Water issues do vary by area. This is something that is often overlooked by Greens in the LA area in my opinion. What is a critical concern of both usage and waste in LA is not as big a concern in NJ or Washington State. Though of course, stopping toxic waste from being dumped in with wastewater is very important anywhere. We don’t generally have a shortage of water. Our shortages are short termed when they occur. (I still have water saving shower heads and use well water for the little bit of watering I do outside.)
In my area, waste management is probably the bigger concern, as NYC & NJ have to export garbage, as there is not enough landfill left. Dumping at sea remains a bad but active practice.
I think saving energy and encouraging our government to reduce air pollution for our transportation and energy industry is of vital importance. We have come a long way in cleaning up estuaries in the US. We have reduced smog in most of the country. We have protected water supplies in many areas that were endangered. We need to reduce our energy needs and clean up our electrical plants.
Clean Coal, more Natural Gas, Nuclear power, Solar & Wind and especially a reduction in energy consumption with additional emphasis put on transportation. This should be our government’s primary concern to clean the air, reduce carbon emissions and reduce our reliance on imported oil.
Then working with other leading nations we need to strongly encourage developing nations to clean up.
Here’s a thing - until two weeks ago, I had never been through a car wash. I always washed my car on the driveway because I was particular about the paintwork and didn’t want it scratched by the Whirling Brushes of Death. And having taken my girlfriend’s (older, more dented) car through - damn, those things are scary!
But I don’t see that my three or four buckets of soapy water, much of which evaporated before it reached the drain, was really doing much harm.
In other ways, sure I’m green. I got rid of my car and I cycle to work. I recycle. I compost pretty much all our food waste. We get a locally grown seasonal organic veg box instead of relying on air-freighted stuff. I’m not obsessive about it, but needless, wanton, lazy wastefulness does make me angry.
Before I lecture, everyone knows the problem with washing phosphate rich detergents down the street, right? Algae blooms and whatnot?
It’s bad, but runoff from the local dairy farm is an order of magnitude* worse.
made up number, and dairy farming in the United Kingdom is high on the list of things I don’t know anything about. This content free post brought to you by Borax.
Well that sort of depends on where you live, no? In much of northern europe sorting all your rubbish into half a dozen different categories for recycling is just The Ordinary Way Of Doing Things™.
So they properly remove labels from bottles, unfold boxes and remove all tape, clean any plastics and glasses of anything, etc. before throwing them away?
If so, that seems a tremendous waste of time for the individual. For probably an additional $30 of taxes a year or something, I’d be willing to bet that you could have all of your trash sorted and cleaned by a factory line. And it would save you 10 minutes out of your day.
I do, only Chicken McNuggets, which don’t require that the Amazon rain forest be razed. So I’m OK.
I learned from Cecil that only a fraction of recyclables get reused, so I figure the stuff I throw out would have become trash eventually anyway.
I think the environment is easier to care about (like animals) because it doesn’t get into CARING about humans who aren’t always redeemable (so to speak).
I care about the environment, but I live in an area with a lot of environmental activism. I see this sentiment a lot. “Hey, why don’t you care about my issue? Are you stupid, or lazy? Which of your flaws is the reason?!!”
The behavior and attitudes of the most vocal activists do a lot to fatigue people on this topic. Several others have noted the feeling that no matter what you do, it’s just Not Good Enough.
I recycle,dont leave the T.V.etc.on standby,cycle, walk and use public transport everywhere but it really gets up my nose when some self righteous dickhead takes it upon themselves to lecture me on what I should or should not be doing.
ie. you shouldnt take foreign holidays ,you should be eating organic etc.etc.
I honestly believe that their vociferousness has more to do with the thrill of telling others what to do and the feeling of smug self satisfaction they enjoy when doing so then any genuine concern with the enviroment.
Give it a few years when something else is the trend of the week and those sort of people are riding on the next bandwagon chuckling at their youthful enthusiasim with the now no longer hip cause .
And while I’m enjoying a good rant can I just say that hearing “Carbon Footprint” and "Eco"this that and the other every other sentence whatever the topic makes me want to get a bucket.