I have been vegan for over seven years now and I was vegetarian for 10 years prior to fully committing myself to veganism. My reasons for maintaining my commitment to veganism and my level of commitment have varied slightly over the years (full disclosure: it took me years to phase out my leather shoes and it was very hard for me to get rid of my docs, I have gone back and forth on the ethics of consuming honey and beeswax, I have recently knowingly used vitamins and skincare products containing animal-derived ingredients, and I sometimes assume free samples are vegan if it seems reasonably so). It is only with slight embarrassment that I admit the foundation for my veganism was the band Earth Crisis (my embarrassment may actually lie in the fact I do still like Earth Crisis and this embarrassment is only slight because even when I say this–nay, even when it comes on my iPod when people are in the car–most people believe that I am only being ironic). But the fact that Earth Crisis is at the heart of my veganism and my understanding of veganism as “more than a diet” is based in the total ideology of Earth Crisis. The notion of “earth crisis” or crises permeates each of the band’s songs and exceeds the basic, widely understood premise of veganism– the fact that animals suffer in the production of commodities for human consumption–calling attention to myriad problems that afflict the planet and its inhabitants–drug use, ecological degradation, sexual violence, misuse of power, and so on.
For me, because of Earth Crisis, veganism has always been about more than saving animals. Even when I was vegetarian, I justified my actions as “kinder to the earth” and paid attention to my actions and their impact on my future and the world around me in ways that it seemed my peers were not. For instance, I remember as an undergrad lecturing my roommates about the importance of recycling and removing recyclables from the trash after they failed to internalize the ideology I so adamantly presented. To this day, I remove roommates’ recyclables from the trash, though I am less likely to present full on ideological bombardments, in part because I have realized the recycling system is so incredibly flawed (more to follow). But, once again, I can’t help but believe doing the “kinder” thing is ultimately better than doing what has been proven to have a more detrimental impact and that there are easy ways to take more steps towards a holistic form of compassion as extolled by Earth Crisis (as angry as they were/are about how F-ed the world is).
Science is important to this claim, especially in regards to the importance of veganism to ecological sustainability. People who state that they are “eco-friendly” are essentially lying to themselves if they consume animal products that come from factory farms. Factory farms produce an exorbitant amount of waste, releasing toxins into the land, water, and air, and consume more resources than they produce. These farms also contribute to a variety of maladies in the humans working within and living close by. Trees and vegetation have been razed in setting new sites for massive poultry and cattle rearing and slaying facilities, and nearby homes have been vacated due to the insufferable stench of production (this is of course when residents can afford to do so, which is not the case in majority of instances). Vegan consciousness rising organizations, the most notable of course being People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, assert the importance of “going vegan!” for the wellbeing of the earth, but leave the ecological question at that–the “kinder” thing is really enough to save the planet (and, as expressed in PETA’s promotional materials, make you thinner, clear up your acne, give you a longer life, and increase your sexual and athletic endurance).
This isn’t to slam PETA, nor any other vegan organization or establishment, like Loving Hut, where I eat on a fairly regular basis despite my reservations about patronizing a business that still uses styrofoam takeout packaging. Instead, I want to question how it is that a moderate ethical stance or, dare I say, illusion regarding the ultimate moral uprightness of veganism has overwritten a need to consider the environmental sustainability of veganism in itself?
As vegan consumer goods become increasingly popular we are confronted with things like this:
This is a bottle of SO Delicious Almond Coconut Milk, which retails for over $4 for a 48oz bottle at Whole Foods. SO Delicious–formerly SOY Delicious before the majority of people decided soy was taboo and went apeshit about almonds and coconuts, which have zero protein, but are no doubt delicious–was one of the first companies to remove carrageenan from their products due to consumer concern over the aquatic coagulant and to quickly ensure all their products met non-GMO and GMO-transparency standards. The company promotes its commitment to sustainability on its website, ensuring consumers that products are “responsibly grown, ethically procured, and safely manufactured.” The company, conceived nearly 30 years ago, places the broad sweeping countercultural ethics of the 1970s at the foundation of its business model, as evidenced on the “About” section of their website, which states:
Our philosophy of doing business is based on our firm commitment to treating everyone and everything—animals, the environment, each other, our partners, and our community—with unwavering respect.
But where does the environment fall in the form of compassion expressed by SO Delicious on this bottle of Almond Coconut milk I am holding above?
Well, my answer is, it really doesn’t, except in the form of an ethical illusion served to the consumer via holistic packaging ideology and a sustainability mission on the company’s website. It is this type of commitment to compassion, however, that placates consumers into believing they are doing good by doing better, alleviating them of the work of interrogating the detriments relating to the production of the convenient, safe, aesthetically pleasing packaging of the products they consume and the wastes that result from them. Consumers fail to see outside of the ethical tunnel vision of their compassion as constrained by contemporary consumer capitalism, recognizing that SO’s commitment to compassion and passionate people is middling at best when (1) coconut almond milk has a fairly large carbon footprint in the sourcing of its ingredients (with most almonds grown in rough ridden California and coconuts grown god-knows-where since I couldn’t find any info on their website though I am sure as shit they aren’t grown in Oregon where SO is headquartered) of almonds and coconuts, but in their ability to simply walk into a Whole Foods and pickup a convenient, durable bottle
Unlike the majority of 1/2 gallon milk (any variety) containers, which are packaged in cartons that are primarily composed of paper (80%) that is then coated on both sides with in polyethylene (plastic, 20%), SO’s packaging is 100% polypropylene plastic, which, though scientifically proven as the safest plastic for humans and the most durable and reusable, is the most difficult to breakdown in the recycling process, meaning it requires the most energy (heat) to repurpose into new products.
While the process that separates polyethylene from paper is intensive and polyethylene does not have the structural integrity of polypropylene, the costs associated with polyethylene, including the energy required in its production and recycling, are less than polypropylene. Moreover, polypropylene is still not accepted in all community recycling programs and smaller polypropylene items, like yogurt cups and the large, bulbous caps of SO’s almond milk, physically fall out of the recycling stream, which serves better a filtering large items, like bottles and tubs. Problematically, as with all plastics, the purity and structure of polypropylene disintegrates over each trip through the recycling stream and to ensure that plastics used by humans meet FDA purity guidelines, virgin plastic is often added in the mix with the recycled plastic pellets in the composition of new packaging materials. AND, based on the fact that certain products require fine, thin, malleable, pure plastics (things like toothbrush bristles, lip balm tubes, infant bottles and bottle liners), no matter how much plastic circulates in society or how much of it is recycled, recycled plastic will never fully meet the needs of new product composition.
Considering the degraded quality of plastics after recycling in relation to the cost of these reclaim materials, there is, in fact, little pay off for employing recycled plastic aside from a sustainability perspective. Then there is the fact that recycling plastic results in the release of toxic gas into the atmosphere, in the same way the production of new plastic does… oh, and the fact that most people don’t even bother recycling, or at least not recycling everything, all the time, nor are they guaranteed that when they put something in a recycle bin that it will end up at a recycling facility (I am looking at you VIDA Fitness and your farce of a $2 a month “eco-fee”).
Of course SO isn’t the only brand of mass produced vegan delectables that we see taking a dubious stance on environmentalism. We have Califia Farms, a company that uses the same form of plastic bottling with the excessively large cap for all of its ‘milks’, Beyond Meat, with their meant-to-look-like-meat plastic tray and cellophane packaging inside of a cardboard sleeve, and Hampton Creek, whose Just Mayo is packaged in a plastic jar instead of glass. All of these companies have a stated commitment to the earth via veganism and the reduction of animal product consumption and, somehow, that, with at most some lip service to recycling, is enough. As these convenience products flood the marketplace, more consumers are willing to try reducing their meat and dairy consumption, but only in that these products are tasty and convenient. This is better than eating meat and dairy, especially sourced from distant factory farms. However, eating locally grown, in-season produce and bulk nuts, seeds, and grains would be best. But that is a lot of fucking work.
In the end, compassion demonstrated through the purchase of a mass produced commodity is a conditional compassion–one that makes the purchaser feel like the $4+ dollars they have spent on their almond milk is a “better,” “kinder” purchase than the money they have spent on dairy milk because the dairy milk contains something (even if only one thing) that makes it less compassionate. And when taken according to the words of the SO Delicious bottle, this is true. Nothing on the bottle itself is a LIE. But not lying and complete transparency to an overall ethical “commitment” are not the same. When there is money to be made, ethics are modified and negotiated. When convenience is at stake, ethics are also modified and negotiated. We can say this is an effect of the contemporary condition, but this negotiation must be seen as what it truly is–a series of deceptions we allow ourselves to believe (or consent to) in order to make our own circumstances easier at the expense of what is ultimately compassionate.
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