Although April 22nd’s Earth Day will come and go like a Styrofoam cup thrown onto a pile of burning tires, we’re still smack dab in the middle of Earth Week. And the tree huggers, gropers and part-time lovers at K&K couldn’t be happier.
Earth Week not only allows us to recalibrate our chakras and mind’s eye to the internal rhythms of Mother Earth like a finely tuned Joan Armatrading acoustic guitar solo, it ups our chances of getting it on with a free-spirited druid or urban wood nymph tenfold.
Needless to say, we’ve been eating a lot of falafel and Baba ghanoush outside Sweet Cherubim on Commercial Drive these last few days. We don’t even know what that means.
So what exactly are we doing to lessen our impact on the world’s depleting resources, repair the damage society has done to the earth’s precious ecosystems and live life with all the integrity of a recycled hemp-fibre “this is not a plastic grocery bag” grocery bag?
First off, we’re only going buy Apple products now that the consumer electronics giant has announced it’s offering free recycling of all its used products and “vowing to power all of its stores, offices and data centers with renewable energy to reduce the pollution caused by its devices and online services.” Speaking from personal experience, it is going to be so nice to replace our outdated iPhones, iPads, MacBook Pros and subsequently outdated power chords, power adaptors and other totally necessary accessories every two years or so knowing that our crappy, useless, outdated, two-year-old Apple products will be someone else’s responsibility. Maybe Apple could give our crappy old stuff to poor people or all those overworked and underpaid people in China who probably can’t even afford the Apple products they assemble or even know how to use an iPhone… which is the real tragedy. iPhones for everyone!
Second, we’re only going to buy a brand new condo in Vancouver that is LEED certified. Sure, we don’t know what that means other than its part of the city’s commitment to “green building innovations,” but we’ll take their word for it, thank you very much. And sure, said condo will probably replace a swath of perfectly good single-dwelling homes and buildings, with most of the demolition waste headed for the landfill, and the condo developer’s promise to the city of providing so many units of low-income housing will be scrapped, but it’s all about eco-density — another thing we haven’t grasped completely but totally like the sound of.
And lastly, two words: Whole Foods. You want only half food? Go to No Frills. But if socially conscious, totally-over-priced-but-so-worth-it real food grown by real people on real farms or wherever is what you’re after, then Whole Foods is where it’s at. Plus when you remember to bring a cloth bag, you can either get 10-cent discount or donate that 10 cents to a charity of your choice. Usually, we’ve never even heard of most of the charities, but if the cashier is cute, we’ll totally donate to a women’s health or animal charity. Unless of course we’re parked outside and need money for the meter because we want to go shopping for Apple products at Best Buy after we get the groceries.
