As all things “sustainable” become ever more common, self-identified green consumers begin to shed the hairy hippie image that’s long been associated with eco-consciousness. At least that’s the hope of the chipper website called Ideal Bite. The site delivers green-living information, but just as importantly, it delivers the feeling that you, the visitor, are young and urbane rather than smelly and dreadlocked.
The information part: Click around in the Tip Library—an archive of daily e-mail tips on green living that you can sign up to receive—and find out, for example, why those ubiquitous sticky yoga mats are bad for you. (Why? Because they contain PVC, “considered to be the most toxic of all plastics.”) Conveniently, there are links right below this to other sites where you can buy PVC-free mats. Or learn about how reading newspapers in print contributes to the death of trees. (Put this tree-killing media down right now! Do you hear us?!) The Bite suggests getting your news online instead. Whatever.
It’s a stretch to call some of these tips green. One asserts that you should buy this gadget that vacuums the air out of a half-drunk wine bottle in order to preserve the contents, and that this somehow “creates fewer empty bottles to recycle.” Wha? Many tips, though, are fairly useful, and if you’re interested in eco-friendly products you can browse the “marketplace” section of the site to discover Ecos laundry detergent and Pet Promise natural dog food.
The image part: illustrations of slim, stylish white people wearing sunglasses and consuming refreshments, and reader comments like “Keep on rockin’ the daily tips, I am loving ‘em,” (from Attie in Flagstaff, Arizona). “Is your shampoo making you fat?” asks the site. “Want to look like you stepped out of the pages of Vogue without feeling green guilt?”
Eco-consciousness and exuberant mainstream culture might make strange bedfellows, but they’ll have to join up if we’re ever to solve our planetary crisis. In that light, maybe Ideal Bite is a glimpse of green to come.
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