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Newmindspace, the Toronto/New York-based “urban arts collective,” says it’s a vegan organization “committed to sustainability.”
But on Sunday (April 8), members plan to litter local parks and streets with 5,000 plastic eggs containing fortune-cookie-style messages like “Pleasure is the path to joy” and “Don’t settle for mediocrity” for their Easter Egg Hunt.
In an e-mail to the group, I somewhat naively suggest that using real eggs would wreak less havoc on the environment than their petroleum-based counterparts.
In his sardonic reply, org co-founder Kevin Bracken says he’s “amused” by my offering. And goes on to chastise me for not considering the abuses chickens endure. Do I not know that agriculture is a “top contributor to global warming after the manufacturing industry”?
But isn’t it also true, I ask, that the oil-based raw materials used in plastics account for a huge percentage of landfill garbage and ocean trash?
Bracken responds that the carbon credits the group purchased for the event will offset emissions produced by the manufacture of the plastic eggs.
“You may have missed the point of the event,” he writes, “which is the messages inside.”
But doesn’t the act of dispersing plastic eggs with messages like “Allow your individuality to shine through” represent mindless consumption, too – in this case of “hip” culture?
On the subject of nonconformity, Newmindspace’s message is, I fear, a trifle scrambled.
