Great Lakes Green Pages

I have to thank my friend Rachel Downey at Studio Graphique for inspiring this post, for good or bad….Thanks, Rachel (or sorry for the rant…)

Thomas Friedman.  he wrote a book called “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.”  In full disclosure, I have not yet read this book, but several of my friends have and have recommended it highly.  One thing that he discusses is the top ten listing of easy things you can do to save the planet.  I agree and disagree…

First off, let’s face it.  The world is in need of a real green revolution.  If everyone on the planet puts a brick in their toilet tank (that is, everyone who has a toilet) we would save billions of gallons of water every year.  Great, nice first step, but all the while major manufacturers that make the products that you are buying are wasting billions more, we are only making small strides in the right direction.  I love my CFL bulbs, and think that everyone in the world should replace their incandescent bulbs with some form of energy saving option.  But if every household in America changed over, that is still only a dent in our huge energy consumption.  Especially as so many of us have big flat screen televisions, video games, and computers sucking the energy every day.  Even our phones which used to use so little power are all hands free, or cellular, and thus gulping down the power all the time.  Switching to a Prius is great, but until gas mileage reaches the critical point-say 300+, and everyone is on board, we are not having a big impact in our emissions.  Until we stop consuming so much and wasting so much, and can convince emerging economies that the American way of life is not what they should be copying, we are barely even slowing down on our destruction of the planet.  No one is gonna save the world just by putting a brick in their toilet.

On the other hand, small steps are better than no steps at all.  When we start recycling at home, we start to think about packaging.  It makes us aware of what we are consuming when we have to separate all our trash.  When we replace all our bulbs, it reminds us to think about our consumption, and hopefully it will lead to turning off the lights more, or putting that computer on stand by.  If we want to make a big impact we have to start with small things, and many folks here in the good old USA have not even started.  So top 10 lists are valid and have a place.  There real job is not to preach to the choir about how important recycling is to the world.  Their real job is to bring in those who are doing nothing and convince them that they too can make an impact by changing out some light bulbs and separating their trash.  Make them feel good about their efforts and get them thinking about what they can do next.  For the rest of us, who are already eating more organics, recycling all we can, and watching our energy consumption, we have to move to the next step.

So, I am proposing a new top ten list:

TEN DIFFICULT THINGS THAT YOU NEED TO DO TO HELP SAVE THE PLANET

1. Stop buying cheap crap. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as consumers.  We need to think about EVERY purchase that we make.  Stop buying those cheap $3 t-shirts from Wal-Mart.  While  Wal Mart may be making great strides to green their supply chain and their stores, the truth is China has a lot to do to fix their products.  Read this post from Green LA Girl about cheap t-shirts and their environmental impact.  Besides the fact that cheap products are hard on the environment when manufactured, they tend to fall apart faster.  This means that their life cycle is shorter and they tend to end up in the landfill faster.  If you are going to make a real impact, you need to buy less stuff.  When you make  a purchase, ask yourself:  How long will it last?  How much packaging does it have?  Is it recyclable when i am done with it?  Is there a program in place to recycle it?  Where did the materials come from?  How green are the materials in it?  Do I really need this?
2. Eat less meat. Meat is murder.  I am not talking about the ethical implications of eating animals, I am talking about how meat filled diets are killing the environment.  To illustrate the point, look at this great interactive post, “from pasture to plate.”  Growing cattle for beef production is horrible for th environment.  First off, to keep things cheap, we feed most cattle a diet rich in corn.  So first, we are growing corn (often Monsanto branded GM corn) with all the water and energy that that takes.  Then we truck that around the country (or ship around the world) where it is consumed-not by us, buy by cows that we are raising.  So the feed already has a hefty planetary impact.  Now consider the cow.  Cows naturally eat grass.  When we feed them grains that are hard for them to digest, they get gas.  Gas means methane emissions that contribute to the overall green house gases.  But wait, there is more.  Most beef is commercially raised, meaning mechanized farms.  These huge farms keep cattle close and spread disease.  Enter antibiotics that enter the food chain and the environment.  To keep cattle cheap, we need to force them to bulk up-so we add hormones and steroids to get them fat.  Then we take them to mechanized slaughter houses, automated butchers, and truck the meat all over.  Finally, we chop it up and put the final product in Styrofoam trays and cover it with shrink wrap.  Top that off with global rainforests being slashed and burned to create grazing land for cheap beef and you can see the overall impact.
3. Drive less and use less gasoline. If you have an SUV, quite frankly, shame on you.  No matter what you tell yourself, any gas guzzling car has no real justification in the world today.  Even companies whose business it is to ship products are greening their fleet.  there are solar panels on refrigerator trucks, trucks that run on cooking oil, hybrids, and more.  So there is no reason for you to be driving that 15 mpg (or less) Mercedes SUV.  Sure, you might have dogs that you need to take to the park, but with a few washable blankets on the back seat, you can still take them along.  Already driving a hybrid or even an all electric car?  Good for you, but how much are you driving it?  It still takes fossil fuels in most parts of the country to create electricity, and gas still is the main propellant for a hybrid.  We need to learn how to get the things we need in our own neighborhood.  Imagine if you didn’t have a car at all, how important would dense urban neighborhoods become to you.  How many food deserts would be eliminated if those of us who can drive, suddenly could not?  The corner grocer starts to make more sense.  And how much healthier would be as Americans if we got off our butts and walked a little?
4. Buy local food. Buying local is hard.  It means making the extra effort to go to farmers markets, joining a CSA or other group and sticking to it.  Most local grocers, even those produce stands at the West Side Market, are getting their produce from around the globe.  Only 1% of food grown in Ohio is actually consumed in Ohio.  That means that the food we consume has a huge carbon footprint just in travel.  It also means that large mechanized farms are fueling the produce industry.  If we really want change that means we have to change our diets, too.  Let’s face it, there is little in the way produce in Ohio in February.  we need to eat more seasonally and locally and that means a lot more work than going to Giant Eagle.  I watched a movie, Deep Agriculture, and my favorite line in the whole film was: “We ship tons of butter cookies to Denmark every year, and Denmark exports tons to the US.  Couldn’t we just exchange recipes?”
5. Get involved. We are all busy, wrapped up in our own little lives.  While we say family is first, or I have to work to support my kids, what good is it if we leave the lasting legacy of global worming and a polluted environment for them to grow up in?  Making change happen requires more work from each of us.  It can be simple: vote, sign a petition for renewable energy, call or write your congressman.  Or if you have the drive or the time, it can be more meaningful.  Get a job with an environmental group.  Start a neighborhood petition to ask your city to start recycling.  Attend the local government open meetings and express your commitment to environmental causes.  Start a grassroots campaign to improve public transportation.  Whatever you do, do something and stick to it.  Americans like to sit back and do nothing and then complain about the situation they are in.  Do something about it instead.  Until we start moving toward a greener centered economy, we can never expect to battle global warming, food safety, health problems or recession.
6. Reuse materials. When I was a kid, we used to patch our clothes.  We wore things until we outgrew them or they fell apart completely.  If we outgrew them, the next kid in line inherited them.  When they fell apart, the fabric became stuffing in some project or squares for a quilt.  Jars became drinking glasses or were reused for homemade jam.  Everything got a second life.  Look in any old man’s workshop and you will find things like jar lids nailed to the ceiling where food jars were used to store nuts and bolts.  Somewhere along the way in the last 30 years, we have convinced ourselves that new is always better.  Use something and throw it out.  Never fix anything.  If it stops working, toss it on the tree lawn and go get a new one.  Notorious for this is the electronics area.  It is actually cheaper to buy a new television than to have the old one fixed.  And technology is a killer.  Things don’t move as fast as they used to in the consumer electronics market as they used to, but it still moves pretty fast.  It used to be that when you bought a new computer, it was obsolete when it hit the shelves.  At least now it will work fine for a year or so.  Instead of tossing things out, we should take a minute and figure out if we (or someone we know, or a charity) can use it for something else.
7. Recycle and buy recycled. Whenever you make a purchase, consider the materials in the product as well as the packaging.  I always buy TP that is made from recycled paper.  Sometimes it is more expensive, sometimes not.  But if everyone bought only TP that had recycled content, then only recycled product would be available.  You need to make your stand and do it-all the time.  If you scan the shelves and read the labels, you will see that there are alternatives for nearly every product.  I bought garbage bags with recycled content and 100% post consumer recycled packaging.  Did you know that Wal Mart’s pizza boxes are made from 100 recycled cardboard that they recycled themselves.  That is the type of closed loop thinking that we need to employ.
8. Compost. This can be a small or a huge undertaking.  At the very least, it is not easy to trudge out in the snow and dump your organic waste into a separate bin in the middle of winter.  It is easy to think, it will break down in the landfill.  Trouble is, landfills are a closed environment.  Want to know why things last forever in a landfill?  We cover and cap them.  That means that even the food scraps that would break down in the garden do not get oxygen and will last for years or even decades in a public landfill.  Starting a compost pile will make your garden love you and save on the use of fertilizers. Don’t have a garden, ask around your city for a place to drop off your scraps.  Or even better….
9. Start your own garden. One of the big problems with modern society is that those of us in developed areas know little or nothing about where our food comes from.  Raise a couple of chickens and you will see how much work it entails.  Learning to respect the food chain is one of the biggest obstacles to change in our currently system.  A study shows that Americans throw out 40% of the food we buy.  I don’t know if that is true, but consider that if it is even half that, how many hungry in our own cities could be fed if we stopped it.  Growing your own food will not only give you healthier and more flavorful meals, but learning what it takes to grow a successful garden will have a huge impact on the food choices that you make.  And what can be a better learning opportunity for those with kids, than to teach them how to grow some of their own food?  That is an education that you can’t get in the local school district.
10. Choose renewable options for your utilities. Most utilities offer some sort of green credit.  I buy our natural gas from a company that offsets the gas with renewable energy.  Many electrical suppliers are offering green credits for the electricity you use.  Choose them, even if it does cost a little more;  by making the right choices, we will make the market more competitive.  Even better, install a renewable energy system on your property-set up a solar panel or mini wind turbine or some other device that will start to make electricity to offset you usage.

So go out and get started.  Later, I will give you the next installment in this series.  Something like 10 impossible things to do if we want change, because let’s face it even this is only a start.