Ten most cost/time/energy effective ways a suburbanite can be environ. responsible?

In My Humble Opinion
1

One can waste a lot of time, energy and expense trying to be environmentally responsible when other behaviors would be more effective. Has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis to determine the way the average American suburbanite can best serve the environment, or lessen their deleterious impact on the natural environment? Any ideas?

Use paper napkins and throw away, or cloth and use resources on laundering them? Buy from a warehouse which uses less packaging and pass savings onto the Sierra Club, or pay higher prices at health food stores for organic Good Karma tea? Use an electric or a disposable razor? What products should not be purchased? Dishes by hand or dishwasher? Genetically altered food? Recycled paper products? Organic food. Natural wood, or chemical fire logs? Nagging friends and family?

2

Good question, and very difficult to answer. Many people have done cost/benefit analyses but they can’t agree about a lot of things. This site allows you to calculate your ‘ecologial footprint,’ it’s pretty neat !

See, there are so many different kinds of things that are ‘wrong,’ that it’s hard to determine which kind of ‘okay’ you want to be.

For instance, a lot of fair-trade coffee isn’t organic, so while you’re making sure the workers get paid fairly, you’re poisoning their environment.

Another instance, a lot of organic stuff is flown/trucked from very far away, so while you’re eating something nice, you’ve been the cause of a lot of unnecessary carbon being dumped into the air.

So a lot of things are all about trade-offs. The points you make about the cost of disposables vs. the cost of cleaning/maintaining, for instance, are all valid.

There are, however, lots of simple things you can do that will make a difference - a lot of things are environmentally friendly AND cheaper AND more enjoyable than alternatives, if you can get in the habit.

For example:

  • bike to work (very cheap, no emissions, improve your health, and in the city it’s usually quicker, etc)

  • try to buy produce/meat that is local and seasonal (organic is good if you can get it, but it can be expensive): it tastes better and doesn’t cause all the emissions of trucking strawberries in in February, for instance

  • avoid packaging wherever possible - who doesn’t have a colony of plastic shopping bags at home?

  • drive as little as humanly possible

  • use double-sided paper for printing or copying, make notepads out of old paper from the office, etc

Basically, develop the habit of asking yourself ‘Do I really need to buy/eat/do this?’ before you buy/eat/do anything. If yes, fine. But be honest with yourself, and try to find out answers to things you don’t know much about. When you make purchasing decisions, they should be based on the assumption that everything is in some way environmentally unsound, rather than the contrary (it bugs the shit out of me when people say things like “Well, I know Nike is bad, so I’ll buy Adidas instead!” NO ! NO ! It doesn’t work that way ! grr), and that you will make the choice that is the best combination of environmentally friendly/socially conscious/suitable for your needs.

(For instance, in Canada there are no regulations about how much pesticides can be on cut flowers, so the pretty roses in the shops are basically dripping with poison. This is bad for the consumers but worse for the low-wage workers who have to apply these pesticides without any protection. I would never have given this a second thought if someone hadn’t told me.)

Oh, and read a lot. Fast Food Nation is a good start, or No Logo, also I highly recommend How Much is Enough by Alan Thein Durning. You may not agree with all of it but it will help you think about the issues.

3

Seems to me the #1 thing a suburbanite can do is car pool, even with 1 other person.

#2 would pobably be to recycle metal, plastic & newspaper.

4

I was wondering why my electric bills seemed lower over time and I realized that lights I use most at home are the fluorescent replacement bulbs. They are NOT compatible with standard dimmer switches and can interfere with radio reception.

If you are in an area with water problems then you can store rainwater in barrels for emergency watering. I’ve switched to Zozia grass for a Southern facing lawn. It grows root-to-root and will take over just about any other growth except onion grass. It requires less water and grows slowly so it doesn’t require as much mowing. It fills spots in nicely and is like walking on carpet. There are hybrids that will do the same thing.

A garbage disposal will send your bio-degradables to a more structured land fill. I’m not sure if treated sewage does better than regular landfill garbage but it seems logical.

5

Suburbanite here.

  1. Bike, take public transportation or carpool whenever possible.

  2. Lower (or raise, depending on the season) your thermostat, and plug up those leaks around windows and doors that cause drafts.

  3. Mulch your yard waste, or at least put it through a grinder to reduce the bulk.

  4. Turn your hot water heater back to 120 degrees.

  5. Don’t run the dishwasher until it’s full, then don’t use the heated drying setting. Make sure your faucets and toilets don’t run continuously.

  6. Try some of those low-wattage long-life flourescent bulbs, particularly in light fixtures you don’t use often. While you’re at it, get a smaller TV instead of a home theater.

  7. Try drying your clothes on a line instead of in the dryer.

  8. Mrs. Kunilou made baby food for three kids with a cheap blender.

  9. Turn off the damn lights when you leave the room (your father was right!)

  10. Cancel the lawn service. A few weeds never hurt anyone, and if they start to get out of hand, you can spot-shot them instead of coating your whole yard.

6

That reminds me, you can use instant water heaters at each faucet instead of using a stored hot water system.

Vent stacks in the attic for summer weather help the air conditioner.

7

Another vote for line-drying your laundry. In the summer, your sheets and other things will come in smelling great – and in winter, if you use drying racks, it helps humidify your house. I’ve got a huge one, shown here (lower picture), that was a little pricey – but it’s a great design. It’ll hold a couple of loads of laundry, and the design is such that if you have to pick it up and move it loaded, you can – it just kind of accordions up. Nice in the summer when I’m using it outside and it starts to rain.

8

I’m another suburbanite who practices organic lawn care. It’s great for lazy people like me. Part of it is cultivating an attitude of indifference towards weeds and crabgrass and such.

I use this little beaut for taking care of dandelions and such:
The Weed Hound

I would also recommend composting your yard waste. Some people around here spend lots of money on chemical fertilizers and automatic sprinkler systems, then have to cut their grass every other day in the summer, then they dump the clippings in a corner of the yard and never do anything with them. I just use an (electric) mulching mower and let them feed the lawn directly.

If I ever move out of this house and build another one I am going to make sure it is energy efficient, passive solar heating at the very least. The lawn will be put in to be organic from the get-go. The runoff from the roof will be collected and put to use in some way.

9

Can a non-suburbanite chime in?

FTR, the beginning of this month I was an exurban commuter going from country to suburb for work each day.

Now I live in the downtown of a small town.

  1. Do anything you can to reduce driving. I know that’s a helluva thing to say to an American but it’s the #1 thing. Reducing driving miles saves fossil fuels, reduces pollution, saves rubber, leads to lower need for paving, promotes greater health.

Caveat: I speak as a man who used to commute 120 miles round trip. Now that we’ve moved from VA to OH my round trip is about 4 miles. And when it warms up I’ll start biking.

  1. Give up on the lawn concept. Promote bushes and ground cover. In addition to not taking time to care it also provides habitat and food for species being pressured by habitat loss.

  2. Don’t have a house built. There are plenty of fine older (some not-so-old) homes on the market. If you’re looking to buy a place then look for one that’s already there. You won’t be claiming the resources and land required for a new place.

That’s a start. Ideally if we were really interested in ecological efficiency we’d be giving tax breaks to move people and families into row houses, town houses and larger apartments in city centers. That’s much more efficient and environmentally friendly than tract housing in the ring-cities.

10

1: You do not need an SUV. Nobody needs an SUV. The SUV is the most disposable class of vehicle ever invented. Get a vehicle with real emissions control and only use it when actually necessary.

2: A lawn does not need fertilizing, weed-killer chemicals, or watering. If it won’t grow properly without such treatment, you have the wrong kind of landscaping for your climate and soil. Whenever possible, eradicate foreign species and plant local native species.

3: Take that large suburban backyard and plant a vegetable garden. Learn low-chemical gardening methods and use them. Likewise, herbs fresh from your garden are far better than “fresh” herbs bought in a supermarket.

4: Composte everything that you can composte. Keep it out of the landfill/incinerator stream.

5: Buy a house in an established area and avoid new developments like the plagues they are.

11

I just thought of a couple more things that are more work-related than home-related: turn off your monitor when you’re not in front of it (at meetngs, gone to lunch, etc.) and reduce the amount of paper you use at the office. Reuse paper where possible.

12

If you know of a grass that will stay green without watering in Region 5, I’d love to know about it.

In my suburban neck of the woods, where the political term ‘sprawl’ was probably coined, I try to to be as civic minded as possible

The biggest offenses I usually see from my neighbors:

A/C: I don’t own on, but am amazed at how many people keep their running 24/7 June thru September.

Dog Shit: Do the pooper-scooper refusniks think the crap their dogs dump all the neighborhood gets magically beamed up to the Starship Enterprise? It doesn’t. In my neck of the woods it ends up in the canals and beaches.

That God-Damn Pennysaver: Try as I had to stop them, those morons keep throwing two pounds of junk mail in a plastic bag in front of every house in the county - most of which aren’t picked-up, read or disposed of properly.

Recycling: When (Mayor) Bloomberg put a 1-year freeze on the recycling program in NYC during 2003 that cited studies showing it was a financial burden. People were up in arms and it’s since been reinstituted. There were cost/benefit analyses that contradicted one another & I still don’t have a clue as to who was correct.

I live 20 miles east of Manhattan and I, nor the town I live in, ever stopped recycling.

Interstingly enough:

1.apartment buildings,
2. co-ops,
3. condos
4. and businesses

are all exempt from recycling in both counties on Long Island. I for one, think that’s absurd. I’ve written local politicians asking why that’s the case and have never received an intelligent or coherent answer as to why. If people who recycled saw how many liquor bottles taverns dispose of & how many unread newspapers the 7-11’s throw in the dumpster every week, they’d be outraged.

For my part, I take-in the glass, metal, plastic & newspapers from the my friends (who live in apts), my parents (in a condo), grandparents (in a senior housing development) and my bar (with a fair supply of empty booze bottles) and put it with my recyclables. The only problem with my solution is the garbagemen and neighbors must all assume I’m one of the lost Collyer brothers with a huge appetite and a major drinking problem.

13

Don’t recycle unless you are paid for the used goods: http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps28.pdf

::runs like hell::

14

Overfishing is a huge problem. The Monterery Bay Aquarium has a list of guidelines of what types of fish are environmentally good to eat here

15

Start using non-toxic cleaners. I’m really into this, cause it’s better for you and the environment, and also cheaper. I clean everything with soap, baking soda, vinegar, borax and washing soda. Five products where most people use about a dozen.

The packaging problem is a big one. As an experiment, do your ususal grocery shopping, then take all unnecessary packaing off of everything and put it in a pile. And don’t buy aerosal sprays. Not only are they not refillable, the spray gets into the air and your lungs. Great for things like oven cleaner that contain lye.