Kathy Blanchard

Thinking green is not a fad. It's an imperative. And it's no more a liberal or conservative thing than it's about being Democrat or Republican. It's about living a rich, healthy life in community with all around us. It's about learning to thrive as humans while allowing others to do so in their own way, too. That goes beyond political platforms and social ideologies. As naturists, we have an added tie to going green. It's rooted in our heritage, and¿I'd say¿it's rooted in who we are. Or at least who we claim to be.

Early European advocates of social nudity in the 1910s-30s heralded the benefits of open-air nakedness by tying it to a healthy diet (often vegetarian), club bans against alcohol and tobacco, time spent naked outdoors away from cities, and plenty of exercise. All this was indirectly a green approach to living, but tended more¿especially in Germany¿to address concerns for social ill health and to regain a perceived purity of social class or race. Getting "back to nature" was not for the good of the natural environment; it was solely to allow a slice of humanity to tap into Nature's strength and purity.

Naturist/nudist romanticism was about people and for people. There's nothing wrong with that, but many naturists today understand that we are not and cannot stand alone on Earth. We live in community with other things, and for our sake and theirs we need to tread this planet lightly. Fortunately, there are many things we can do while living a flourishing naturist life and minimizing any our impact on the Earth. And most of these things are easy, inexpensive, and fun.

There are many obvious suggestions made routinely that anyone can follow. Turn off unused lights and appliances in the house. Don't waste water. Recycle what your city is set up to recycle. Pre-cycle by (a) reusing items instead of throwing them away and purchasing new ones, and (b) buying things in bulk to avoid extra packaging.

But naturism opens a whole new world of green ideas. Here is a list of 30 green things naturists can do in the course of their naked lives.

Home Nudity

1. Go nude. That may seem obvious, but how many naturists or nudists actually spend much time naked? Living more hours naked each day results in a dramatic drop in my laundry, which in turn reduces my water and energy use (along with my related bills). It also reduces the amount of soap I release(in my case)into the Puget Sound.

2. Buy eco-friendly clothes. We've got to wear clothes at least some of the time, but we can buy fewer of them. When really needed, we can buy those made from earth-friendlier materials like hemp or organic cotton. I'm glad to see TNS moving in this direction with organic T-shirts offered in their new Ecotique.

3. Shop with eco-friendly bags. The debate continues as to whether paper or plastic is environmentally best, but bringing your own re-usable bag beats them both. It's taken me a month to remember to bring my bags to the grocery store, but it's recently become an enjoyable habit. And yes, the TNS Ecotique has a new shopping bag, too. I'm waiting for someone at the store to ask me about the logo.

4. Host neighborhood CO parties. If there are naturists living nearby, why not do what people did before television ruled our evenings, and invite them over for a clothing-optional dinner or pot-luck? Travel to your house will have little negative impact on the environment, and you¿ll make friends and sustain neighborhood relationships.

Naked Gardening

5. Go native. It's easier and less expensive to work with native plants than with ornamentals or exotics. Natives thrive in your weather patterns, require less watering, are more resistant to harmful regional insects and disease, and provide food and shelter for native birds and other animals.

6. Grow food. The amount of energy needed¿in terms of gasoline and water¿to transport tomatoes from Chile to your local store is astounding. If you have a private yard, you can plant veggies as nature intended. If you have the space, you might plant enough to give to friends or a local food bank.

7. Grow organic. Save money by avoiding pesticides and herbicides. You almost surely don't need them, regardless of what the chemical companies say. When I was working for one of the largest nurseries in Seattle, my boss instructed me to always push a product if a customer asked about bugs or weeds. I knew from my years as a professional gardener, however, that a lot of gardening problems could be resolved with elbow grease or a household organic concoction. My yard has been organic for years, and the health of the soil and plants helps keep weeds, disease, and pests away, and invites the kind of insects that prevent such troubles from occurring in the first place. Plus my veggies are healthier to eat.

8. Compost. Any garden will produce yard waste, and compost bins can turn it into a primo soil amendment. There are instructions for building various styles of bins online and at any nursery. My husband Mark and I built one in the corner of our yard, and I try to get him to flip the compost every couple of weeks. He's generally willing if the neighbors are gone and he can do it nude. We then can use the soil each year in our veggie beds.

9. Build a worm bin. Those little red worms eat through an amazing amount of kitchen vegetable waste. A large box with a lid is easy to build, and the worms will nibble happily on most of the trimmings from dinner, leaving nutrient-rich castings that cost a fortune at nurseries. Our smell-free bin is right outside our kitchen door, so it's easy to get to nude.

10. Use rain barrels. We get plenty of rain in Seattle, but I still catch what I can in a barrel for watering potted plants. I took a downspout from my roof, directed it into a barrel I bought for this purpose, attached a hose to a spigot at the bottom, and am ready with rain water at a moment's notice. It's a simple way to save water.

11. Nudist club adopt-a-plots. If you belong to a nudist club, the management may be open to members "adopting" small plots of land for small-scale gardening. If the club opts for a "pea-patch" approach, the members working the small plots get to keep the food they produce. Or the club might prefer a "co-op" approach, where members take turns working the beds, and the club gets to have a feast on the veggies when harvested. And how cool would it be for a club to become known locally as the group that gardens naked and gives the produce to the local food bank?

Naturist Travel

12. Go local. Use less fuel and spend less time in your car by enjoying the clothing-optional clubs, hot springs, beaches, lakes, or friends' back yards nearby. Traveling afar will remain fun, but taking greater advantage of what's near to home will be easier on the Earth and provide more opportunities to get to know naturists close at hand.
 
13. Go with friends. Carpool when possible. This one's a no-brainer. With gas prices going into the stratosphere, you can either support OPEC (like they need our money) or go green while letting local friends share gas costs. And again you are getting closer to real people while living greener.

14. Bike or bus. I used to be close enough to clothing-optional More Mesa Beach in Santa Barbara to bike there any afternoon I wished. Biking to clothing-optional sites is more challenging now, as there are none nearby and I'm no longer in my 20s. But you might check out the sites in your area and see if anything is close enough for an energizing bike ride. It's surprising how fast you can get somewhere by bike, given the traffic we slog through in cars these days.

15. Star pattern tours. Instead of taking the car on long road trips driving to a new site each day, consider aiming for one home base clothing-optional site that has naturist options close by. You'll save gas, money, and time. As more naturists figure this out, more clubs and resorts will see the financial advantage to advertising their proximity to other naturist sites. Clubs are often great, but in my opinion the best are ones I can use as base camps for local naturist exploring.

16. Wilderness travel. For an even greener "footprint," my husband and I often drive directly to a back country trailhead or shoreline, park, and leave our car for a few days while we backpack or paddle naked into the wild. For those few days, we use virtually no fuel, our diet is minimal with low ecological impact, and we return healthier. Add to that our increase in appreciation and regard for Nature; these trips are coolly green clothes-free vacations.

17. Be physically active. I'm probably like most America adults, and don't really have a huge need to relax. I can do so at home. Or when I'm dead. What I need is more bodily activity. It's good for my health and mind to be physically active while on vacation, and as it turns out, these are the kind of things that are often free or inexpensive, use up fewer natural resources, and are gentler on the Earth. For my naturist vacations I'm thus looking for opportunities to snorkel, swim, kayak, walk, bike, or otherwise move around.

Natural Lifestyle

18. Eat food; not too much; mostly plants. Author Michael Pollan's suggestion is as succinct as any. And we can follow his advice nude! Our American eating habits have made us some of the most unhealthy people in the world, and I'm thus trying to eat less and lower on the food chain. It would be healthier for me, free up some resources to hungry people, and be easier on the environment. Mark and I are experimenting with various cooking styles that make for light, tasty meals leaning toward veggies. So far we're liking it.

19. Go with the season. Flying tomatoes from Chile to my grocer is ecologically inefficient, but it's not much worse than my buying produce from U.S. hot houses. The amount of energy required to artificially produce food out of season is often greater than what's required to ship it from abroad. Keeping track of the impact of buying imported produce can drive Mark and me crazy, but we're starting to enjoy what our region can produce season by season. And we can always cook and eat naked.

20. Reduce consumerism. I'm convinced that happiness doesn't come from acquiring new things. My energy is put to much better use developing good relationships with real, face-to-face people, to living a healthier life, and to fostering a rich community in my part of the world. There is wealth in simplicity; and in buying less, I can help sustain the Earth's vitality.

21. Exercise more. I need to remind myself of this as much as anyone, but a routine of enjoyable exercise will make each of us healthier. I'm not so worried about impressing people with a "perfect" body; I'm more concerned with being healthy enough to do the things I like to do. With stronger bodily health comes added opportunity to do the physical things that in turn are good for the environment. It's kind of an upward or downward spiral. The more I exercise, the better I feel, and the more I can do things like walk to the store rather than drive my car. The less active I am, the worse I feel, and the more likely I'm going to use my car for every errand.

22. Go to bed and get up earlier. Save electricity and use the light of day. Simple. And naturists are supposed to like sunshine. Yes?

23. Kill your TV, and seriously wound your Internet connection. The amount of time and electricity Americans waste staring at video monitors is astounding. I got rid of my last TV in the late-1970s. If I go by what is purportedly the national average for daily television viewing, I've freed up nearly 43,000 hours for myself. In those hours, I've gone to the beach with friends (usually naked), gardened in my back yard (sometimes naked), or gone biking (less often naked). I've saved hundreds of dollars not being hooked up to a cable company. And as for the Internet, it's certainly useful, but when the day comes that I spend more time surfing for information on nude beaches than I do actually bodysurfing naked at beaches, I'll no longer be a naturist.

Doing Good

24. Beach clean-ups. Most beach and hot spring support groups know all about clean-ups. They can be done nude, are kind of fun, and can help cement good relationships with site authorities. Sometimes, though, naked friends and I have selected a secluded public lands site and did a clean-up simply for the good of the environment. It was like paying some rent for our time on earth.

25. Paddle clean-ups. Just as fun is to kayak or canoe naked along a river, lake, or ocean shore collecting trash. There's a lot you can't get to from on-shore clean-ups, and it's not that hard to drag a large garbage bag alongside your boat as you paddle. If you have the confidence, you can let a local reporter know about the clothes-free event ahead of time to get the story in the paper. After you're finished and have taken the trash away, be sure at least to tell a site authority about what you did and give local naturists a good name with that agency.

26. Swim clean-ups. I don't yet know of anyone else who likes doing this, but Mark and I love nude open water swimming, so we get a kick out of exploring offshore along isolated lakes and diving down to pick up trash. We swim to shore and dump the stuff, and walk along later to pick it up. Lake Tahoe was awesome for this, as the string of clothing-optional beaches at the northeast portion of the lake made for an afternoon of world-class, eco-friendly skinny-dipping.

27. Trail maintenance. If you live near wilderness areas, there are often trails overgrown with invasive weeds. It's fun to get small groups of friends for a naked work party a couple of miles up a seldom-used trail in need of clearing.

28. Eco-restoration. If you understand the native plant environment locally, there are often secluded locations on public lands that could use some small-scale restorations. This really requires some investigation beforehand, as you don't want to mess up a federal or state agency's plans for a site, but often an agency overseeing a clothing-optional beach will be happy to work with naked naturists in tree planting, weeding, or hardscaping projects.

29. Plant a tree. This is way too easy not to do. Every leaf that reaches to the sky sucks up a little bit of CO2, reducing by just that bit our global warming. Be sure, though, to plant saplings that are native to the area, and in sites that won't cause problems. Get some advice from a nursery on how and when to plant the trees, get naked, hike out into the wilds, and stick the little guys into the ground.

30. Recycling donations. Most individuals and a growing number of nudist clubs are learning how to recycle glass, aluminum, paper, and other products. The same goes for donations of used but usable clothes. Naturist groups can donate these materials to a local charity, thus not only reusing limited resources, but also assisting the needy and giving naturism a good name.

All of these things are fairly easy to do. Many of my friends and I have done most of them at one time or another, and intend to keep at them when we can. For the naked eco-warriors in the world, there are more assertive steps worth considering. Getting involved with organized Earth-friendly public events like World Naked Bike Ride or World Naked Gardening Day can give a strong green message associated with the body acceptance naturism proclaims. Creative minds can think of new and zanier ways of telling the world what it means to be nude and natural. That's the kind of world I want to live in.
 

Site Map | Privacy Policy | Contact | © The Naturist Society