An accidental "Eco-Mom"

An article last month in the Int’l Herald Tribune (“Dishpan hands? Today it’s eco-anxiety”) discussed how a new sub-culture of women and mothers is mobilizing to lessen their households’ impact on the environment with “greener” practices. Websites and organizations have sprouted up, one even called the Eco-Mom Alliance. Reading the article, it occurred to me that since moving to Germany, many of the Eco steps taken sounded familiar. But rather than feel satisfied about how some of our behaviors are not detrimental to the environment, I felt more concern, since, truth be told, I am no environmental activist. Our relatively “green” lifestyle these days is more a product of our new habitat.

I asked myself a variation on that philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest with nobody to hear it, does it make any noise? (At least I think that’s the question) So, if we are taking some “green” steps but doing it, more or less, in spite of ourselves, can I be an eco-Mom?

I think not. Oh well. All I can do is hope that when we move back to the U.S., we will see the (contact fluorescent) light and join the ranks of the true, card-carrying Eco-households that are actually making a concerted, laudable effort to reduce consumption. For now, in our house we’re just going along with the country’s commendable environmental policies. Being “Öko”, as they say in German, is more a question of conforming (also a German pastime). Read on.

Recycling
Recycling is central to the country’s extremely organized, public notion of environmentalism. Everybody recycles their household waste. If you don’t participate, you risk being reported by an informer, say, an annoyed neighbor. I am not kidding.
**Please see photo of our kitchen’s receptacle “tower”**
--From the top: The cylindrical “Bio” bin, for organic compost: banana peels, apple cores, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea bags, cut flowers, etc. We compost and we don’t even live on a commune! This stinky stuff, picked up weekly, is converted into genuine, Hannoverian fertilizer™ that can be purchased or given as a gift.
--Immediately below, the trash can. Notice how small it is. The eleven occupants in our building only require one average-size, curbside can per week, and over half its volume is taken up by Leo and Marco’s diapers. What goes in the trash besides dirty diapers? Not much: kitty litter, chicken bones, dirty hankies, human hair, ashes, cigarette butts.
--Below the trash are the three stacked bins for recyclables. I stick on Post-it labels whenever we have non-German, overnight guests.
-In the top one: anything made of plastic or metal. No rinsing allowed—not even of milk and yogurt containers--since this wastes running water.
-In the middle is the paper bin: all forms paper and processed wood, from cereal boxes to tea bag wrappers, newspaper to lightly soiled Kleenex, toilet paper cardboard to broken wooden toy.
-And finally, anything glass goes in the bottom bin: an empty bottle of moisturizer, a bottle of wine, even that weird blue stuff.

Once you get the hang of it, it becomes as second nature as breathing. Deep breathing near bin stack, however, is not recommended, as it can get pretty rank.

A country of "Locovores"
**please see photo of unsightly local beets**
This term, coined by the best-selling American author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, etc.) refers to the energy-conserving goal of consuming food grown within a limited radius of where you live. In Europe with its teensy weensy countries, this is easier to do than in the U.S. Take the Italian tomato, the only kind available in Germany from November to May. While not local per se, it still travels considerably less than a California tomato did to get to the Shaw’s in Massachusetts.
In our house, we’ve moved closer to being Locovores for two reasons: 1.) German markets prefer to sell domestic produce whenever possible, and 2.) I have come to loathe walking for more than five minutes to buy food. How’s that for local? During the winter months--at both the nearby, overpriced mini-supermarket and the nearby, overpriced weekly farmers’ market--its all German, and all apples and celeriac. As you can see from the photos, the pickings are slim. To survive the grey time of year and all the grey veggies, an attitude adjustment is in order. Beets are sweet! Parsnips are kind of like carrots! And really, who can resist cabbage? And as it turns out, the potato is to the northern German as the snow is to the Eskimo. There are 80 different varieties for sale in February, and Leo likes them (unfo., they make Marco gag). But the other day I wrestled with some temptation: a package of spotless green beans from Senegal. I hesitated a bit and then stuffed them in the basket. They were delicious.

Gas consumption
No need to dwell on this huge topic since I’ve referred to it in several entries. The “huge topic” being our carlessness. While it is true that most young families like ours have only one single car in their possession, most Germans do, in fact, have cars. We have some German friends that remarked that, as far as the no-car thing goes, Fernando and I are “more European than the Europeans”, and therefore, somewhat ridiculous. I suppose it is pretty good that we have not personally consumed automobile gas in a year and a half (excluding our visits to the US and the occasional car rental weekend) and have relied instead on Hannover’s excellent mass transit (tram, train, bus) and our bikes.
But the real reason we don’t have a car is because we can’t. As it turns out, we cannot drive legally here, since Germany does not honor Georgia licenses. They are totally fine with Alabama and Louisiana drivers, but not us Peach State folk. Nobody understands why. And getting a German license is no walk in the park. It is expensive, requires time consuming lessons, hours and hours of theoretical exam preparations, and several hours of first-aid course work. We have had trouble making the time. Fernando has been on the brink of taking the theoretical exam for over a year now, but something always happens. He goes away on a trip. A baby is born. We buy a garden. He gets a new job. Life gets in the way and the diligent study sessions stop, the memorized answers to confusing multiple choice questions are forgotten. But one day he’ll take and pass that exam, we can get insurance, we can buy that elusive car. Maybe.

Small "global footprint"
The global footprint, according to the article, is “a measure of the estimated amount of land it takes to support each person’s lifestyle” The American average is 24 acres. Our footprint here in Hannover has got to be less, judging from how small our apartment is and that we have no yard. And our footprint will soon be even smaller, since we are currently trying to sell off the ½ acre Schrebergarten that we bought less than a year ago (see multiple blog entries from 2007). Again, we are not doing this for reasons of conservation, but more for lack of time, the complexity of getting out to the garden colony with two kids (and no car!), and because of our somewhat embarrassing lack of knowledge about, um, how to garden. Someday we’d like to have a garden, preferably attached to our house and not a 20 minute bike ride away. But in the meantime, wish us luck selling this one! A handsome reward for referrals ending in a sale.

Low meat consumption
No, we have not become Vegans or even vegetarians. But when faced, day after day in that overpriced little market around the corner, with rows and rows of sausage, tubes of Liverwurst, and slabs of pork, deciding what to do for the “meat course” is sometimes just too taxing. So we eat lots of pasta and frozen pizza (it’s really yummy here, the Dr. Oetker brand). It is easy to eat way less than the American daily average meat consumption of 8 oz. Yes, we eat more hot dogs than we ever thought possible, and even though I buy the organic kind, I’m not kidding myself. But they don’t weigh much.

Real Eco-Moms could also lobby for the U.S. to adopt the following German practices that are, coincidentally, better for the environment.

∙Make people pay up to $0.25 for plastic bags at all retail stores, no matter how much they just spent. It’s the German way. And believe me, Germans do NOT buy these bags. The stack of bags is available for foreign fools attending some Hannover convention or for scatterbrained expats like me. Germans rely on their reusable burlap totes, and consider fancy-looking paper bags from prestigious stores (Benetton, etc.) to be national treasures.

∙Bathe children once a week. The concept of bath time as a nightly ritual involving toys, bubbles, washable crayons, puffy waterproof books, and special helmets to protect baby’s eyes from shampoo is totally unheard of in Germany. Bath night is Sunday, and those kids get scrubbed so clean they’re pink after. And crying while shampooing builds character.

∙Withhold information on home energy expenditure until the end of the year. That’s right. For the entire year our monthly bill actually reflects the previous year’s energy prices, even if different people were living in the unit. Thus, at the end of the year comes a big surprise: the letter asking for 12 months of back pay if you have gone over (and you usually have). This year long guessing game is a great psychological trick. Every day as you turn on the coffee machine and then the light switch, you wonder, “How much will this cost me?”. This year, we had to pay a couple hundred € . Who knows about next year?

**please see photo of boys in blue sweaters**
This photo is here to increase the number of hits this page gets :), but I think the sweaters were made with all organic material and with fairly paid labor, etc. A gift from some (American) friends.