What is Green?

Last week Homesteading Neophyte shared a Morning vent. She was refuting the notion that homesteading=green. I'll let you read it for yourself, be sure to read the comments too, but it got me to thinking about what it means to be green.

Being green is not my primary motivation in the way we live. Frugality and self sufficiency take those top spots. In my eyes being green is a pleasant bi-product of our lifestyle. For example, cloth diapers would be considered a green thing to use. They also saves you a ton of money. When we started with cloth, saving money was an absolute necessity. I found not only did they save money, I liked them better, and bonus, we weren't filling a landfill with disposable diapers.

I know that being green is a popular thing to do now, but I'm not exactly sure what the guidelines are to being green, in the popular sense of it. To me, being green goes hand in hand with frugality. It is about careful management of our resources, frugality dealing more with money and green dealing more with natural resources.

I do wonder at the push to buy so many green products. There is a marketing aspect to the popularity of this issue. I wonder about the real impact of buying a new "green" car. On an individual level, I can certainly see why someone would want to buy a more efficient car with these crazy gas prices, but when you look at the whole picture is getting that new car any easier on the environment? I don't have an answer to that question, but pose it as something to think about. What about the resources used to create that new car? What about the old car? Where does it go? To the junk yard or sold to someone else to drive? What is the net effect?

So are we green? We recycle, repurpose, hang our clothes on a line. We grow much of our own food, and even eat some that grows in the wild. We try hard to get every last use out of an item before sending it to the trash. In our house you will not find any new modern furniture, but some dated second hand furniture. We want to build an earth-bermed home, and much of the lumber we will use and have used for various projects comes from a local source; our own property.

But we also drive older vehicles that may not get the best gas mileage or burn the cleanest, including a '71 dump truck (my dad's.) Of course we aren't driving it for leisure use, but when it is put to work it gets a whopping 4 miles to the gallon. We burn wood some in the winter and hope to use it more in the future. We cut down a lot of trees to put in our driveway, electric lines and our homes.

In my mind we are green. We are careful and thoughtful with our resources, including the natural ones. Are we green in the eyes of the world? I don't know, and I'm not sure I care. I think we are being responsible with our resources, not perfect, but thoughtful, and that is what matters to me.