Thinking Green on a White Friday

Snow's back. So is the cold. And if Tom Skilling's right, it's going to get worse before it gets better. But then it's January in Illinois. So pour a cup of your favorite warm beverage and pull up a chair.

All that white out the window has me thinking about things green -- not just gardens, but also the whole knotty business of being a good steward of the earth (which, when you cut away all the rhetoric, sniping and special pleading, is what the "green" movement is about.) Living green -- or being a good steward -- is complicated business.

It's not just about choosing to believe or not believe in global warming, carrying reusable bags to the supermarket or recycling. If you take the business seriously, it begins to reach into every aspect of your life. And the calculus of being a good steward is complicated.

For example, over the weekend my Seal-a-Meal stopped working. Couldn't get the vacuum seal to take. Called customer service and, because the system is relatively new, the rep gave me the choice of a new gasket or a new Seal-a-Meal. Of course, I took the new product. But then, I told one of my colleagues at work about scoring a new product, and he pointed out that, really, the responsible thing would have been to take the new gasket. (Replacing one is not exactly rocket science. Even I could do it.) Why? Because a gasket is cheaper and takes less energy to ship and by keeping the old machine, I wouldn't be confronted with the difficulty of disposing of the old one.

He's right, darn it. I can't in good conscience give the old one to Amvets or Purple Heart because it doesn't work. So I'm going to do one of two things: Put it in the garbage, which means it ends up in a landfill somewhere or down in my basement, where it will gather dust until the next time I decide to clean the basement (which could happen during the Obama administration, but I wouldn't count on it), when I'll put it in the trash anyway.

Now I feel vaguely guilty about having a new Seal-a-Meal. See what I mean about complicated calculus?

So why am I bugging you with my minor ethical dilemmas? Because a few of us are meeting Tuesday night at 7:00 in the church library to talk about what we as a congregation can be doing to be better stewards of the environment. (That new computer-controlled boiler system is one example of the kind of thing we're looking at: We save both energy and money. Good deal.)

We don't know yet exactly how this will play out. There are certainly practical things we can do both at the church and around our homes. But we're looking for ideas and input. Show up Tuesday night and share yours.