Closet Environmentalist - January 15, 2017

Gorp (aka trail mix). Just an outdoor convenient snack? No, I have consumed more gorp in my daily routine than in my all outdoor hiking trips (It’s not my wish but life getting in the way).

But my gorp doesn't come in an expensive puny pouch whose packaging weighs as much as its contents paradoxically marketed to earth crunchy conservationists. No, I mix gorp myself, paying close attention to the nutritional values, sugars, organic and GMO content, and origin of each of the individual ingredients. As with fossil fuels and batteries, my goal is to achieve maximum energy per pound and per dollar. Even the relative size of each ingredient is important because to most efficiently get those calories into my body, I “drink” it. Everything is dry, of course, but still “pours” easily from my sustainably manufactured stainless steel water bottle. I am proud of my gorp!

Now, I am at a new client getting their system up and there was so much to do that I skipped lunch and “drank” my gorp. "What do you have there?" one of them asked. While this could have spawned a 30-minute conversation on sustainability, I only said "Just a snack." I later thought, why was I such a wimp? Was it because the company environment looked so apathetic about environmental concerns that I got inhibited to converse about it? Perhaps I committed a new idiom – “Do as I do, though I don’t say.”