Greener Than Thou? How?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

What are Dopers doing to minimize their environmental impact? I’m hoping to find some practices that I can use, too!
Here are some things that our family is doing:

*We recycle as much as possible.

*Drive reasonably fuel-efficient cars (Honda Accord & Ford Focus Hatchback).

*Dh has basically a zero commute right now, although that’s partly just luck.

*We don’t buy styrofoam or paper plates, and use fabric towels for hand-drying and some cleaning.

*Rarely use household chemicals indoors (mostly vinegar, baking soda, and living in harmony with grime!)

*Never use chemicals outdoors (no pesticides or herbicides at all, period).

*Buy most of our clothes, lots of the kids’ toys and basically all of our furniture from re-sale or Goodwill.

*Donate to Goodwill as much as possible.

*Dispose of dangerous items (batteries, old television) appropriately.

*Sometimes find extra uses for food packaging, like peanut butter jars (great for storing small toys), ketchup bottles (squirt toys), paper towel rolls and egg cartons.

*Patronize parks and forests.

*Hubby has a gas lawn mower, which isn’t great, BUT he is replacing a lot of our lawn with extensive flower gardens and there are parts of the lawn that he just doesn’t mow because the weeds are pretty.

*We don’t always flush (we’re on a septic system) “if it’s yellow, then it’s mellow”.

*We have a small compost pile.

*We feed the birds in the winter.

*Our yard has a bunch of trees and we’re adding a few more.

*We’ve volunteered on behalf of “green” candidates and causes.

*We donate to environmental groups.

*My husband’s job is to do research on air pollution caused by livestock farms.

*Since the kids like those foamy pump soaps, I’ve taught them that they should only turn the water on at the very end, for rinsing.

2

I do some of the same stuff.

Recycling
walking if possible, and consolidating car trips
Limiting disposable products
Switching to more efficient lighting
No styrofoam unless absolutely necessary, even for egg cartons
Composting food trash, on a small level
Reusing grocery bags

I have a tendency to overthink things though. Examples: Is it really better to use cleaning cloths then use electricity to wash and dry them? Several “natural” products we buy aren’t made around here. What about the gas it takes to get them to the local store?

3

You’re not overthinking at all: transportation produces probably the biggest impact of most of your consumer decisions.

Probably the biggest thing you could do is buy local. For every product you buy, find out if you can get a locally produced version - if you can, do it.

Along with the environmental benefits, you will find local food is much tastier than the stuff bred to survive intercontinental transportation. It also supports your local economy, which you might find quite useful if the global food supply system is ever disrupted for any reason.

4

All my cleaning rags are made from old clothes. It takes me a year to go through a roll of paper towels.

I use a push-mower.

My problem, I can get my carbon footprint down but then I take a business trip and POW! it’s huge again.

5

Eat less meat!

I’m a rotten gardener myself, but luckily I have a mom living locally who is really good at it, so we get a lot of food from there.

I take sub showers.

In this hot climate, a whole house fan is a wonderful thing to have; you can turn it on in the early morning and late evening, and it whooshes the house full of cool, fresh air. Really cuts down on the AC use, but a lot of people have never heard of them. I think more people should have them!

I try to use the old pioneer maxim:
Use it up, wear it out,
Make it do, or do without.

Because buying new stuff and more stuff when we don’t have to isn’t a good idea.

6

Well I am not as green as many of thou, however:

I am a lifetime member of a local environmental group and I actively help run it water appreciation (Boat Committee). We maintain and Sail or Row a Tuckerton Bay Sailing Garvey to water sample, seed shellfish in a multi-year river replenishment project, teach people to sail and especially teach people to love and respect a clean river and Clear Water.

I am a member of many other groups, but not active.

We power the house with a 6700 watt solar panel system.

I am diligent about turning off lights, using a programmable thermostat for heating and keeping the house on the cool side.

We have completed replacing our old leaky windows with new high R factor windows.

I have installed compact fluorescent bulbs every place my wife lets me get away with it. Roughly 75% of the house at this point.

We do not use chemicals for the lawn and in 5 years, I have put down lime once. I have however used some weed killer on my front walk.

Our Oil burning boiler to heat the house is near maximum efficiency and cleanliness.

We do not water the lawn except in small spot patches. We do maintain a large lawn that the house came with. It has a small selection of whatever weeds grew in it and is very green without my working hard at it. However, this 2-acre lawn supports a large population of wildlife including a family of deer and way too many groundhogs.

We recycle as much as we can. We use rags for heavy cleaning, but we do go through paper towels with kids and pets.

I compost all lawn clippings, leaves and yard debris.

We just planted three new pear trees and plan to plant 6 ever greens soon. I have chopped down one large oak, but that was to clear way for the solar panels and I composted all the small stuff and cut the large pieces for firewood, which we burn now and then.

I am raising my kids to be environmentally aware and have increased the environment awareness of friends and family. I have also encouraged several additional purchased of Solar Systems.

I drive a fairly efficient Ford Focus Wagon and I plan to replace it in two years with a hybrid. The Focus will be at 140,000 miles at that point. My commute is very long. Nearly 40 miles each way and I have no ability at this time to reduce it. My wife’s commute is roughly 4 miles each way.

I reuse an amazing variety of old items, turning it into something else of use.

Jim

7

I’m sitting here in a huge brightly lit room filled with several hundred heat producing servers/switches that use in one day more electricity than my house uses in a month (or two), is kept at a constant 65 to 70 degrees, and is one of three such rooms in this building alone, and I wonder if my driving a Corolla and using a swamp cooler instead of A/C really makes any difference at all.
ETA - not to bum out the thread or anything, just a little frustrated

8

Hey Jim - what’s the story w/those solar panels? I’d love to do those someday. Was it expensive? What are your cost savings?

Do those carbon footprint calculations weigh the impact of beef? I’ve read that methane from the cattle industry does more damage than ALL transportation combined.

9

We…

cloth diaper!
use cloth grocery bags
pick up dog poop with biodegradable plastic bags
have one car
don’t flush pee
use homemade cleaning products
frequent our (wonderful) farmers market
are buying a house close enough to my husband’s job so that he can bike to work
buy local food/products as much as possible
eat very little meat
try to use as few disposable products as possible
I use cloth menstrual pads
recycle
and some other stuff but I have to get off the computer (I didn’t realize what time it was! yikes!).

10

There was a very interesting story on NPR about 2 weeks ago (maybe someone can find a link) calculating the carbon footprint of a typical family.

They were doing pretty well - their house was well-insulated, they didn’t commute too much, and so forth - until they were asked about plane travel. They took 3 or 4 flights a year. Their carbon footprint basically doubled.

I concluded that a very effective thing a typical person can do is not to fly.

11

Well in that case I’m doing great! I practically never get to travel.

12

The panels and supporting equipment was expensive. The payback will be 8-10 years. That was with a 70% rebate from NJ. I would only do it if you planning to stay in place for at least 10 years at this point.

Look into what state rebates are available in your state.

As far as the carbon footprint calculations of beef, I have only seen PETA claim that the cattle industry does more damage than transportation. Transportation is the largest piece of the American puzzle currently.

I would strongly suspect that what you heard about the cattle industry was false.

Jim

13

We’ve gone the compact fluoro route with about 75% of our bulbs being CFL’s. We recycle as much as possbile and compost just about everything. I use about $2000 of diesel per month but only while I’m working on the research plantations at work. I also plant approximately 2500 trees every year(Though not willingly - part of the job). I don’t know how green I am and will probably never be able to calculate whether or not I leave a carbon footprint.

14

Some things I do (or don’t do) that I haven’t seen mentioned:

I don’t own a car (Luckily there is a pretty good bus system in the Twin Cities, so I absolutely don’t have to…and work is just a 30 minute walk away)

I get anything I can second hand (clothes, furniture, etc.)