this green hullabaloo is simply not a trend to him. Rather, his idea of sustainable living is completely connected to his commitment to the farm. While his story may be inspiring, he is not, as one reviewer calls him, "Joe DiMaggio, Alice Waters and Spider-Man all rolled into one." At least, not deliberately. As far as we can see, John Peterson is a quirky farmer with his foot in two increasingly overlapping cultures.
While we're pretty sure we wouldn't take to farm life (both rural and urban) very well, we'd all do better to incorporate a little more green into our day to day habits, even if it means taking a minute to read the pizza box before chowing down.
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