Environmentally Responsible Choices...Are they getting harder?

I was watching Bill Nye’s program, Stuff Happens, on Planet Green the other day. He did a segment on cashmere. Cashmere, as I’m sure you know, is a completely natural fiber obtained from the Cashmere goat. Cashmere goats are not sheared like a sheep, they molt or shed their winter coats in the Spring and the fibers are collected or, in some cases, combed out. What could be more natural, more green, more eco-friendly than that?

If you’ve ever had a cashmere sweater or scarf or robe, you know why everyone loves cashmere. Therein lies the rub. Everyone loves cashmere! As a result of the popularity of cashmere, the Cashmere goat raisers, who run their charges on the outskirts of the Gobi, are expanding their flocks at a rapid rate. Goats are voracious eaters and efficient brush clearers. Since goats like to eat from the top down, areas where goats forage will have a "browse line" below which virtually everything is cleared off. The grasslands that border the Gobi are being stripped away, allowing the desert to expand by leaps and bounds. Maybe cashmere is not so green after all.

So let’s see. Cotton, a renewable natural fiber, is grown on plants that are sprayed with pesticides. They grow a lot of cotton around here, in this desert, and I can tell you that the fields are heavily irrigated and, after the harvest, stripped and left bare for the soil to blow away during the windy season. That doesn’t seem so green either. Wool comes from sheep, which means it is also a renewable fiber. Sheep, like cows, emit an appreciable amount of methane gas every day. Methane is a particularly worrisome greenhouse gas. Producing wool also requires a vast amount of water—not only to raise and care for the sheep, but also to rid the raw wool of numerous impurities. It takes approximately 500,000 liters of water to manufacture a metric ton of wool; this figure is even higher when the sheep in question are fed in confined quarters, where extra water is required to manage the manure.

I remember a few years ago when it seemed like every other news report was of yet another food that was going to give us cancer. When it was just a few, we were able to make good choices and avoid the ones that were reported to be cancer-causing. Then it began to seem as though all foods were problematic; the water we drank was dangerous; even the air we breathed. The result? I know I threw up my hands and said there were no good choices. I gave up and ate what I wanted. I’m sure I was not alone in feeling helpless about what to do.

While we all want to make informed, environmentally friendly choices, I’m afraid this “under the microscope” look at all aspects of the production of the products we use every day is going to lead us to decide that we can make no completely responsible choices. We may stop trying. I don’t know what the answer is in this world of information overload. In fact I like having a lot of information at my fingertips. I’m just not so sure this is going in the right direction. As we become more and more concerned about the environmental impact of everything we do, which is a good thing, I’m afraid we may become overwhelmed and give up.

What about you? Are you starting to feel a bit overwhelmed and unsure about your choices? I know I am.