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Mister Miyagi's Guide to Going Green: 5 Questions to Always Ask to Think Green and Be Green

Or... How learning to think greener makes it easier to be greener

By Matt McDermott
Brooklyn, NY, USA | Mon Jun 22 12:30:00 EDT 2009

Planet Green readers, raise your hand if you've seen the Karate Kid. I imagine a great deal of you know how Daniel gets whooped by a bunch of kids before they're driven off by the elderly Mr Miyagi, whom Daniel persuades to teach him karate. Except that Mr Miyagi doesn't appear to be too concerned about kata and more concerned about teaching the proper way to paint the fence, wax the car, etc.

What does this have to do with green (other than Mr Miyagi was a caretaker/gardener in the building Daniel and his mother moved in to)?

Well, in many ways being the greenest person you can be is probably best accomplished by thinking like Mr Miyagi. Every moment is one in which you can develop you're green thinking skills. If you do that, if you learn the very basic motions of green, some basic rules of thumb, the more complex decisions become that much easier—the stronger and more lasting your green practice will become.

Here are a couple examples:

1. Is it reusable or biodegradable?

For any product you buy the hierarchy of questions you need to ask yourself is: Reusable, Biodegradable or Recyclable, None of the above. It's sort of a green rock, scissors, paper.

Is the item reusable? Reusable beats everything. Most of the time.

The only exception being if you already have too many of something. We've done such a good job in getting the reusable shopping bag meme out there that you can easily develop a surplus just from attending a couple concerts or events where they give out free swag. Ditto for travel coffee mugs and water bottles.

2. Is the item biodegradable or recyclable?

These really have to be asked at the same time. Biodegradable and recyclable is probably better than just recyclable in most instances. Even though paper and plastic bags both take a similar amount of resources to make them, considering people's propensity to litter, I'd rather see a paper bag improperly disposed of than a plastic one. At least that paper one will decompose. That plastic bag is around for your life, your children's lives, their children's and beyond.

3. Is the item non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, non-reusable? Stay away.

This is the very antithesis of green thinking. When you're done with that product it's just going to sit in the ground, or river, or lake, or ocean for time immemorial. If this is the only option you've got in front of you, do without.

4. Can you pronounce the ingredients?

Perhaps the simplest test in determining the quality of something you're going to put in or on your body, is simply asking yourself if you can pronounce the ingredients. And I'm not talking about not knowing the correct way to say asafoetida or some other new-to-you spice.

I'm talking about multi-syllable words that bear no resemblance to anything you yourself could actually grow in your backyard. If whatever you're looking at be it food, a health and beauty product has anything like that, put it right down and move on.

If you can't visualize all the ingredients, still less pronounce them then you can be assured that the product, 99 times out of 100, is not green. The distance all those ingredients traveled adds up too. The simpler you keep things the better.

5. How did the product get here?

Even if you're getting the majority of your food locally, and try to buy locally made consumer goods, there's still probably a good deal that's imported.

Here's a rough hierarchy of energy efficiency: Ship, train, truck, plane. You very well may have known that order, but not the impact.

A recent study of the carbon footprint of wine showed that trucking wine from Northern California to Southern California was roughly equal to shipping wine via ship all the way from Chile. And on the East Coast, wine from France sent by ship had a much lower carbon footprint than sending it across the whole country in a truck. Put a plane in any of those distances and the carbon footprint starts climbing quickly.

Keep in mind that's just one part of the equation, and keeping the supply chain as short as possible is a good thing; not to mention, there well be other benefits that outweigh just the transport method.

However if you're looking at transportation that's a decent (if basic) rule of thumb. It works for moving yourself around too: Just add in bus before train and substitute car for truck.

Don't sweat it if all this talk about micro-managing your carbon footprint and ecological footprint seems nitpicky. Keep these broader concepts in mind. There will certainly be exceptions to all of these rules‚ but when you starting to go green it's better to get the basic forms down before you worry too much about the fine-tuning your green lifestyle.

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