Eco=FIO

After much deliberation, I still haven't come up with a comprehensive list of resolutions for 2009, so I'm settling on just one: this year I'm going to become more "green."

The beauty of the green lifestyle is that much of it is just a way to turn what is really a bunch of fuck it off (FIO) ways into something admirable and PC. If you think if it, doing what's right for the environment is, in many cases, just the same as being cheap and/or lazy.

Examples:

1) Gift wrapping. Only enviro-haters who want the earth to turn into a fireball buy fancy paper that's sole purpose is to envelop a gift already boxed or otherwise packaged for a few minutes until it's disdainfully ripped off and thrown in the trash. The eco-friendly way to wrap a gift is to use newspaper or, better yet, just hand it to the recipient unwrapped and explain to him or her that you're being eco-friendly and forgoing wrapping paper. You will score bonus points for being green, and will have saved yourself not only the expense of wrapping paper, bows, tape and a gift tag, but the chore of actually wrapping the gift.

2) Holiday or Greeting Cards. So you forgot to send a friend a birthday card, or didn't feel like shelling out upwards of $25 for cards (who am I kidding--most people purchase custom-crafted holiday cards that cost several dollars each; the sky is the limit because, after all, Christmas only comes once a year!)? Should you feel like a rude, forgetful slacker? No! You should feel like an eco-hero, because you saved not only the money for the cards and postage, but the trees that would have had to die for that card and of course the carbon footprint that card would have left on the planet: the gas for the mail truck, the machines that process mail--it all adds up, you know. Instead, you can just send an email saying happy birthday (or holiday, or whatever)-I just saved a tree in your honor by not sending you a card.

3) Personal grooming.Showering: wastes water and necessitates the purchase of shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and whatever other accoutrements you personally like to add to your shower or bath experience. Deodorant costs money and contains harmful, cancer-causing aluminum and is encased in earth-killing plastic. God forbid you use the aerosol kind--don't even get me started on the carbon footprint and health hazard that is aerosol anything. Ditto toothpaste. Instead of wasting time, money and effort showering and grooming daily, limit showers to once or twice a week (hey, Europeans do it so it must be great), skip the surfectant-laden shampoo and other cleanser and buy a big slab of eco-soap that does double duty as shampoo and body wash. Skip toothpaste--baking soda on a finger is good enough and saves the landfills from being filled with used toothbrushes and empty toothpaste tubes. And so on--basically the dirtier you are, the closer to the earth you are, right?

Ok, actually, after writing #3 I realized that there's no way I can ever go green--I am way too vain and lazy to ever become an eco-vigilante of that magnitude. I'll stick to not wrapping gifts or sending cards and exploring the world of luxury organic grooming products from my friend's online store, Organically Happy. I do admit that I have recently tried two eco products and was pleasantly surprised that they turned out to be better than their chemical-laden equivalents: Filthy Farmgirl Royal Almond handmade soap and SensAtia Grapefruit & Avocado Body Balm.

Well, here's to another year of living the FIO life and loving it!

*Moral of this post: don't write a blog post while you're watching TV; I've already had two people point out typos and/or grammar mistakes in this post.