On Being Frugal – The Vegan Korean Way

Being Vegan can be a really cheap way to live.

To make animal products is an expensive proposition, and the costs are (justly) passed onto the consumer. A pound of beef takes over 2,000 gallons of water, while a pound of rice (well known for its need for water) takes 600 gallons. A pound of wheat takes even less, at 150 gallons. I’m not going to link to sources. Go look it up, and then come back and argue with me.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Do you remember hearing this mantra? Good. Maybe we sat in on the same enviro-meetings. Either that, or we had the same parents.

Reduce:

Figuring out how to live with less crap is the most elegant solution.  Do you really need more clothes from Patagonia, even if you’re helping The Cause by buying that sweater made from recycled plastic bottles? Do you need yet another pair of comfort casual sandals from ragazzivegan.com? More vegan ice cream? (hmm, maybe)  Hey, I’m all for supporting environmental causes and if I really do need something, I’ll buy it from a company I admire.  But sometimes, less is more.

The whole simple living movement makes sense from the standpoint that if you don’t have  tons of crap, you’ll have time and space to do things that would actually help you. You know, like getting a job, or sleeping.

Reuse:

You help the planet when you reuse stuff. Thrift stores. Garage sales. Picking stuff up off the curb. Getting hand-me-downs from your older sister. Anyone can buy a cute cocktail dress for $500. However, not that many people can do it on a budget of $5. It’s a mental challenge. You like mental challenges right? You don’t? Oh Jesus.
Note: there has been a rash of bedbug infestations in larger cities, so I think the reuse thing is going by the wayside a bit.

Recycle:

Recycling is the least useful of the three, imho, because you have to take your used crap to someone, who will create something new out of it. Seems like an awful lot of effort to me. I lived with this raw foodist chick who ate out every day and carefully collected and washed all her takeout containers, putting each type of container into the appropriate recycling bin. By the end of a week, we had a mountain of trash, which she dutifully DROVE to the recycling center. Me, I ate bulk oatmeal and bananas, because I was poor. I had almost no trash, except maybe some used tissues and banana peels. Was raw foodist chick really doing the planet a favor? You tell me. I recycle, but I try not to make trash in the first place.

Being Korean can be a really cheap way to live.

If I were a Korean-American stand-up comedian, this is where I break out the mom stereotypes and start screaming into the microphone in pidgin English. And hey, who am I to break tradition?

<begin screaming pidgin English>
My children waste everything! I remember my daughter (who still doesn’t have a husband) threw away this tissue after she blew her nose. That tissue had a perfectly good unused side! So I took it out of the trash and put it back on her desk, where she could use the good side one more time. I was trying to do her a favor, but she gets mad at me!

Don’t worry about the bugs in the rice! During the war, we always had bugs in the rice. You just have to carefully wash them out.

Why are you throwing this away? This is a perfectly good tampon, you just have to wash…(just kidding, she never said this).
</end screaming pidgin English>

More tips from my family:

Arguing with each other at home is a cheap way to entertain ourselves, and as such, preferable to a peaceful outing at the movie theater.

The library is the most precious resource on the planet, not just for the books, but for central air and heat. I often run into my dad at the public library.

Gyms are for sissies and fools. Go to the backyard and pull some weeds instead.