Are You a Scuppie?

When my wonderful fiancée Tim went to see an old friend of his the other day, his buddy asked if we are scuppies. A little confused, Tim asked for the definition of scuppie before answering yes or no. His friend answered with something like, "You know, a socially conscious yuppie."

Apparently I'm way behind the ball on this one. The word was coined by financial planner Chuck Failla, the author of the soon-to-be-published Scuppie Handbook. Treehugger published a post way back in March about scuppies, a number of people have already written articles on the term, and there's even a scuppie website for the book.

So what does it take to be a scuppie? Well, we unplug our power strip when we leave the apartment; we shop at the farmers' market for our vegetarian meals when we can (and bring our groceries home in our own canvas bags); we changed our lightbulbs; and we recycle. But I'm not sure that's enough.

There are also many things that we don't do, like work on a community garden, as Michael Pollan suggested in The New York Times Magazine last week. We don't offset our travel with carbon credits or anything, we don't compost, and we don't use only green cleaning products. We also eat fish (so I guess, technically, we're pescatarians).

I haven't decided if we fall into the scuppie category. After doing some thinking, I decided that there should be another term specific to the environment for people who are doing everything they can to live a sustainable lifestyle. Ecuppie? If only it didn't sound so much like a hiccup...