What about clothes that are “Made in USA”? Does that mean it was made in the states? Not necessarily; the territories count too. Is that what you thought you were getting? If you’re concerned about the carbon emissions necessary to get your new clothes to you, it’s not much closer than India or China.

What about using the bus vs carpooling? What about “going paperless”? Is that really green? The bank websites say it is, but who knows if that’s actually the case. What about reusable bags vs. paper bags. Which is really better?

Do we have the time to figure this stuff out? Do we have a good way to measure the impact we have?

I guess the point of this is, When you buy something with the word GREEN labeled all over it, don’t let yourself believe that your conscience is off the hook. It’s not that simple. Buying “green” still sends a good message, it’s just that the products may not be doing real tangible good for the world.

Keeping score in general feels bad when it comes to service, and money is the ultimate way of keeping score.

Also, how much money you have isn’t an indication of how much good karma you’ve amassed. When we buy things all we see is the end product, and as we all know, the ends don’t usually justify the means. If the food you’re eating now was procured in such a way that the soil underneath has been depleted of nutrients, is it worth the cheaper price than the one that was farmed sustainably? The plastic option may be cheaper but it’s often not recyclable or biodegradable. Is the computer that ultimately ends up in an electronics junk heap poisoning the earth worth the affordable price? We don’t see these negatives when we buy a new product. And even when there is information on products (Organic! Free range!) it can often be misleading. You can meet all the standards of organic and still not produce your products sustainably. There’s no regulation on what “Free range” actually means.

So yes, it’s very clear that you can generate lots of money by doing things that are unsustainable. That is, the value you provided to the end user came at a cost to the earth or to others who don’t have a say in the free market.

And, of course, when you go to spend the money you can use it in very damaging ways: flights around the world, giant houses, more new stuff than you can count.

Money is like power. When you have a lot of it it’s tempting and easy to misuse it. It’s also tempting to do amass it in less than ethical ways.

I suppose, then, that it’s not surprising that a primary sustainability metric is income. The more money you make the less likely it is that you’re living sustainably. Why? Because of all the reasons I’ve listed above. To generate money you probably waste a lot and you’re probably will to spend money on things that are also wasteful.

It certainly seems like the only way to do good for the world is to be OK with living on virtually nothing. But that sounds less than wonderful.

Can you make money sustainably?

There are some occupations that don’t do that much damage to the environment. Blogging, for instance, is fairly low. People aren’t buying new computers for the sake of reading a blog, and there are lots of ways to get access to said blog without even owning a computer. In general anything where there is no physical product is very low on the impact scale. (At least that seems intuitive to me… I don’t know if that’s actually the case.) Also with blogging and other content type things, it doesn’t matter all that much as you get more and more readers. With something like making cars or electronic stuff or plastic candy dispensers or disposable diapers, the more customers you have the greater your negative impact on the earth.

I imagine with one of these low impact type careers (especially content generation) you could have the potential to make lots of money essentially guilt free. And if you’re wise in the spending of your money you could have an incredibly positive impact on the world.

It’s a jar of little origami stars with inspirational quotes on each star. Inexpensive but time consuming to make and it’s a really great way to start my day. It’s like opening a fortune cookie except I get to do it every morning  and I don’t have to throw out a cookie.

If you’ve got plenty of time, but not plenty of cash, or if you want to give more personal gifts this year consider this one.

There’s a few websites with instructions on how to make the stars. Here’s one. Here’s another.

She used a cotton ball holder, but you could use an old jelly or pasta sauce jar. For the paper, my friend used old notebook paper which she hand colored, but you could use fancy scrapbooking paper or whatever kind of paper you like. Etsy has ready-made supplies too.

Finding quotes can be a bit challenging. I suggest picking a theme. For instance, my friend picked “Power to Women” and most of the quotes are (unsurprisingly) from women. People like Gilda Radner, Iris Murdoch, and Sophia Loren.

Other themes you could consider:

• Love
• Inspirational
• Religious
• Philosophical
• Poor Richard’s Almanack
• Bad Puns…

I like this gift because it’s personal and it isn’t all that wasteful. All materials (the paper and the container) can be things you’d otherwise throw-away. Thrifty and thoughtful!

Yet, if you read personal development literature (like any of Steven Covey’s books, for instance), you’ll find that highly effective people tend to believe that there is indeed plenty or everything for everyone. They have what is called an “abundance mentality” (AM), the belief that scarcity is a fallacy. The not quite so effective people tend to have “scarcity mentality” (SM), the belief that if one person wins another must lose, that resources are finite.

It seems both strange and wrong to me that a delusional belief can be more effective than a more accurate one, and that’s what this post is looking into. How does AM work in a finite world?

Examining the Definitions

Before we really try to answer that question, lets examine what kind of beliefs people with AM and SM have.

Unsurprisingly, these kind of beliefs affect a person’s personal development. Here a few examples of the desires a person with AM has versus the desires of a person with SM.

A person with abundance mentality competes with himself. His potential is unlimited. He’s attempting to capitalize on an abundant resource.

A person with scarcity mentality believes that competition happens externally. She either competes with others or refuses to compete. There’s only one “Number One” spot. It’s a scarce resource. If she’s attempting to be THE Best, she won’t be happy for anyone else being their best since they now become a threat.

Assuming AM is possible, it’s not too hard to see how it’s superior to SM. With AM you’re free to be generous because there’s plenty of everything for everyone. No guilt. Everyone can be happy. No jealousy either since you’re only comparing yourself to yourself. Everyone wins. Life is good.

On the other hand, with SM you aren’t free to be generous because you’re compromising your own position. You’ll feel guilt either way. Jealousy is everywhere. Any win means that someone else has lost. Life isn’t all that great.

A Finite Earth

Image by: woodleywonderworks

As I mentioned earlier, AM has always seemed like a delusional belief to me. The Earth is finite. There are only 36,794,240,000 acres of land available on earth. Divided up between all 6 billion humans, that’s about 6 acres for each of us. If anyone has a 10 acre plot, that means someone else must have less. Even if you account for children and the infirm who couldn’t take care of 6 acres, there will still be a finite number of acres per person. And if you think wild animals ought to have a home, that’ll decrease the acres per person by even more.

This applies to other resources too. Oil, water, trees, and other finite resources will eventually be mined away. We don’t have an ever replenishing abundance of this stuff. One day it will be gone. The earth can’t support all 6 billion of us using these resources at the rate 1st world countries are using them.

It certainly seems as though abundance mentality doesn’t work when it comes to finite resources. A person can pretend all he wants that we have an abundant supply of oil… and when it inevitably runs out he’ll get a rude awakening.

Stuff Versus People

The trick to getting AM to work is to see that abundance isn’t supposed to apply to stuff (it’s already been shown that physical resources are limited), it’s supposed to apply to people. Or more specifically, to human potential.

If you look hard enough, every human want can be satisfied multiple ways. If you’re hungry there are plenty of different things you can eat or do to curb your hunger. If you’re lonely you can fix that loneliness by spending time with friends or meeting new people or distracting yourself.  Chances are for every problem there is at least one of solution that will result in a net gain for society and for everyone else. Let’s look at a couple of examples: oil and property.

Example 1: Oil

Oil is a finite resource. Oil is also, for all intents and purposes, energy. It enables us to drive our cars, heat our homes, fly us across the world, among many other things. If oil couldn’t do that or if something else could do it, would we have the same love for oil? I think not.

There isn’t an abundance of oil, but there are lots and lots of ways to create energy. We just need to find some that work well.

Example 2: Property

Remember how we only have 6 acres of land? How can we feel comfortable having a 10 acre estate knowing that we have it at the expense of someone else? We could rationalize it by telling ourselves that “not everyone wants a large estate” or something similar, but that kind of reasoning seems a bit weak to me.

It also is the type of resource that’s often wanted for its own sake, meaning it can’t be replaced by something else that does the job.

The problem here is that you can’t justify living on that land all by yourself. Other organisms need a place to live too. The question to ask then, is who do you feel comfortable sharing the land with? Maybe you could let a significant portion of it go wild to provide a home for animals or maybe you could invite other people to live on your estate too.

Or you could go a different route and donate money to research ways to acquire more land. There’s a finite amount of land on earth, but we don’t necessarily have to live on earth. I bet there’s a space colonization project somewhere.

There isn’t an abundance of land, but there are plenty of ways to make good use out of the land we have. And if we’re creative we may even find ways to increase the amount of land humans can colonize.

A Refined Definition of Abundance Mentality

There’s only one thing that’s truly truly truly in abundance: human ingenuity. A better definition of abundance mentality, then, is the following: it’s the belief that through human ingenuity all needs (both human and non-human) can be sustainably met. It’s the belief that we have the ability to solve every problem such that no-one loses. If you’re in a desert, AM doesn’t mean you believe that there’s plenty of water there, it means you can figure out a way to have water there that doesn’t take away from anyone else’s enjoyment of water.

So, yes, Abundance Mentality does work in a finite world because it’s not about believing in the abundance of things. It’s about believing in the abundance of human potential, something that’s not really possible to measure.

Get a Roommate

From what I’ve read on sustainability, getting a roommate is one of the most significant ways to help out the environment. Single family homes, while comfortable, are usually pretty wasteful. Rooms don’t get used. You have to heat and cool the whole thing. By getting a roommate you not only cut down on your monthly bill, you make better use out of your resource.

Buy Used Everything

This is something Aaron and I do all the time. For the most part our furniture comes from three sources: IKEA, our family, and thrift stores. Our living room couch is from Craig’s List. Our kitchen table is my parents’ old table that’d been collecting dust in their basement for years and years. My desk is a hand-me-down from my cousin. Our waffle-iron (among other things) is from Kiwanis Thrift Sale. Our coffee table is from Aaron’s grandparents. We have some pots and pans from The Salvation Army. There’s a painting in the living room we got from Treasure Mart. The filing cabinet in my office is from the Reuse Center. There’s a lot more stuff too that I just can’t think of off the top of my head. It’s all stuff we’d buy anyway, we just purchase it used instead of new.

There’s no shame in buying used, and in fact for kitchen gear I’d highly suggest it. Why buy a brand new, expensive mixer when you don’t know how much baking you’ll do?

Buy Factory Refurbished Electronics

They look like new. The work like new. But they cost a fraction of the retail price.

Case one: KitchenAid Professional 600 Series Mixer — Amazon.com price $343.24; Factory Refurbished: $239.00; Aaron got one a few months. No complaints. It looks and acts like new.

Case two: Brother Digital Copier and Printer – Amazon.com price: $442.10; Factory Refurbished: $249.98; We got one of these a few weeks ago. Again, no complaints.

Pretty significant savings, and it’s similar to buying used. It’s stuff that would normally get thrown away.

Bus or Carpool

I think we all know that this suggestion is both a money and environment saver, but I’ve found that it’s really hard to regularly use the bus or carpool when the car is so nice and available. The only times I’ve been able to use the bus consistently have been when I haven’t had a car around to tempt me. For instance, last month I got into a car accident and it took a couple weeks for the car to get fixed. During those two weeks I had no trouble whatsoever getting to the bus-stop on time. Before that, I got there…uh.. most of the time.

If that scenario sounds familiar and you’d like to use public transportation more regularly, I’d suggest fasting from your car for a month or so. Park it at your parents’ house or give the keys to your significant other with the rule that he/she decides when you can use the car. Without the car around to tempt you, you’ll be amazed at the ways you’ll find to get wherever you need to go. Hopefully by the time you’re done fasting you’ll have established a habit of using public transit and saved a bit of cash.

Bike

Exercise + No gasoline = synergy. Need I say more? Well, actually, I will say a bit more. The usefulness of biking is highly dependent on where you live. In suburbia where it takes one mile to get out of your subdivision and another three miles to get to the grocery story, a bike might not be all that useful. On the other hand, if you live near the downtown of your city, you’ll probably find that it takes as long to drive to certain places as it does to bike, and biking costs less since you don’t have to pay for parking. We live less than a mile from downtown, so biking for us makes a lot of sense.

Plant a Garden

Think healthy food is too expensive? Grow a garden. A packet of seeds costs only $2.00 and you get a lot more than two dollars worth of food. Of course, there are some start-up costs like wood and soil and whatnot, but those still pale in comparison to the yield you get from your crops.

As for the earth, the benefits should be obvious. At the very least, you can get your tomatoes from your backyard instead of across the country. That gasoline savings alone is pretty major.

This year Aaron and I are going to plant a Square Foot Garden. It’s allegedly very inexpensive and easy to maintain, but neither of us has first hand experience with it. I intend to blog about the process so you all can know if it’s as wonderful as advertised or at least you can learn from our mistakes.

Use The Library

If you regularly spend a significant amount of money on movies and books and want to cut back, use the library. I’m willing to bet that most of us don’t read many books more than once, so does it really make sense to buy a book and let it collect dust on the shelf? Plus it’s wasteful.

Libraries these days (at least in Michigan) have just about every book you might be interested in, and if your local library doesn’t have it you can usually acquire the book you want through inter-library loan. For books you intend to read or reference only once there’s really no reason (aside from impatience) to not get them from the library.

That’s it for now. I’ll be going to either Home Depot or Lowes this weekend to buy supplies for our garden, so you can expect a post about that very soon.