Is Sustainability the Remit of a Privileged Few?

As part of my 6 week Teamworks involvement we met Jil Zilligen, formerly of NAU and Patagonia. And this I felt was the least informative aspect of the Teamworks event.

I'll admit, I'm cynical about consumerism participating in anything positive for the earth. For God's sake, Unilever owns Ben and Jerry's. Clorox owns Burt's Bees. Budweiser bought Henry Weinhard's. Sustainable, local, organic, green are all words co-opted to sell more crap. So when I hear the people behind the companies go on about how much good they're doing, implying that others aren't trying or doing their best, I get a little defensive.

Don't get me wrong, organic cotton is fantastic. I like any company that uses practises that don't exploit their workers, that restricts the use of dyes due to metal content and makes things to be worn multiple times in a day. These are all great things. What's making me recoil is how goddamned exclusive the whole concept is.

There are a few reasons for that. The first is language. What the hell does "sustainability" mean anyway? The word sustainable only really means that you can do something repeatedly in any given environment. Is there a time frame? What happened to the simple commercials of my youth? This gets the message across in 16 seconds. Recycle your soda cans. There's no lecturing about sustainability, or harping on about why one way is better than another. Just 'hey kids, recycle your soda cans.' And I know that recycling is really only a small part of the solution, but the presentation is so much better because it's lacking in pretense.

I think most people would refer to sustainability as thriftiness, like reusing butter containers from the supermarket to pack fruit for a lunch. But those are words and practises for the poor. And pretty unlikely to appeal to a group selling to the educated classes. So they had to make up this new word for something that my great grandma did every day, and by creating this meaningless catch phrase cut off the simple things that the genuinely needy did and do to survive. The people who wash their tin foil, or in Beverly Cleary language "watch the mold slide off their lettuce" don't live sustainably. They're invisible to this whole process but likely the most sustainable of all.

The second aspect of "sustainability" is use reduction. We need less stuff. Well, NAU and Patagonia aren't going to tell you that. Or, what they'll say is you should by their stuff because it will last you longer because they are timeless styles and high quality. Ok, sure. If that's the case, then why aren't they holding sewing classes? I was shocked to discover a large portion of my volunteer group can't sew. If Patagonia and NAU are really all that invested in sustainability, maybe they should teach people how to repair their clothes. Oh right, because that means people might buy less of them. And that hurts their bottom line. Because the point of Patagonia and NAU is to sell more um, stuff.

George Carlin had something to say about stuff. Certainly more interesting and insightful than anything on a clothing retailer's page. And that was back in 1986!

And the third thing that's driving me crazy about "sustainability?" The -isms are all being displayed pretty proudly but since they're sustainable, it's perfectly ok. Sure, it's fine not to use cobalt blue dye in clothes due to heavy metals, but it's no problem to market your stuff to thin, white, people for eye watering amounts. A minimalist jacket at NAU will set you back an eye watering $340. And that's if you can trek to the zip codes where their stores are, with equally extortionate rent. They'll say that price is because it will last you a long time and the sustainable manufacturing processes are expensive. Well, that's good, but I paid 50 bucks for the wool jacket I wore today. That was 7 years ago. With the exception of replacing some buttons, it's held up pretty damned well. Oh and the vintage Wilson's leather jacket I bought at a thrift store 9 years ago for $12 is holding up well too. But wait, I know how to repair my damned clothes.

The justification here is the white upper middle class has the cash to be able to purchase things like this so they should. And that the white upper middle class will be role models to the rest of the world. Does that kind of evangelism sound familiar to anyone else? Does it resemble the Great Chain of Being or Manifest Destiny, or other acts of cultural hegemony propagated around the world? You know, the concept that the white leisure classes know better than everyone else but withold those ideas unless they inflict it on someone? Maybe just a little?

And don't get me wrong, while I think NAU and Patagonia's whole goddamned product lines are one big ball of hyper-consumerist, exclusive and snobbish crap, that doesn't discount the entire movement for me. It's just that I've found the organizations that contribute the most to reduction in waste, like Goodwill and Free Geek, are the ones that don't use that word at all.

A great post on why climate change (and as a result "sustainability") is a black women's issue

Food is a feminist issue