Do you personally do your bit for the environment?

[AniThyng]

With the endless cycle of debate in N&P about the merits of letting the developing world play catch up by aping the Wests path, I'm curious to ask the denizens of SDN: Just how much of an effort do you personally make to try to be environmentally friendly and reduce the impact of your lifestyle on the Earth?

To answer the question myself: I drive to work and leisure instead of taking the train. (Though I drive a small car). I use disposable plastic bags for shopping. I only recycle cans and paper. I own a ton of electronics and computer equipment and shamelessly run them even when it might be better to power them off to conserve electricity. I eat meat and do not make organic or sustainable farming practices a criteria for my shopping decisions.

In short...yeah I'd be pretty hypocritical if I had to lecture anyone about sound personal environmental choices.

[Broomstick]

That's going to vary all over the place, isn't it? People living in dense urban areas, particularly in Europe, are going to find it a hell of a lot easier to take mass transit than someone living in rural North America, for example. I collect aluminum cans and turn them in, but that has more to do with getting money from them than tree hugging tendencies. My backyard garden is all organic, but I still eat meat - but not as much meat as the average American. I re-use shopping bags. I buy used clothing. But this is as much about saving money as being environmentally conscious. I don't use a dish washer because I don't have one. So where do I fall on the scale? I'm sure there are people much greener than me, and many who are less so.

[Erik von Nein]

I do as much as I can, but obviously I don't do nearly enough. I argue, and vote for, better water conservation methods (I argued that my parent's recent upgrade to their house should be xerascaped, instead they went with water-intensive plants), voted or petitioned for various marine protection programs and volunteer for a local water quality testing/estuary protection program. I also, as often as I can, eat fish sustainably caught and encourage everyone I know to do the same (Seafood Watch Program cards for all!).

Do I drive everywhere? Yes, unfortunately. I also drive a pretty damn inefficient car. I also eat out heavily, and don't always buy locally or environmentally friendly foods. When I buy products they tend to have more plastic wrapping than I'd like them to have. I also tend to run fairly energy intensive electronics

Could I make excuses for these (my area has shitty public transportation, I can't afford a more efficient car, etc)? Of course I could, everyone could, but I've also been attempting (mixed success) to reduce the amount of poor choices I make. That, I think, is the more important question to ask; how much are you trying to improve?

[Korvan]

I do what I can. I recycle just about everything I am able to and have a compost for organic waste. I don't really have room for a garden and my attempts to grow produce in pots hasn't worked out so well (one small tomato and 3 small carrots over two years). I've never owned a car and have gotten my fiance to drive much less.

My computers are put in sleep mode when not in use and I try to keep rooms unlit when unoccupied. We are slowly transitioning to CFL as existing bulbs burn out and we have replaced most of the halogens (the bathroom lights are permanent halogen fixtures which cannot be easily replaced). I'd like to switch over to LED's once the technology and products mature a bit more. I've got programmable thermostats keeping things cooler during the day and at night.

My biggest energy use are the long hot showers I take, and it's doubtful I'll ever give those up, still our overall energy bill is quite low. Our yearly bill is less than some monthly ones I've seen. I could do a lot better at trying to buy locally, mostly laziness there.

[AniThyng]

That's going to vary all over the place, isn't it? People living in dense urban areas, particularly in Europe, are going to find it a hell of a lot easier to take mass transit than someone living in rural North America, for example. I collect aluminum cans and turn them in, but that has more to do with getting money from them than tree hugging tendencies. My backyard garden is all organic, but I still eat meat - but not as much meat as the average American. I re-use shopping bags. I buy used clothing. But this is as much about saving money as being environmentally conscious. I don't use a dish washer because I don't have one. So where do I fall on the scale? I'm sure there are people much greener than me, and many who are less so.

"I try". The poll choices are more along the lines of "do you personally feel you are doing enough" so the yardstick would be based on where you live and your circumstances. It's admittedly a very open ended poll.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I drive a fuel efficient car everywhere, as my city has no mass transit. I buy sustainably produced fish, free range chicken and eggs, and usually avoid red meat and try to remember to either reuse shopping bags, or use paper. This is not always possible. As far as produce is concerned I reject organics as an option because they reject GM crops, which I intentionally seek to buy. I am seldom home, and when I am not home my computer is typically on and I have reptiles so I have water pumps and basking lights on. However 100% of my electricity is from wind, so that is guilt free.

[Guardsman Bass]

I use those reusable grocery bags, I try to use mass-transit when it's viable (which it often isn't in my neck of the woods, but when I lived in a better place, I used it frequently), I recycle, and I turn off the lights when I'm out.

On the other hand, I probably use too much water, I don't really use "sustainable" as a criteria when buying food, and I still live a relatively high-electricity and gas-consuming life-style when you factor in the need for long car trips.

[salm]

I don´t own a car, i share an appartement with two other people, i lead a pretty minimalistic lifestyle meaning that i don´t buy a lot of stuff. We separate normal trash from plastic, glass, cans and paper. There´s no possiblility for spearating organic waste. I don´t buy bottled water and try to buy food that´s not shipped all the way from Indonesia. Heh, and i gave one of my two votes to the green party in the last elections. I hardly ever use grocery bags. That´s what rucksacks are for. And if i do get on a rare occastion they´re usually reused as garbage bag.

On the other hand i eat quite a lot of meat products, fly to far away countries for vacation, go snowboarding in the winter and have one or more coputers running 24/7 (all with old tube monitors) for work related tasks.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Yes.
I always turn the lights off in rooms and public areas in the dorms, conserve water scrupolously, recycle if I can, pick up plastic trash in public areas and take public transportation if I can. We also grow a lot of our own food.

[[R_H]]

I don´t own a car, i share an appartement with two other people, i lead a pretty minimalistic lifestyle meaning that i don´t buy a lot of stuff. We separate normal trash from plastic, glass, cans and paper. There´s no possiblility for spearating organic waste. I don´t buy bottled water and try to buy food that´s not shipped all the way from Indonesia. Heh, and i gave one of my two votes to the green party in the last elections. I hardly ever use grocery bags. That´s what rucksacks are for. And if i do get on a rare occastion they´re usually reused as garbage bag.

On the other hand i eat quite a lot of meat products, fly to far away countries for vacation, go snowboarding in the winter and have one or more coputers running 24/7 (all with old tube monitors) for work related tasks.

I'm pretty much the same as salm. Except I don't vote for Greens , I separate the organic waste (it gets sent to a biogas powerplant...it also directly saves money, we pay a fee for every bag that gets picked up), I buy some bottled water (local stuff) in case of disaster, grocery bags get reused for other stuff, I don't eat much meat (because of the cost), don't go on vacation (don't like traveling) and I use a laptop (electricity is expensive). Here it just costs a lot of money to live, well, like the typical North American.

[Zixinus]

You will be hard-pressed to find traditional wolfram-bulbs in this household. We use almost strictly gas-based bulbs.

Aside that, me and dad both use a bicycle whenever weather and time permits it. I go to school every day with my bicycle.

We also collect and throw out recyclibles into the nearby recycling cans (which somehow translated to the locals as "garbage dump", because of stuff we don't know what to do with, like nylon bags).

We use our hands and fabric bags, while I prefer to use a thermally sealed backpack for shopping.

Beyond that, I'm afraid I am sure I could do more. I often shamelessly run my computer on for a long time (well, if it doing anything, otherwise I just turn it off) and Dad often forgets to turn off his TV. Food, dad is on better footing than me. I cannot or refuse to eat food that I am not familiar with (I think that is due to my Asperger's but I could be just obsessively picky or even more simply, spoiled rotten). I also prefer to bath than shower, although recently I try to shower more often.

[Tritio]

I try to make the effort by turning off lights/other electrical appliances when they're not needed, re-using plastic bags and other disposable containers, not using excessive amounts of water when bathing/washing stuff.

[Cairber]

I think we are doing pretty well...examples...

- energy saving bulbs
-recycling
-energy saving appliances
-cloth diapers
-breastfeeding for 2 yrs
-homemade baby food
-buying local food
-husband takes mass transit to work, I use the car but with the 3 kids and I and usually offer a ride to any other mom who wants in
-car pooling to get kids to school
-reusable grocery bags
-set heat at pretty low level, wear sweaters/fleece socks, etc.
-no AC but use fans
-I don't buy books anymore, I DL to Kindle or use the library
-I carry a kit around with spoons, forks and fold out plates for the kids so we don't use plastic/foam ones when we go out.

I use to do a lot of these things to save money, but now I do more for environmental reasons. V and I went back and forth on getting a second car but decided we are fine with one and him walking to the train/using regional rail for work. Sometimes cloth diapers are a PITA, but I keep trucking because I know it's good for the environment.

[Cairber]

Another thing is eating very little red meat; I think that is pretty environmentally friendly. We eat vegetarian 4 times a week, fish once, chicken once and then a red meat once a week.

[Singular Intellect]

Despite being in construction and needing to haul around plenty of tools, I bought a hybrid car that is vastly superior on gas mileage. All my tools do fit in it, and as a bonus I get to hear the other guys complain about gas prices and needing to fill up every three to four days, while I do so every two weeks for half the price they do for one fill up.

[Cairber]

I feel like composting is a great thing that we do...but it also reminds me a lot about the amount of food we don't consume Leftovers only last so long. It's definitely something we need to work on as a family. But we try to compost anything we can including stuff like dryer lint and the like.

We use it to plant veggies. This past spring and summer we did onions, pumpkins and zucchini. I want to try tomatoes and peas next year.

[Zixinus]

Dad and I do not stockpile food: odds are that anything you will find in the fridge will be consumed within a week or two. The odds of leftovers are actually rather low, as we don't buy anything that we (or rather, I) won't eat. Does that count as being environmental friendly?

[His Divine Shadow]

I got a better, modern, tiny car. Try to save electricity use at home but my motives are more selfish than doing it for the enviroment in both cases. I never buy the biodegradable bags anymore after I tried it a few times. They feel flimsier and are more expensive plus we reuse the plastic ones as waste bin liners so we're always needing new ones. Also I try to support local agriculture by purchasing domestic meat and vegetables.

[Broomstick]

Well, I don't think anyone is going to hit all possible ways to be green. Just reducing one's impact is important. If we all halve our energy usage, for example, it will make a significant difference. So, replace most of your lightbulbs with CFL's or LED's, but if you have one or two incandescent left don't kick yourself (some applications still require incandescent, such as dimmer switches.) Half the battle is just teaching people that some forms of being green actually are in their self-interest - efficiencies that lead to lower energy bills, for example.

[Duckie]

It annoys me that in some parts of America- it might be the south, but I've only got two data points (One location in the south = no, location in the north = yes although not a lot)- it's very difficult to Recycle. The only place that recycles is the Campus which has bins for recycleables next to the garbage, which busses it to somewhere where they actually do recycle.

So I can only recycle, generally, paper (I do try to bring paper with me to throw in the school's bins). If recycling were available where I lived, and if it were German-style (everything is recycled even food->compost, fees for garbage removal per gram, recycling is free) then I'd recycle a lot more.

I don't own a car, take the bus, have fluorescent bulbs which I only turn on when I need them to see, and generally don't abuse my air conditioner more than necessary to survive in this climate.

However, I do use a lot of electricity for computing, and I don't have my computers shut off nearly enough. I try to pay it back by donating the spare cycles of time to a distributed computing climate change prediction.

[JBG]

I voted yes but a bitch about light bulbs.

A light bulb should provide good light. That sounds simple but...

I want a light bulb that doesn't take 5 minutes to warm up, that I can read under and that is amenable to dimmer switches. For that it is incandescent.

I do not want to hear about "energy savings" where the CFB alternative is more expensive, provides inferior light, is toxic when disposing of it and which, in my experience, does not last that much longer. And dimmer switches do not work.

It is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[Duckie]

What the hell kind of fluorescent light bulbs do you have that take 5 minutes to warm up? Mine take 2 seconds of flickering as the power goes into them before they turn on, and provide suitable light. Granted, I'd like some dimmer switches for my room since I get frequent migranes and light sucks really badly at full intensity, but I don't feel like paying a significant amount of extra money for something that'll only be useful maybe once or twice a week.

Also, Fluorescent bulbs are more expensive, but they decrease your energy usage. They aren't more expensive unless you're unable to do basic math and think that using a light bulb is free beyond the cost of purchase.

[Simon_Jester]

I have an irrational fondness for continuous spectra, so I expect to be using some incandescents for a long time. But only in, say, one lamp.

[Zac Naloen]

I probably don't do as much as I should, I'm not as careful as I should be with my electricity usage for example but my bills are very low so I can't be using that much.


I have a PC on most hours and I don't think i have energy efficient lightbulbs but I do switch them off everytime I leave a room. (rented property, lights came with it and haven't gone yet).


But I do drive a small car, and I do recycle everything my region lets me. And I use public transport everytime it's practical.


I don't know how environmentally friendly this is but we do get our vegetables and meat directly from local farms via the riverford.co.uk farms network cutting out the middle man there.

[Plekhanov]

We do what we can we've chosen not to have a car, are vegetarians, recycle & compost everything we can, use fabric shopping bags, have energy efficient appliances, try to use as much 2nd hand stuff as possible, try to only replace things when they break not to upgrade (though as this means my desktop is now an increasingly obsolete Athlon XP 1700 so I think I'm going to have to get a new one soon even if it doesn't break & donate it to one of my nephews).