I’m still not sure I agree with you; I live in a city of over a million people. If a million+ people stop throwing their aluminum cans in the garbage and then the landfill and they recycle them instead, then fresh aluminium doesn’t need to be mined to make all the things that are made from all the recycled aluminum cans from 1 million+ people. That’s just one example of one recycled product for one city in North America.
As for perfunctory efforts people make, I’ll agree to that. One area that makes a big difference (in my opinion) is making it worth people’s while to recycle, or making it much easier. We recently got curbside recycling in Calgary; I used to pack stuff up and haul it to the bins, but it was difficult, and I don’t think many people did it. Now that I can just go put it in a bin in my garage, it is much easier, and I think the rates of recycling have gone up a lot since the change.
What I would ask from people (and from me, too) is not necessarily to make huge changes in your life, but to start looking at it and see if there are tolerable changes that you can make. I don’t think a good solution is just throwing your hands up and saying there’s nothing I can do, so you do nothing.
The kinds of things where they say “Throw away the products you’re already using, and buy our ‘green’ products instead!” seem to be what that poster had in mind.
Me, I reuse whatever I can, recycle whatever I can, do my best to use items with less packaging, combine trips, turn off lights if I’m not in the room, etc.
Yeah, that is crap. Also the “greenwashing” bullshit, too, I imagine (just slap a label on some product that says, “Green!” when it really has nothing to do with reducing or recycling or anything like that).
Earth Day is just PR by environmentalists to demonstrate support for new and existing programs. If people only recycled, used public transport, etc., one day a year, you’d have a point. As it is, a part of the population uses green practices all year round and it adds up. A nice thing about Earth Day is that it sometimes gets me thinking about what else I could be doing, not that I can do something on that one day and then give myself a pat. Giving yourself a pat on the back can lead to some real problems.
I think you might be getting at how there are a lot of people who portray themselves as environmentalists yet they also have some extremely bad practices. The typical example is an upper class or middle class person who recycles with devotion and drives a hybrid car, yet still flies internationally every year. That person is almost certainly going to generate more carbon than somebody who’s too doesn’t fly or recycle and drives an beater pickup truck that leaks oil. Person A’s carbon output will still be reduced by all that recycling, though, provided he or she is part community that actually bothers to make sure that recycling is a net savings. Rich people just tend to consume a lot and thereby waste a lot of energy and produce a lot of carbon. All people tend to overestimate how well their good behavior stacks up in comparison to their bad behavior.
It really isn’t about somebody doing all that can be done. It’s more important for everybody-- excluding the antisocial asshole contingent who’ll never be reached-- to do a bit. Me deciding to never fly again won’t have much of an impact. I only fly internationally once every other year (using the last few years as a baseline), so if I live to be 100 that’ll cut about 25 flights. If a 100 million people decide to cut their international vacations by half, we’re looking at 50 million flights in a single year. That would reduce carbon emissions by about 30 billion kg a year.
50 million flights, 5000 km/flight, 114 g carbon/km.
Until people ARE prepared to make huge changes to their lives, then it’s just secular Scientology.
If you wrote yourself a list of all the ‘green’ things you don’t do, (not the things you ‘could’ do, but everything in your life that cannot be not classified as environmentally friendly) and times that by your millions+ example, then it might take a bit of the shiny off the side of the coin you’re showing.
Dave Hartwick I agree with most of your post; but what we are prepared to do is still based on convenience and minimal interruption to our lifestyle.
I do respect your (and others) intention, Cat Whisperer. And though I do many of the things others have posted, they’re things I’ve done for most of my life that are now considered ‘green’. I just can’t applaud the basic mediocrity of it.
For me, until we confront and resolve the hugely indulgent ‘throw-away’ society we perpetuate, what we’re doing amounts to very, very little. It certainly doesn’t address the massive environmental issues of third word manufacturing etc. etc. etc.
The process of how environmentally respectful ‘recycling’ is a furphy. Why keep manufacturing billions of containers when I should be able to take my own to be refilled?
Yeah, I do ONE green thing… Well ok maybe two… I also make home made apple wine, does that count? I start it with fresh sweet apple cider from the local fruit farm and use un-refined sugar etc. I don’t use pectic enzyme, so that’s one less commercially bought good in the recipe.
How does one refill a can of soda? Also, recycling some materials does save a huge amount of energy compared to extracting and processing new material, like aluminum, in addition to the environmental effects of mining.
On the other hand, if you are the kind of person who has to have the latest electronic gadget, then you are wasting vast amounts of energy, even if you replace them with more energy-efficient devices and regardless of what you do with the old ones; for example, I still use a 10 year old CRT monitor (which still works with no problem) and while a LCD might cost less to operate for me, the energy needed to make a new LCD monitor greatly exceeds the energy it might save over its lifetime. In fact, a single microchip in a computer, which has dozens (monitors also have chips, especially LCD; LCD displays are like giant chips themselves) can contain more embodied energy than an entire computer might use over its average use lifetime (average time people actually use them).
You don’t. You refill a bottle. And you stop making soda cans. Soda was in existence well before cans, y’ know! Who knows, eventually it may just be so much trouble for people they might even stop drinking the stuff. How ‘green’ would it be if carbonated drinks were no longer mass produced?
That’s a good point. I would love to be able to buy refills for stuff in minimal packaging, but they don’t really exist around here. (I have stopped buying sodas - we have a water carbonator now - the amount of waste we have from that has gone waaaay down).
With regards to third world manufacturing, high-priced oil might actually put the brakes on that - when it stops being cost-effective to manufacture in China and ship to North America, we’ll stop doing it.
Good move on not buying the sodas anymore, Cat Whisperer; now y’ just gotta work on not drinkin’ it
It’s hard to know what the oil prices will really do. It may just lower wages, or increase prices. I think we’re so addicted to consuming, that someone, somewhere, will find a way to keep up production.
It’s really unfortunate that where you are means you’re unable to buy in bulk. I have a cleaning supply place that lets me refill (or return) their original 5 litre containers (so my refills are refilled from refills..or something like that..) and I buy my grains and nuts and honey and stuff from a place where you have to supply your own container. (Brilliant!)
Anyway, I reckon you should set up Cat Whisperer’s Friendly Environmentally Responsible Refill It Or Bugger Off Store.
And, which car? A Starlet is a small car and some carried up to 180 g/km.
A Supra is not a small car and carried a 224 g/km CO2 rating.
If it annoys any tree huggers, I do zilch to help the environment. We’re only here for a limited time, let’s use the Earth like we’re meant to.
I’ve recently been experimenting with saving water/energy in the shower - mostly because I have an 9.5kw electric instantaneous shower - so obviously, I don’t want to run it for longer than necessary.
I’ve got it down to less than 5 litres of water - less than a minute of total running time - the routine is as follows:
[ul]
[li]Turn on shower and run half a litre into a plastic jug while it’s warming up[/li][li]Stand under the water for about 10 seconds, getting thoroughly wet all over[/li][li]Stop the shower[/li][li]Lather up all over with soap and shampoo, using the water in the jug to wet the bar of soap as necessary[/li][li]Turn the shower back on and rinse off - takes about 30-40 seconds[/li][/ul]
It helps that I have close-cropped hair.
I reckon I save at least £10 of electricity a month this way.
Well ok maybe two… I also make home made apple wine, does that count? I start it with fresh sweet apple cider from the local fruit farm and use un-refined sugar etc. I don’t use pectic enzyme, so that’s one less commercially bought good in the recipe.
