Emily Geeson of Project Harmless meets Caitlin Cox at home in London, on one of those long, pale spring evenings when the city feels, briefly, like somewhere worth fighting for.
For Harmless Voices — conversations with the quieter end of the sustainable living movement.
The conversation around sustainable living has, in recent years, taken on the breathless register of a self-improvement project — a lifestyle to curate, a set of credentials to acquire. It can be exhausting to look at. The instinct, often, is to look away.
Caitlin would rather you didn't. She is twenty-something, unfussy, and volunteers with Greenpeace when she can; the kind of person who will walk an extra mile rather than take a car, and who keeps her cleaning products in refillable glass. We met on a Tuesday in April, in the soft, honeyed light that collects in north London gardens around seven, and spoke — for the best part of two hours — about the small, stubborn acts that constitute her way to live harmlessly.
On where it began
When, I ask, did the planet start to feel like her problem?
"The first time I can remember realising the planet was in trouble, I was eight or nine years old. The ad breaks were full of melting ice caps and polar bears, and I couldn't understand why the adults around me weren't treating it with the urgency it seemed to deserve. I don't think I ever quite stopped feeling that."
On the shape of a day
I'm curious what the work looks like between the marches.
"I try to use as few disposable things as possible. My cleaning products are all refillable. Most of my hygiene products come in packaging I can recycle. I refuse carrier bags, and I don't travel by car if I can help it — it's walking or public transport. None of it is dramatic. That's rather the point."
On the pleasures of company
She mentions, almost in passing, that her social circles are not always receptive. I ask whether that's lonely work.
"It can be. I find I downplay how I feel about these things with friends, because I don't want to come across as preachy or exhausting. So to walk into a room full of people who feel as strongly as I do about the environment is — refreshing isn't quite the word. Steadying, maybe. It reminds me I'm not overreacting. It makes me want to keep going."
On the myth of difficulty
There's a popular narrative that a low-impact life is a life of sacrifice. Caitlin finds this historically illiterate.
"The human race lived sustainably, worldwide, until about the last century. It's not as difficult as people think. Disposables for everything, next-day delivery, all your food in plastic from one supermarket — those habits are three or four generations old at most. We can go back to a more sustainable way of living very easily, and there's nothing frightening about it. The only reason we haven't is that there's more money to be made
