Consuming Thoughts: Z

Z is for Zero, a Target for Waste. Robyn Hitchcock: You’re just trash…and you’re a loser. The only people that prosper (short term) from trash are waste removal companies. Eventually, we all lose. Take packaging: companies waste money and resources through packaging, we waste money to buy it and throw it away. Plastic packaging and waste floats languidly in nation-sized gyres in the Atlantic and Pacific. Consider this: Wend magazine reports that the North Pacific gyre is currently twice the size of the continental U.S.

Sooo, as consumers what can we do? Aim for zero waste. Recently, I was told that Dick and Jeanne Roy of the Center for Earth Leadership, here in Portland, put out one can of garbage per year. Waste serves no purpose, adds no value and is a meaningless burden on our communities and our world. We can all make a big impact here.

Two strategies:

1) Simply reduce. Pay attention to what you buy and what is wrapped around it. Buy accordingly. Avoid plastic bags like week old guacamole.

2) Rethink and Redesign. Walk up to that big ‘ol mirror and don’t flinch at what you see. Take a moment to reflect on your consumption patterns and style. Change what is clearly wasteful.

And, repeat. It’s not just trash we’re wasting and it’s not just about you anymore. It’s about us. Our world, our communities, our home.

Tags: Atlantic gyre, Center for Earth Leadership, Dick Roy, Jeanne Roy, Pacific gyre, plastic bags, Robyn Hitchcock, Wend Magazine, zero waste

Consuming Thoughts: Y

Y is for Yes and the Power of Intention. Peter Gabriel: And the tears roll down my swollen cheek, I think I’m losing it, getting weaker…I hold the line, I hold the line. Record numbers of homeowners are walking away from mortgages that they are fully capable of paying. According to a Times Magazine article Their decision is strategic. It’s good business. As the writer says, “we are all economic pinballs, insensibly colliding for better or worse.” Financial services organizations routinely make such “strategic” decisions. Banks no longer own mortgages, why should we?

This is economic nihilism and it does make sense – if we view our lives as one thin transaction after another. If we believe we’re losing it we probably will. Disconnective thinking breeds disconnected action. It is a a symptom of withdrawal, collapse, contraction and fear. Mentally, physically, spiritually we grow weaker. We believe we can separate our “selves” from “the world.”

We hold the line. The line is a thread. A thread that connects and binds us together. We can ignore it. We can say “no” to it but the relationship won’t go away. We hold the line. We can turn our backs on responsibility. We can put our heads in the sand and refuse ownership and obligation. We remain connected, however, the quality of that connection is weakened, degraded, frayed. Or, we can say, “yes.” “Yes”, opens us to opportunity, possibility and abundance.

They hold the line. What would happen if a line of credit was also seen as a line of connection? What would happen if banks looked at us less as risks to be managed and more as opportunities to increase social and relational capital in the communities they serve?

We hold the line. What would happen if we said “yes” to spending strategically to build value in our cities and communities? What if our intention as consumers was to support and sustain the banks, businesses and services that sustain us?

Try it. Say “yes”, reach out and connect. Manifest the intention to support and sustain each other. Share what we share anyway to strengthen our connection. It is within our grasp. We hold the line, the line of strength that pulls us through the fear.

Tags: abundance, credit line, mortgages, Peter Gabriel, strategic defaults, We hold the line

Consuming Thoughts: X

X is for “Exchange” Your Money for Action. George Bailey: …this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. We do. 99.9% of businesses operating in the world are small to medium-sized businesses. In the US, small and medium-sized businesses employ over 60 million people. Currently, many of these businesses and their people are suffering. Cut off from sources of credit, capital and equity they are slowly, inexorably going broke.

Traditionally, small, community banks and lenders were there to serve small businesses and individuals. However, according to the Move Your Money post in the Huffington Post:

…America’s Main Street community banks — the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of — are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.

So, what can we do? Three things:

1. Continue to buy local. Small and medium-sized businesses are overwhelmingly local and regional businesses. Healthy cities and communities are sustained on a resilient web of local commerce and consumption.
2. Start saving and investing locally. Put your money in local, community-focused institutions. The folks at the Huffington Post have started the Move Your Money campaign and website where you can get information about how and where you can make a difference just by opening a bank account. Community banks, savings and loans and credit unions have a much bigger interest and stake in maintaining and growing a healthy community.
3. Check out this video. George Bailey or Mr. Potter? The choice is ours.

Tags: buy local, George Bailey, Its a Wonderful Life, Move Your Money, small and medium-sized business, The Huffington Post, too big to fail

Happy “New” Year

At Kiyomizudera they have chosen “shin” as the kanji most representative of the past year, 2009. Shin means “new”. The kanji “新米” means a new crop of rice, new growth and symbolizes a fresh beginning. It is easy and, perhaps, more comfortable to think of the last year as a year of loss. Over 15 million children died of hunger. Millions of people lost their jobs, hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, wealth evaporated, hope continues to be severely tested.

Yet in the midst of such suffering, tragedy and loss the seeds of opportunity are sown. Somehow, life perseveres. Somehow, we go on. And, somehow, we still have the capacity for happiness, compassion, joy. Somehow, we continue to work the land and, somehow, the land continues to provide.

Every day, every moment, in every breath, opportunity emerges. This place, our place,this planet, our planet this universe, our universe is impossibly complex, simply abundant. Our minds, our senses are the universe witnessing, wondering, reflecting on itself. What we perceive are our selves, in all of our inter-related, interwoven beauty. We are many. We are one. We are the dance and interplay between.

Opportunity emerges. Faith abides. As we awake to the “new” year, we strive to begin anew. To be better fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, children. We have the opportunity to be so much, even when we have so little – even when we’ve lost so much.

Let us all take a moment as we begin this new year and be silent, present, full. Of life. Of love. Of each other and the abundance the universe provides.

Now, let that moment go: on, and on, and on…

Tags: abundance, Kiyomizudera, Shin