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Great green divide: Environmentalism not totally in mainstream

Photo by Adam Stine

Aidan Stine, 5, keeps his family honest about recycling and picks up bottles and cans on walks with his dad.

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By DONNA KOEHN

dkoehn@tampatrib.com

Published: May 29, 2009

Liz Taylor and Matt Coles live what they believe.

Taylor gathered her recyclables long before receiving curb service at her Seminole Heights home, built to conserve energy with shade trees and xeriscaping. Her daily commute downtown is short in a fuel-sipping Honda.

For more than 20 years, the business analyst has encouraged her workplaces to reuse paper and shun Styrofoam cups or plastics in the break room.

She and her husband, Phil Compton, started Friends of the Hillsborough River to work for healthier waters; Compton quit his job to become an environmental activist.

Coles, on the other hand, wouldn't mind blasting past Taylor in his fully loaded Nissan Armada SUV, purchased when gas prices skyrocketed and the cost of gas-guzzlers dropped.

He has no qualms about dropping his cans and bottles in the trash basket, rather than in green bins.

Green guilt?

Please.

"I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I think it's a fad, something trendy for celebrities to do," said Coles, of Tampa, who works in recruiting and staffing. "I was happy to get a good deal on my obnoxious SUV."

Most people probably fall somewhere in between, feeling pangs of guilt when they toss a soda can in the trash basket or forget to take their cloth shopping bags to the grocery store.

Often it's wealthier and better educated people who go green and stay there, experts say, exerting a bit of peer pressure on their neighbors if they don't comply.

Fewer feel green guilt

According to a recent study, 50 percent fewer people admit to suffering from green guilt than they did last year. But the researchers say they don't know if that is because people are doing their part or if the lousy economy has shoved environmental concerns to the bottom of their list of worries.

President Barack Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, criticized by Republicans as too costly, includes more than $60 billion in clean energy investments.

Included are plans for an improved energy grid system, new fuel economy standards for cars and trucks beginning in 2011, millions of dollars for green job-training programs, and plans to develop renewable energy projects using water from the continental shelf.

But in a country with widely divergent beliefs about global warming - a topic engendering passionate debate - not even the innocuous-sounding Earth Day can pass without ridicule by online pundits. Government efforts that impinge on personal choices are likely to heat up the debate.

The green behavior study, commissioned by the nonprofit Call2Recycle, said about one-third of those who buy green products say they do so because of peer pressure.

The Publix GreenWise Market in Hyde Park is a mecca for the environmentally concerned. Alicia Permanente, customer service manager, said its customers use fewer plastic bags than at any other Publix in the area.

Mica Rosier, an elementary education major at the University of Tampa, likes shopping there for its mix of organic and regular merchandise. Last week, Rosier loaded up Publix's green cloth shopping bags purchased on previous trips.

"I bring them - when I remember," she said.

It's a habit for Madelyn Adams, a nurse who walks almost everywhere she needs to go, including work and GreenWise. She grabs her United Nations Feed the Children bag before she heads out on foot.

"I try to buy things with as little packaging as possible," she said. "I'm willing to pay a little extra to do that."

The green survey reported that more than half of respondents said they are willing to pay a premium for eco-friendly products or services from companies that are environmentally conscious.

Taylor said she doesn't preach to others to do a better job tending the environment.

"It's a personal thing. I don't want to tell people what to do," she said. "And if someone's driving a big Hummer - just forget it."

Adam Stine of Brandon said even if he decided to get lazy about the environment, his son, Aidan, 5, wouldn't let him.

"We joke and call him the 'Recycling Nazi,'" Stine said. "He's always after us, so I named him the recycling manager of the house."

Aidan takes his job seriously, trying to recycle even items that aren't meant for the bin. He also picks up bottles and cans on their father-son walks.

"He's really into it," Stine said. "I think he learned about it at school on Earth Day."

Economic influence

Brian Mayer, who teaches environmental sociology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, said researchers are intrigued by what makes some people embrace a sense of personal responsibility.

The economy definitely can play a role, he said.

Some people might hang on to or reuse items that otherwise would have gone to the landfill, but others experience a shift in priorities.

Mayer cited a recent health survey in which migrant workers in Apopka were asked to rank their most pressing issues, including the environment. No. 1 was crime. No. 2? Adequate streetlights to prevent crime.

"Environmental issues are not always of concern in populations with unmet needs, even if their working environment is unsafe," said Mayer, author of "Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities" (ILR Press, 2008).

During the 1960s and 1970s, the ecology movement, with its own green flag, was one of many popular social causes. People vowed to save the planet and clean up its waters. Earth Day was founded in 1970 as an "environmental teach-in."

Cynicism, a sense of powerlessness, a decline in social involvement and a belief that individual needs were more pressing than collective concerns contributed to the decline in interest.

Mayer said he thinks many people have substituted a sense of personal responsibility for a group effort that would prove more effective in the long haul.

"We'll buy green products or bottled water, but critics say we're missing the larger problem," he said.

Environmental sociologists call it "inverted quarantine" - people trying to keep themselves safe while keeping out the dangerous world.

In "Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed From Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves," (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) author and sociologist Andrew Szasz argues that people are buying products that give them a sense of safety while ignoring bigger environmental dangers.

Similar behavior occurred when Americans in the early 1960s built bomb shelters in their backyards, Szasz says.

Coles, who believes the green movement is a fad, said there are many people like him who are reluctant to speak up.

"I'm a good person. I go to church. I care for my daughter more than anything in the world. But when people ask me if I don't want to do this for my daughter, I tell them not really.

"In 10 years, the same things will be going on," he said. "Maybe I'm just a cynic."

Reporter Donna Koehn can be reached at (813) 259-8264.

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