Why Using Sex Toys, Watching Porn, and Going Green Is an Easy Fit

By Liz Langley, AlterNet. Posted February 13, 2009.

"They need to sex-up environmentalism," Fessenden says with a laugh, citing the Super Bowl-banned PETA ad as an example of one attempt. "Let's change the meaning of 'Drill baby, drill' -- let's put it back in the bedroom and take it out of our wildlife refuges. Get people all hot and bothered about cooling the planet."

Use Nature as a Backdrop

Everyone loves sex in the great outdoors, especially if they've had a few and can't feel the ant bites, sunburn and bird poop that just hit their hair.

OK, unless you're totally shitfaced on dopamine, sex outdoors is often an awesomely uncomfortable experience that'll find you tweezing sand out of holes you didn't even know you had well into your golden years.

It looks like a good idea sometimes, though, the perfect way to be at one -- or two, or three -- with nature. Usually the dizzyingly fresh air contributes to this feeling of healthy horniness, but sometimes just the sight of a big sky, snowy mountain or majestic ocean can be stimulating.

Why not, then, make a few adult feature films in our magnificent national parks? Certainly the parks could use the PR and the site fees. Visitations to national parks were down by 800,000 overall in 2008, which isn't a terribly steep decline, but doesn't look great when compared to the increase of 275.6 million visitors in 2007. And viewers could benefit from such a beatific backdrop ... no one has to know where you got this great idea all of a sudden to go see the Badlands, or, gawdhelpus, Big Thicket. And what can't you do with a name like Grand Teton?

Recycle Sex Toys

OK, before I'm deafened by the collective "Eeew!", it's not what you think.

Dreamscapes LLC, an eco-friendly adult-products company out of Tampa, Fla., certified by the Institute for Green Business, recently started an innovative program where the public can send in their unwanted novelty items -- the Island of Misfit Sex Toys, as it were.

President and CEO David Kowalsky says Dreamscapes offers a 90-day guarantee on all products, and one day, in noticing items returned, he thought it didn't seem right to just give them a toss. In keeping with Dreamscapes’ green philosophies, he figured out a way to recycle them. The products are first cleaned and then taken apart.

"Say it's a programmable multispeed vibrator," Kowalsky says. "The plastic shell is removed. The silicone computer chip is taken out, the motor is put into a separate bin, the rubber or silicone is separated from that, and then after we have 100 weight of different materials, we send it off to recyclers."

A variety of companies buy the recycled materials and makes items, from handbags to tabletops, out of it, and yes, they do make sure the companies they deal with, which are all domestic, know where the materials come from. Since beginning the program in December, Kowalsky says, 600 individuals have sent in old toys to Dreamscapes and why not? You get $10 off on a future Dreamscapes purchase as an incentive for more good green fun.

Pedaling Sex

Larry Fessenden says that the Web is the greenest way to deliver entertainment, but what about by bicycle? We just had to give the nod to Chicago's Antony Mikrut, who started a 24-hour sex toy bike courier service in the Chicago area because -- one supposes -- sometimes at 3 a.m. your partner and your own dexterity just aren't enough.

The only footprint such a delivery service is leaving is in the Chicago snow.

Interestingly for Kinky Llama, Mikrut's company, he says his shipping business is 98 percent men while his delivery business is to women, and 98 percent of which he takes to mean that when women want it they want it now. Wise man, Antony Mikrut.

Working What You've Got

At a time when a lot of people can't afford the luxury of sex toys, or even the batteries to use in them, learning to use our own bodies more effectively is the ultimate green solution, and maybe a few instructional videos might be a good, inclusive and lucrative idea.

See more stories tagged with: sex, green, porn

Liz Langley is a freelance writer in Orlando, Fla.

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