Environmentally conscious consumers who opt for the natural versions of their favorite products might want to check their labels once more before making a purchase. While brands like Tom's of Maine and Burt's Bees may make you feel nice on the inside with their earth-toned packages and handwritten fonts, they're often no better for the earth or for you than their more corporate-looking counterparts. They're not even independently manufactured anymore; Burt's has been bought by Clorox and fans of Tom's are simply funneling their money over to Colgate-Palmolive. These Fortune 500 companies simply mark up the prices on the supposedly natural stuff, then pocket the money of people who have been tricked into thinking they're making the more sustainable consumer choice.

The truth is, there aren't any real criteria for buzz words like 'natural', 'green', or 'organic' on products like toothpaste or makeup. Organic food obviously must be grown without pesticides to bear the label, but there's no such requirement for organic deodorant. And there's certainly no minimum standard of environmentally friendly manufacturing for a product to be marketed as a green variant on an old classic.

Giant companies are simply surfing the green tide up to high profits by tricking consumers into feeling good about themselves. Your natural cosmetics in those sand colored bottles are as likely to be as full of chemicals and toxic additives as the regular stuff next to them on the shelf. Anything can be branded as natural. If consumers don't do their homework and read the fine print, they'll have no way of knowing the difference.

There's no doubt that buying food in bulk greatly reduces both the cost and waste that accompanies traditionally-packaged goods. I buy all of my produce loose these days; it's cheaper, and the sight of a saran-wrapped crown of broccoli always frightened me to begin with. Lately, I've been purchasing more seeds, grains and beans in bulk, too.

But then I end up with piles of those awful filmy plastic bags that I mean to recycle for weeks while they sit rustling in my bakeware cupboard. They infect my kitchen like beached jellyfish. They're the worst. Sometimes, like if they've been holding mushrooms, they get too dirty to recycle and I have to throw them away, inevitably launching them into the sea where they'll ultimately ensnare and drown some baby sea turtles. I do not like to think of myself as a murderer of baby sea turtles. Therefore, I looked for a way to kick the bulk bag habit that supermarkets impose upon their customers.

Reusable jars or other solid containers might work in theory, but most stores aren't set up to subtract the weight of something heavier than a bag from your purchase. They need your food to be enclosed in something nearly weightless so they can charge you precisely. So what's an environmentally-conscious bulk grocery shopper to do? Pick up a few reusable food bags, of course. 

I'll be honest: I feel like a pretty shoddy environmentalist at the moment. I just drove about 2,400 miles in the past six days. Well, technically it was my bandmate doing all the driving, fearless leader that he is, but the point remains that I burned way more  liquefied dinosaur bones than I've ever burned in one sitting just so I could go play a few shows at SXSW. While I'm thrilled I did it (there's nothing quite like the hipster Mardi Gras that 6th Street becomes in the thick of the festival), the early summer I returned to up in Chicago got me thinking about the future of pretty much everything I like to do.

The honest truth is that most of what we do isn't sustainable. While plenty of European countries may have gotten a handle on running efficient economies with hardcore recycling programs and renewable energy sources, we Americans remain gluttonous in our ways. We want all the things, all the time. We want to do things our way. We want commodity and we want convenience, the future of the planet be damned.