This or Thats | Simple Steps. This site from the Natural Resources Defense Council has some great articles and tips on how to tread gently on the environment. I recommend giving it a look—especially as this year comes to a close and people start thinking about resolutions for the new year. Why not resolve to reduce your carbon footprint as much as possible (or more!) in 2010? Now’s as good a time as any to commit.
Small changes on the local scale can generate big changes on the global. Western societies have largely become focused on convenience and pampering, and we’re stressing the ability of the planet to support us (not to mention the majority who live in less-fortunate circumstances). Making some relatively small adjustments to the convenience factor can have positive effect on the state of the world, though.
Central heating and air conditioning are common inclusions in houses across the United States and in other ‘developed’ nations. They help keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, but some might argue that we’ve taken things a bit far. Where I live in the southeastern U.S., it seems like the A/C kicks on as soon as it reaches 23 ºC (about 74 ºF) and stays on until it drops below 20 ºC—at which point the heat turns on! This is especially true in public spaces, where it seems like building management is determined to reverse the seasons so it’s freezing cold in summer and boiling hot in winter.
One effect of all this over-cooling and over-heating is a huge drain on the country’s aging electrical grid (with massive draws against natural gas and oil in winter). While it’s nice to come home to a comfortable home or work in shirtsleeves all year, we could all manage a couple of degrees cooler in winter and warmer in summer without being seriously inconvenienced. Sweaters are easy ways to keep warm in winter and woolen ones are environmentally sustainable!
Take advantage of nature’s heating and cooling cycles; in summer, close the blinds in rooms that face the sun and you won’t need to run the air conditioning so much. In winter, open the blinds and drapes in those same rooms during the day and you’ll store up some heat for the afternoon and possibly even into the evening! If you have central HVAC, spend the money to have it maintained and serviced regularly and you’ll find that you’ll save some money (and relieve some stress on the planet), too.
While you’re at it, turn the heat down while you’re washing your hands, too—studies show cool water works just as well as hot and it doesn’t stress your skin as much! Turn the water off while you’re lathering and you’ll save more of a resource that’s becoming harder and harder to obtain: potable water.
Taking a vacation? Turn the water heater down while you’re gone—all you’re doing is wasting power keeping water you won’t use hot! You might even consider replacing that hot water heater with an “instant on” model like many Europeans have. Water is only heated when it’s needed, so you don’t have tens of gallons of water constantly heated “just in case.”
Have I implemented the changes recommended above?
YES — at least, mostly. I’ve been training myself to get used to it being warmer in summer and colder in winter; my water heater is set to ‘warm,’ not ‘hot’; and I use lukewarm water when I wash my hands. Tiny steps lead to long journeys!
Recycling. As the marketing people from that shoe company would say, “Just Do It.” Seems pretty straightforward, right? I mean, plastic, paper, metal, and glass. That’s what most folks think of when you say “recycling,” and by and large it’s true… but not always.
In fact, it turns out that there are all sorts of twists on what can and cannot be recycled, and the list of things that can be isn’t exactly set in stone. The Consumer Recycling Guide is a good resource for finding out what can and can’t be recycled (in general); you should check it out. If you don’t have the time to read the whole list, their “World’s Shortest Comprehensive Recycling Guide” can help give you advice.
Both guides are pretty sobering reads—who knew that plastic containers contained so many conflicting sources, or that a mixture of different types can ruin a plastic recycling effort? Think of all those unread newspapers, still in their plastic wraps, that get casually tossed in the recycling bins without thinking that some of the contents (not to mention the plastic wrap) might not be recyclable—and could just end up in the municipal dump? I know I’m as guilty of this as anyone.
But wait, it gets worse. In the U.S., at least, there is no central authority for recycling. This means that every municipality, county, and state has different rules and regulations about what gets recycled—if anything! Some recyclers take a broad spectrum of products; some take few. Some are well-managed and others are not. Government agencies that manage recycling are not terribly effective at making sure citizens know what can and cannot be recycled. In my town, for example, cardboard was explicitly not accepted when I moved here. I only found out that was no longer the case through pure chance. I hate to think of all the Spamazon.com boxes that got thrown in the bin over the years instead of being put into the recycling. If you’re confused about what your local recycling laws are, or if there are any, I recommend starting at your state’s Web site and searching for “recycling,” or just use the ever-handy Google.
I remember a time I visited some acquaintances in New York City and had a can of soda in their apartment. After finishing it, I asked them where I should put the can for recycling. They looked at me with puzzled expressions and said, “oh, we don’t recycle. It’s too much work.” While I hope that sort of attitude has changed, I can see why some folks might not want to recycle. After all, doing it properly can take time and energy—especially if you live in an area (like where my mom lives) that has strict rules on separating and preparing recyclable materials. Sadly, there are many who simply cannot be bothered to take the time to recycle at all, or who use religious beliefs to argue that there’s no need to recycle, since the world will be destroyed anyway.
From a pragmatic position, recycling makes good sense. Many materials in heavy use in modern society—particularly hydrobarbon-based products like oil, plastic, and, well, just about everything else it seems—are made from substances that are not renewable. When they’re gone, they’re gone; while there may be trickles of stuff like oil for centuries, sooner or later it’s going to become astronomically expensive to get any of it out of the ground.
Materials that are renewable, such as trees (the primary source of paper today), may have lower overall costs of production, but the environmental devastation caused by logging “virgin” sources is still much higher than that of recycling facilities.
Have I implemented the changes recommended above?
YES — I try very hard to recycle as much as I can, though I suffer from not always making sure that what goes in the bin is really the right stuff to recycle.
The 2009 Blog Action Day topic for 2009 was Climate Change. (You can see my post on it here.) As part of my contribution, I’ve committed to at least one post a week for the year with tips on how to reduce your impact on the earth—be good to yo’ mama, because she’s the only one you’re gonna get!
Posts in this theme will all appear in the “The Environment” category and will have subjects starting with “[StarkReduzerit],” which is a play on the German phrase, “Stark reduziert,” for “deeply discounted.” It’s an in-joke with my family, so please pardon the diversion…
To start off the series, I have to thank my friend Peter from Plurk (the one in Belgium) for pointing out an article in Time magazine online on an angle that, I warrant, few would think about when considering how to reduce their global footprint.
Yes, people are still having sex, and few probably realize that you can actually help Mother Earth out while having a shag or tossing one off! Now, stop giggling for a second and give it a thought. If you’re a sexually-active adult, chances are you’ve used some sort of sexual accoutrement at least once. Lubricant helps make things move more easily; condoms keep unwanted pregnancies away (as well as STDs); and other items can bring a sense of freshness and excitement to what can sometimes become pretty perfunctory.
Sure, spending some extra money for “organic” lube that doesn’t contain most of the Dow Chemical formulary may seem a bit ridiculous, but don’t just think about “going green” in terms of one person’s (or one couple’s) contribution. If a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand people switch to a product that reduces packaging, reduces the need to synthesize or dig up or process to the nth degree some chemical, then the effect multiplier grows. This is part of the trick to reducing your impact—realize that if many people take the same steps, the effect will grow rapidly in size. Use products that require less processing for their ingredients, and maybe we’ll save a mountain from being mined into destruction, or one fewer pollutant-spewing power plant will be needed to satisfy our needs.
Now go out and get nasty 
Have I implemented the changes recommended above?
No.
Why Not?
The short answer is that I’m far from sexually-active these days, so spending money to get items that have no immediate or practical use is counterintuitive. If things change, however, I’ll definitely be jumping on the bandwagon!
Although I’ve committed to posting one tip a week on how to reduce your impact on the earth and ameliorate the effects of climate change, I wanted to post a link now to the No Impact Project, which my friend Claudia brought up on Plurk recently. Check out the site and have a look around—will you accept the challenge?
