Hah. I can relate -- my university was almost entirely made up of hippies. Although I was a committed liberal before heading off to college, I found myself becoming more centrist out of sheer defensiveness toward the militant vegans, dredlocked white people desperately trying not to be white, pot heads, and yoga goddesses I was surrounded by.

I don't mind Prius drivers, though. At least where I live, they tend to be decent drivers, unlike the tailgating BMWs and Lexuses. The people I know who have Priuses are tech geeks, not hippies.

I appreciate the vegan argument for avoiding honey and bee products, but I think it would be fair to factor in other considerations when choosing to eat or not eat honey. Although I am a vegetarian, my bottom line is environmental sustainability, not animal rights, and there are sound environmental reasons to choose honey over other sweeteners. I get mine from the farmers' market. It is minimally packaged, unprocessed, and produced less than 15 miles away. I enjoy talking to the beekeeper, who speaks affectionately and protectively of her bees. From what I've read about beekeeping, honey is essentially a by-product of renting out bees for crop pollination, which is how most beekeepers actually make most of their money, so boycotting honey does not liberate bees from exploitation. I like being able to support local agriculture and farmers, and I feel confident that the bees that make my honey are well taken care of.

I think it's also worth considering that other sweeteners, such as agave nectar and palm sugar, can have human, animal, and environmental issues. I am not an expert on them, but I do know that most travel much further than 15 miles to reach their consumers, some are heavily processed, some require a lot of water and pesticides (organic does *not* mean pesticide free) to grow, and as crops, many, if not all, have displaced natural habitats and disrupted ecosystems. Do other sweeteners ultimately cause more loss of animal life through environmental destruction? I don't know. It seems likely.

The least problematic choice would be to avoid sweeteners altogether...however, I'm definitely not there yet. I've chosen to eat honey based on its environmental sustainability, but I certainly respect your decision to not eat it based on your position on animal rights.

It's definitely possible to love animals and still eat them, but many of the people who start thinking the way you do eventually stop eating them. I grew up with pets and have loved spending time with non-humans my whole life, yet only went vegetarian four years ago when I was faced with a choice to either start dealing with raw meat (which makes me feel sick) or to stop eating it. I didn't adopt the label vegetarian; if I had craved meat, I would have allowed myself to have some. Surprisingly, it never happened.

Even as a vegetarian or vegan, there are still plenty of ethical quandaries, although my conscience is happier now than when I ate meat. There is no diet or lifestyle that does no harm. Even growing plants involves killing mice, gophers, insects, and worms, exploiting bees, exploiting human workers. I think the best we can do is make thoughtful, conscious compromises that we can live with. For some of us, that means going vegan/vegetarian, but other paths are possible, too.

Well done! I found you through this week's challenge. It sounds like you're a much more experienced plastic avoider than I am! I reuse those big 1lb lidded plastic tubs for the bulk bins and got around the milk thing by buying raw almonds in bulk and making my own almond milk. I attempted to make yogurt out of almond milk and failed. Oh well...

The produce stickers seem to be unavoidable unless you shop at the farmers' market all the time.
My recent post Change the World Wednesday: My Plastic Free Week

I try to keep in mind that recycling comes after reusing and reducing and shop carefully to avoid ending up with a lot of packaging. I'm learning to make my own pizza (no boxes!) and cook most of my food from scratch. One thing that I'd like to be better about is bringing my own takeout boxes when I go out to eat. The actual recycling part is pretty simple -- our city just has one big collection bin for recyclables, and then we make occasional special trips to get rid of batteries, spent light bulbs, and e-waste.

I'm in! (Sort of. I went vegetarian for completely non-environmental reasons a few years ago, so every day is meatless.) I didn't learn to cook until after I stopped eating meat, which was helpful -- no favorite recipes to try to salvage. Tips...hmm. I think dishes that were meant to taste good without meat are more appealing than using a lot of substitutes -- good cuisines to venture into for vegetarian recipes are Indian, Thai, Chinese...actually, most Asian cuisines offer lots of vegetarian options without the heaviness of dairy, as western vegetarian food tends to focus on. Also, don't worry about protein. Even vegetarians and vegans in this country get way more than we need!

Here's one of my favorite vegetarian sandwich fillers. It does kind of taste like tuna/chicken salad, but it's good in its own right. http://yeahthatveganshit.blogspot.com/2007/08/moc...

We live in such a fascinating world, and we don't even know it most of the time. I 'met' some of these guys in the documentary Blue Planet -- if you haven't seen it, it is an amazing series. It and its companion series Planet Earth were actually fairly influential in waking me up to the extent of the impact humans have on the natural world.

Thank you for writing this! I'd love to live in a world where it is socially acceptable to choose not to have kids -- for environmental or other reasons -- and judging by the number of childfree articles that have been popping up in the last few years, we're getting at least a little closer.

It's interesting that environmental concerns played such a large role in your case. Going by the other childfree people I've met, most of us simply don't desire to have our own children and have known it from a very early age. (Case in point: I joined the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement as a precocious fourteen year old.) The environmental aspect upholds, but doesn't shape, my decision. It can be a useful answer when people who ask why I don't want kids, but I'm much more likely to offer the truth: I'm happy with just my spouse and a cat. I like my quiet life the way it is.

The body oil sounds perfect. I hadn't heard of this company before, so thanks for bringing it to my attention!
ailanna at hotmail dot com

I love 'Where Ice Meets the Sky.' It would be awesome in my dining room!
ailanna at hotmail dot com