Imperfect Environmentalism

I was standing in the shower, listening to music and thinking about the new outfit I wanted to buy and the color I wanted to paint my nails. The hot water felt amazing after surfing for hours in the freezing ocean. I let my thoughts drift, losing track of time. Piercing the cozy enclosure of my shower, an ear splitting, though familiar, scream shattered my peace. “Helena, you’ve been in the shower for twenty minutes… again! I thought you were an environmentalist.” At first, I was ridiculously annoyed by my mom’s criticism, a harsh interruption to my blissful distraction. But as I looked down and became aware of the gallons of water flowing down the drain, I began to feel like a hypocrite, preaching one thing and practicing another. 

For the past four years, living more sustainably has been one of my biggest goals. I was on the Eco Council at my middle school, started a straw free campaign in San Francisco, won the International Ocean Film Festival, and have a blog about protecting the ocean. These efforts made me feel like I could sit on my high horse and nag my friends and family about taking care of the environment, and yet there I was: taking preposterously long showers. I realized that my hypocrisy showed itself in a million other ways too. I buy heavily packaged makeup after cleaning up plastic on the beach. I shop at fast fashion stores right after going thrifting. I call oil companies evil while happily jumping on airplanes to travel. I use a plastic coffee cup one day and a glass mason jar the next. While I deeply care about the environment, I fail over and over and over again to match my actions to my values. 

A couple months ago, I had a conversation with my aunt, who is both vegan and an animal rights activist, that completely changed my perspective. After expressing my own shame about my failings, both in the shower and as a semi plant-based eater myself, she offered me this statement:  “it’s more effective to have thousands of people who are mostly vegan than one completely perfect vegan.” This insight made me think about environmentalism as a whole and helped me understand that each of us doing our individual best to help the environment may be the best way to make a difference. Changing behavior can be hard, especially when we think it has to be radical and overnight. Also, not everyone has the privilege to make radical changes to their lifestyle in order to live more sustainability. But we desperately need to shift our culture to be more mindful of the environment and take action in every way we can. Even if we all embrace imperfect environmentalism, it still won’t be enough to pull us out of the climate crisis. It would, however, help get many more people on board with climate activism and ultimately put pressure on large corporations and governments to make changes. 

Since this conversation with my aunt, I have tried not to be paralyzed by perfectionism, to get comfortable with failure, and to take manageable steps towards a more sustainably-minded lifestyle. With this new mentality, I have worked towards a few new goals. First, I am trying to take much shorter showers, which, embarrassingly, has been hard for me to accomplish. I have started out by timing myself in the shower so that I am aware of how long I take and how much I need to cut down. I have also reduced my consumption of animal products by trying to have a mostly plant based diet. The transition to eating minimal amounts of meat wasn’t as difficult for me because I have never eaten red meat, and I have always been conscious of where my meat comes from. But trying to go dairy free has been much harder and virtually impossible when there is mint chip ice cream in the freezer. I am also trying to use less plastic by being conscientious of a product’s packaging. I opt to buy more of my clothes from thrift stores and “shop” my friends’ (and my mom’s!) closets. And as I spend so much time in the ocean, I make it a point to clean up the beach when I see trash. 

I am FAR from perfect, but I have begun to hold myself accountable to these goals. Maybe one day I’ll be a perfect vegan, and maybe I won't, but either way I will continue to take steps toward sustainability and try to make a difference. I know we are no longer looking ahead at a climate crisis, we are in the midst of one. I hope there is still time for all of us to embrace imperfect environmentalism, because the idea that we would all have to be perfect tomorrow seems unrealistic.