Carborexia is an intense obsession with living green, taking environmentally friendly practices to an extreme level. While living green is commendable, when it becomes all-consuming and personally compromising, it may be seen as unhealthy. Carborexics can be intimidating and condescending, ignoring the fact that not everyone has the ability to live a carborexic lifestyle.
A carborexic is someone who has developed an intense level of obsession with living green. This term is a portmanteau of “carbon” as in “carbon emissions” and “anorexic,” an eating disorder in which people try to eat as little as possible. Some people find that carborexia demonstrates an unhealthy level of obsession, while people strongly committed to an environmentally conscious lifestyle may argue that a carborexia is simply interested in taking care of the environment.
You may also hear carborexia referred to as “greenorexia” or “deep green,” referring to the slang term “green” used to describe environmentally friendly activities. Many people are becoming aware that the environment is facing a variety of problems, some of them serious, due to human activity. Practices like recycling, being energy efficient, and generally being more environmentally aware are widely encouraged, but a carborexic takes those practices to a new level.
For example, many people recycle cans, bottles and other materials. A carborexic not only recycles, but they search through other people’s trash to remove recyclables, making sure they don’t get sent to the landfill. Many people have a habit of turning off lights when they’re not in use, while a carborhexic might turn off the main breaker when leaving the house, making sure no energy is being used.
While living green is certainly commendable, when the obsession becomes all-consuming and people make choices that are extremely uncomfortable and personally compromising, people may characterize the desire to live green as unhealthy. For example, refusing to visit a dying family member because it would require air travel would likely be seen as an unreasonable sacrifice. Turning down the heating in the winter to save energy is reasonable, but leaving the heating off and making family members ill is counterproductive.
The concern with carborexia is that people may focus so much on small details that they miss the big picture. Carborexics can also be intimidating for people who are just starting out to attempt to think about issues such as energy and resource consumption, and some might see a carborexic as an “ideal” role model and give up on the venture, reasoning that they are willing to rearrange their lives around green life. Carborhexics can also be very condescending, suggesting that if people “really cared” about the environment they would choose a carborexic lifestyle and ignoring the fact that not everyone has the ability to do so.
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