DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

We went to the SF Green Festival over the weekend. It was as cool as ricecream. I expected a small and forgettable and haphazardly-managed event, but I was surprised — this festival was huge and completely professional. There were over 200 exhibitors and a crowd so large it was difficult to get around, shoulder-to-shoulder idealists and bright-eyed vegetarians. I heard that the organizers expected 20,000 attendees.

I insisted on visiting every booth. Who knew what earth-friendly treasures I might discover? And with Chrismas approaching, this was prime shopping time. Never mind the fact that nearly nobody on my gift list gives an unsprayed fig about saving the earth. Maybe they’d appreciate organic rat poison (booth #279) or a six-pack of WholeSoy Cultured Soy Drink (booth #409) anyway.

BTW, I tasted the WholeSoy drink. It was really good, surprisingly good. It tasted like a yoghurt smoothie, but without any undertones of bovine growth hormone, mad cow disease, salmonella, meat, or fur. The woman at the booth recited a list of six live bacterial cultures in the mix, as if she had recited the same list a thousand times already. Probably she had. She didn’t say why ingesting any of those Latin-named compounds might be a good idea. Generally I try not to consume things I can’t pronounce, especially if they were originally discovered in somebody’s Petri dish.

A company called Earthware makes biodegradable picnicware — knives and spoons and forks that look like plastic, but are made of wheat or corn. They’re compostable. Unlike plastic versions, they’re made from a renewable resource. Unlike plastic versions, these won’t be around in 1000 years, clogging up your descendants’ back yards.

Needless to say, these utensils are a lot more expensive than plastics, which are stamped out by the millions in offshore factories. That’s one of the biggest downsides to the pursuit of renewable resources and nontoxic living — it is expensive. It’s sad to think that the lifestyles optimized by economies of scale are so poisonous.

Another neat product we saw: a flooring material called Marmoleum. It is linoleum, as far as I can tell: a flax-based floor covering made entirely of natural raw materials, without chemical solvents. They say it’s antiseptic, anti-static, allergen free, and (of course) biodegradable. It looks great and feels good underfoot. I think our next bathroom remodel will start at the Marmoleum website.

Lots of organic cotton and hemp clothing vendors were in attendance. Some of the hemp vendors couldn’t help themselves — apparently it wasn’t enough to promote hemp because it grows easily without pesticides and makes high-quality food, fiber, and pulp — they had to push the NORML party line too. Personally I think the war on some drugs is wrong-headed, but still the hemp people would have an easier time selling T-shirts if they wouldn’t also sell decorative water pipes, wink wink, nudge nudge.

One of the hemp clothing vendors displayed a device I’d never seen: an aluminum cylinder, maybe four inches in diameter, disassembled into sections, each of which clearly had some functional purpose. I was mystified as to what that purpose might be. The device’s lid screwed off to reveal what looked like an iron maiden, if an aeronautical engineer had taken it upon himself to design a palm-sized torture device (while listening to, say, Iron Maiden). The underside of the lid was machined into a 3D skyline of sharp edges and teeth.

Another piece of the cylinder had a very fine mesh screen in it. A third was a reservoir of sorts, screwed below the screen.

I had to ask — “What the heck is that thing?” The sales guy had a free-spirit sort of vibe. He dressed in hemp and, as would become evident, smoked it too. “It makes (hashish),” he exclaimed enthusiastically, whispering the word “hashish” and glancing around as he said it, as if a DEA agent wouldn’t have been clubbed into unconsciousness by hairy-armpitted vegan warrior princesses at the door of the convention center.

“See,” he went on, unscrewing the lid, “you put your (stuff) in here… screw down the lid… the powder goes through the screen and collects down here! Then you can (smoke) it, or lace your (joints) with it, or cook with it, you know, make (brownies)!”

He was chatty. I wondered if this was the first time he’d demonstrated the hashish grinder that day. Maybe he’d led a tutorial before lunch.

He was just one character of many. The whole crowd was colorful, like a madras skirt in a tie-dye factory. I saw corporate CEOs in (bleached) oxford shirts. I saw Haight St. refugees with open-toe sandals, their dreadlocks tied up in African knit caps. The former smelled of expensive cologne. The latter, of BO and patchouli. Both made me queasy.

My sensitivities notwithstanding, I liked the crowd. We all shared a vision of reducing waste, developing sustainable lifetsyles, and being healthy. For the most part we had all decided not to live under the illusions painted by junkfood vendors, the makers of dangerous oversized automobiles, or the politicians who spin untruths into reassuring PR pap. It was comforting to see so many people who, as unlike me as they might have appeared, believed a lot of the same things. It made me hopeful.