Read this.

[kitchen_kink]

ceelove made a post about environmental stuff that I never would've had the guts to make, mainly because I'm nowhere near as good about all of this stuff as she is.

But I think she makes some excellent points here, isn't didactic or condemnatory at all, and made me think long and hard about what I could be doing better.

For my part, I buy organic (though I eat meat - I try to buy organic, and when I don't I buy naturally raised), I recycle everything I can, I turn off lights and electrical appliances, and, after reading this post, I took a little extra time to find a used Ziploc bag instead of using a new one, I made sure to turn off my computer speakers, and I decided against a drink at the water cooler in the absence of non-disposible cups.

They're all little things, but every big thing is made of a whole lotta little things.

(I typoed that at first as "every big think..." The same is true, I suppose.)

And now to the post.

Comments

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

Recycling Is Garbage

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

My impression is that most people I know (myself included, generally) consume at least as much food out, mostly more so, than they cook from scratch at home. Unfortunately, this means that even if I buy all organic for home use, I'm still consuming (and therefore supporting the production of) more non-o than o. (Even more sadly, the one place in Davis (that I know of) that used organic ingredients had a piss-poor business plan and didn't last long. I miss Celia's.)

So a nice compromise regarding the fact that organic ingredients cost more is to by them more, and prepare more of one's own food. In the end, I think this would still cost less than eating out as often as many of us do. I've been thinking about trying to make a habit of severely limiting my eating-out (both meals and snacks) and cooking a lot more, possibly in larger quantities that I can freeze for later ues.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

I agree with the general tenor of ceelove's post, but I have a few more points to make.

Using an extra plastic ziploc is bad, yes, but not nearly as bad as a number of other things. I wish that someone would really rank these things in an order of magnitude setting, but then again in a lot of cases we don't know what the true impact is.

For example: If you commute by car, you already have a HUGE ecological footprint. So in order to save precious petroleum resources we should do things like use public transit, walk/bike, insulate your home, etc.

We should also remember that recycling is the last option of choice. The phrase goes "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" IN THAT ORDER. If you can avoid using paper cups by bringing a mug, great! If you can reuse by buying clothes at a used clothing store, excellent! And if you absolutely cannot find another way of limiting your impact, then recycling is good, especially for easily recycled things like aluminum and paper.

Yes, I am glad people are thinking about reducing their impact but I wish people put that extra little thought in there to realize how best to do so.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I'd love to hear your take on the article that ladytabitha linked to above. It seems that recycling, with how easy it is to do, makes people feel like they're doing a lot when really they're still driving to work every day and leaving the lights on.

The article suggests this lightly, then goes into its larger point that recycling, for the most part, is way more expensive than landfilling, and suggests that the so-called "garbage crisis" is a joke. His solution? Make people pay to have their household trash collected.

It's an interesting piece, though I think he evades some points by placing it all in an economic context. But I'd love your take, as I said.

[dda.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting piece, though I think he evades some points by placing it all in an economic context.

The town I live in (which is along rte 495) was forced by the state to cap the landfill; after some comically bizarre town meeting stuff (more than one person said they liked hanging out at the dump on Saturdays as an argument for a transfer station!) they did, in fact, vote for a transfer station. So the town borrowed money using a 2 1/2 override to install a transfer station and made recycling "mandatory." We are now charged $1.50 each for trash stickers that go on 33 gallon trash bags and for various misc. recycling; the normal recycling stuff is free.

Since I pay the bills in my house, the economic context is pretty important to me, especially since I currently don't have a job. So going from "free" to my taxes going up and it costing me money to dispose of my trash and being required to recycle (with all the impact of everyone still having to drive to the dump) has done nothing to make me feel like landfills are bad. If the article to which ladytabitha linked is accurate, all this was a result of overzealous activism which does nothing to endear those people to me, either.

I turn out lights, replaced incandescent with fluorescent bulbs, turn off monitors and other stuff on the computers, use set-back thermometers, insulated the house, I try to keep my cars as long as possible and they have, in general, gotten around mid-twenties for gas mileage.

What bothers me is the fact that the people proposing the solutions only consider their circumstances. I can't ditch my car without also ditching my employment; even if I wanted to walk to work in the winter, there is no place for me to work that is close enough to walk to. I can't buy organic without driving way out of my way to do so (I do buy what I can in the local Shaw's now); I cannot shop without driving, either. I won't stop eating meat, regardless. To lay even the smallest guilt trip on me will not in any way help the cause. Show me a way that helping the environment saves me money and I'll be all over it. I have no problem voting at town meeting for buying conservation land, too. :-)

[fanw.livejournal.com]

I know I listed "not driving" in my list, but I didn't mean any offense to those who have no alternate option. I mean, I lived in Atlanta a couple years back and there is no way to have a job and not drive in that town. So I understand. I'm just saying that people should think more broadly of what they can do (without leading a totally ascetic lifestyle).

And I'm glad you don't drive to get organic! That just cancels out all the benefit (to the environment at least, if not to your health)!

[dda.livejournal.com]

My point is that the solutions proposed always seem to assume that one lives in a city with all kinds of public transportation and health food stores lying about. Lots of people live in the suburbs and rural places; that changes the basic assumptions of those making these recommendations.

My other point is that economic context is very important. Life in my town got more expensive because people voted for a transfer station rather than curbside pickup; even if
I privately pay for curbside pickup, I still pay for that transfer station in taxes.

This stuff is symptomatic of a larger problem that I won't discuss here but a lot of it is caused by not thinking out the full consequences of what seems like a good idea. Enthusiasm/zealotism is a bad substitute for real investigation, especially in mattes of public policy.

And yes, it bugs the crap out of my that my housemate leaves the TV on, not matter what he is doing. I turn it off when I can. :-)

[fanw.livejournal.com]

I think that article does "evade some points". Although theoretically we have enough land to dump more things, we don't have enough land in the places where there are the most people and where the most waste is generated. Making people pay for their trash is a good solution since it forces people to think in the "reduce" mode instead of the "recycle" mode. I know that they have some form of this in Seattle where my brother lives. They pay a certain fee for garbage collection and then must pay extra if their garbage exceeds a certain amount in a week.

The other issue with recycling is that there are many _many_ different types that are all called the same thing. In Germany they "recycle" glass bottles in the best possible way. The company that sells the soda includes a "pfand" or recycling fee in the price. You get this back if you return the bottle to the place you bought it from. Those bottles are taken back to the plant, washed, sanitized, and reused. It is very efficient because the responsibility and costs lie entirely within the company, a cradle-to-grave approach. Then you have things like steel recycling. Believe it or not, the steel industry in the U.S. is amazing this way. Thousands upon thousands of cars are crushed and melted down and turned back into steel products. Things like plastics and styrofoam, well, there's very little you can make out of them. There's certain low quality composite plastics that they can use in making playground equipment or some other things, but the amount of effort that goes into processing these things is pretty high. You're not saving that much energy-wise. The best thing of all is to buy products with very little packaging, once again "reduce"!

So, recycling is better than not and I'm certainly against just counting on landfills, but make every effort to not let it get to that point!