Can Your Friends Make You Green?

This post is part of October’s APLS Blog Carnival. Check out what others have to say about October’s topic of proselytizing green at Greenhab on October 19 or join the conversation yourself!

This month’s topic immediately made me think about a headline I saw recently that read “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” The article, which discusses how two social scientists, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, used data collected as part of the Framingham Heart Study to measure the impact people had on others in their life, included this quote:

By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people.

Friends also help people go green, I wondered?

When we first started making changes to green our life, we often felt alone. That feeling of isolation was, in and of itself, a barrier. On Tuesday mornings, it was tempting to sleep in a bit and let the recycling truck pass us by since we were then the only family on our block who would drag a recycling bin to the curb. I could feel the influence of our neighbors’ actions even though they hadn’t said a word.

On the flip side, a number of the changes we have made were spurred by everyday interactions with others. A helpful parent stopped me in the school parking lot to let me know one of our tires was a bit flat; as a result we started regular air pressure checks. We saw a lady at the grocery store using pretty reusable produce bags and asked her about them; now we have eliminated that source of plastic into our home.

And I can see times when we have had an impact on others as well. A dinner party turned into a discussion about our CSA after folks saw information posted on our refrigerator, with one of the families then joining the CSA themselves. A birthday party shifted to a conversation about reuse after a mom commented on our sand/water table and I told her we bought it for $5 at Goodwill. And, thankfully, we are no longer the only family on our block recycling!

I want to influence others positively so will continue making green choices and looking for others who can teach me how to live a greener life. I believe strongly that actions speak louder than words so am more likely to proselytize the green life through my behavior but have seen again and again behaviors leading to conversations. And I am always up for a chat about greening families!

As I was wrapping this up I came across an article on the need for sociologists to study conversations around climate change on Nature.com. It is an interesting read so check it out!

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