What are you doing to decrease your reliance on oil?

Checking into Facebook this morning, someone I respect a great deal greeted me with this question, “What are you doing to decrease your reliance on oil?”

I answered her question and now I’ll ask you: What are you doing to decrease your reliance on oil? How about energy in general?

The fact is Americans are addicted to petroleum — which is in damn near everything, and coal — which powers many of our homes and businesses.

We consume and consume and consume, and are then told to consume more. To make matters worse, most of the things we consume come wrapped in some sort of paper or plastic and stuffed inside a plastic bag. And, if we’re being really honest with ourselves, we know that a lot of the stuff we buy isn’t needed and that new stuff will sit around in our house, taking up space, collecting dust or sucking up electricity.

Look around your home and office. Look at your habits. I’m looking, and I see a lot of excess. I’m looking, and I see an opportunity for positive change.

In my family, with the understanding that we vote with our dollars and that everything we consume requires energy of some sort to produce and transport, we’ve decided to try to consume less in general.

We’re driving less and (organic) gardening more. We’re trying to buy more from local vendors and less from big box stores. We’re looking for products that have less packaging, recycled packaging and compostable packaging. We use reusable bags when we shop — everywhere, not just at the grocery store. We repair and re-purpose broken things and buy used things instead of new things when practical, in part to avoid packaging but also because of all of the energy and water required to make new stuff and deliver it to local stores or our doorstep. I drive a hybrid that not only requires less gas but fewer oil changes and my husband is considering a hybrid to replace his aging vehicle, too.

But, even with all of that effort and commitment, when I list things it’s easy to see that — though we think we’re doing a lot — we’re not doing nearly as much as we could.

What can you do without to protect our environment and preserve our high standard of living for future generations?

Here’s an example of someone on the extreme end of the spectrum, someone with a lot of good ideas for those of us taking baby steps toward a more sustainable lifestyle:

When she goes to the supermarket, Bea Johnson brings along a sealable glass jar so the butcher can slide in a pork cutlet. In the bulk aisle, she fills reusable bags she makes from old bed sheets to carry rice, pasta, oatmeal or nuts.

In fact, everything she and her husband buy is without packaging: They make their own household cleaning products, buy soap that comes unwrapped and return milk bottles to suppliers for refills.

At least three times a week, Johnson phones marketing companies in her unrelenting war against junk mail.

“The amount of money you can save by just carrying your own water bottle is huge. Plus, the more you get away from plastic, the more likely you are to buy fresh,” said Johnson, who blogs about her lifestyle in Marin County, Calif., at zerowastehome.blogspot.com.

Johnson has emerged as a guru for people looking to take green living to a new level.

“We’re definitely seeing more people interested in living without waste but the demographic has changed,” said Sarah Kennedy of San Francisco’s Rainbow Food Cooperative, which offers everything from shampoo to seaweed in bulk.

“Before it was tree-hugging hippies who washed and reused their produce bags. Now we’re seeing a much more middle class movement, more moms with their kids, with Tupperware boxes and neatly folded linen bags,” she said.

Read the rest of this MSNBC.com article, by Sean O’Driscoll, here.

Check out Bea Johnson’s blog, Zero Waste Home, here.

George Carlin on the new American past time: Consumerism.

This article appears in Jun 1-7, 2010.