Melinda,
I think your green typology works well, especially from a consumerist standpoint -- how most of us are conditioned to interact economically, e.g. voting with our dollars if we're sufficiently enfranchised.
I too experience "green" as a lifestyle, and mostly as a continual reduction of consumption.
Yet while I am interested in finding new ways to re-use and learning how & where recycling occurs, I am even more interested in accessing the passion that motivates green action.
For me, that passion stems from caring about food, water and air quality, species diversity, health, and from experiencing my life and that of my family and community as integrated elements of a living system, a system with real significant limits. Acting accordingly -- greener living -- demands a persistent willingness on my part to analyze personal and cultural behaviors, to become better able to discern the repercussions produced by those behaviors, and perhaps to come up with better ways of behaving.
I know you relate to what I'm saying here. As Green Moms, we care especially about our children, their health, and the possibility of their experiencing a full happy life on this wonderful planet.
"Lifestyle" may or may not adequately describe the analytical, ethical and creative exercises entailed in growing green-er. I hope I have been able here to suggest a way of going green that begins with VALUES, wherein money or money-saving may have little or less to do with it.
While there may be two or more ways to go green, simply making consumer choices does not seem like enough, if we really care, because in addition to dollars we also have powers as producers of change. As we learn and become more aware, we communicate and share our knowledge. For a ready instance, this greenmommy group you've cultivated helps our community to learn cooperatively, to produce new meaningful ways of being, so we may all grow greener together.
Thanks for seeding this conversation.
