Pick Your Pollution: Trade-Offs in 'Eco-Friendliness'

Recently, Frito-Lay has made the difficult decision of replacing its new biodegradable SunChips bags with the old ones. Obviously, the point of the biodegradable bags was to decrease pollution and therefore become more eco-friendly in efforts to appease the environmentally conscious consumer. However, the bags seemed to have a problem with a different kind of pollution--noise pollution! The bags were so loud that they elicited enough negative feedback from consumers for Frito Lay to reconsider the benefit of eco-friendly marketing in this case. The biodegradable bags just weren't worth all the noise they made.

This story really brought to my mind the notion of trade-offs in our values. We often view things as 'black-and-white.' We either vouch for something completely or not at all. In reality, though, we rarely make decisions in such a manner. The 'bag' will eventually get 'loud' enough for us to not care so much about its 'eco-friendly' nature. We may be vehemently opposed to littering, but there is invariably some amount of trash we will be willing to pass by without picking it up. We may be strict believers in raising emissions standards in motor vehicles, but most of us will still drive at some point in our lives. We may think it horrible that some people give up their pets to animal shelters, but there is some point at which we personally will stop taking those unwanted pets into our home.

Personally, I call myself a 'selective tree-hugger.' I consider myself to be environmentally-conscious to some extent. Sure, I want to live in a clean, sustainable world. Who doesn't? But that isn't going to stop me from living my life. We want to protect the environment but we also want to be able to live in it. I have no problem cutting down a tree to build a house. Some of us, however, think that we're more 'eco-friendly' than we really are. We are unaware of the trade-offs that we make. We sign petitions against deforestation on paper produced from trees cut down for profit. We'll drive miles in our SUV to a rally against pollution caused by motor vehicles.

We need to realize that everything is a trade-off. Especially when it comes to environmental concerns, we're dealing with a trade-off between the quality of the environment we live in and quality of our lives in such an environment. Sometimes, we want our trash to be eco-friendly, but there are times when it's just too 'loud' to accomodate our lifestyle.