i try to do my bit when it comes to recycling, i have a compost bin in the garden for garden rubbish and vegetable wastes, and also shred most of my cardboard from packaging for use in the compost, and i also have a rainbutt connected to the guttering to collect rainwater for use in the garden i dont drive (although my wife does) but we only have a 1.2l car i recycle as much as possible when it comes to council bin collections, unfortunately they only collect metal, paper and glass, which i find very annoying as i would say 70% of our household waste per week is plastics (milk bottles, pop bottles, food packaging etc) what annoys me is that our local tip will only permit cars on the site, so you have to drive there to recycle items and its less than a mile from my house so phesably i could either walk or bike there with my plastics when it comes to parcels, i recycle all my jiffybags/padded envelopes and packaging materials as much as possible when it comes to electricity i must admit we are quite wasteful, as i have a large tv and entertainment setup which is a bit of a energy hog, but as i hardly watch tv these days its mainly down to the children, and educating them to turn things off when theyre not in use, although 90% of out lightbulbs are energy saving ones, and weve just replaced our washing machine with a A+ rated one, and the fridge and freezer were replaced last year with A rated ones, also my computer server is on 24/7 so thats a bit of a hog, but i do always switch things off when not in use rather than leave things in standby (but thats mainly to reduce bills and not directly to reduce my carbon footprint) although some evenings i do use candles rather than electric lighting, but not sure if thats any better really! (atlhough my wife does enjoy it! :110: ) water consumption is a bit of a problem but thats due to having a family of 4, although i do share baths with my wife as much as possible ;-) and mostly have showers i also actively use freecycle for giving away pretty much everything from my broken washing machine, to old computer parts, old toys, furniture etc and i also regularly sort through clothes and either donate them to local charities or again use freecycle, and also thanks to freecycle i managed to obtain 2 full bedrooms of furnature for both my kids, rather than buying new items (plus on occasion you can get some nice bits of console hardware and software for free!) ive also just applied for a grant for free cavity wall insulation and loft insulation, which will hopefully reduce our heating costs in the wintermonths on a whole i dont think i do as much as i could to recycle and reduce my carbon footprint, but i do think i make a small difference with what i do already, and if out local council will actually pull their finger out there arse and offer plastic and cardboard collections along side their existing paltry services that would make a huge difference to out weekly waste
From what I've heard recently, factory farming esspecially of cattle is a major reason for concern. Apparently we probably need to stick hoses up their asses to keep that gas from going into the atmosphere. Then NASA can use that gas in their new engine. ;p I think we'll do some notable things to try to be less wasteful, but ultimately the best (most effective) way and the way more likely we will solve this problem is war. War and disease are more likely to solve the problem than stopping waste. Still, I think things like recycling are very important. Things like paper, glass, and plastic can be recycled and should be opposed to ending up burried in the ground forever. It's not like it's hard to recycle. No one should be throwing away such things. Just wait and maybe we'll catch up to Futurama and we'll all be eating recycled sandwiches, mmmmm yum. My bet is still on war and disease.
btw. something I noticed while being away from my appartment for a half year was that it didn't really matter that much how much electricity I used, b\c the difference when not using any what so ever and using it normally (with computers, ligts, fridge, TV, etc.) was ~200 SEK (or ~30 USD). So the real cost wasn't the usage but some intial fixed cost o_Ô
I am actually genuinely interested in the responses on here. Not all that long ago it was considered almost freakish to be environmentally aware or remotely green. Ecologically minded people have long been immediately lumped in with tree huggers & women who rarely used soap (unless they made it themselves) or guys with long beards and thick rimmed glasses. My parents were the "original" 1970's hippies, which on first glance might appear to lump me in with the huggers & bearded women, however it took me a few years to appreciate their efforts. Back then I was always red-faced by their attempts to make their own peanut butter (which I never had the heart to tell my mother tasted crap!) or my Dad and his home brew wine efforts. I don't know how well known the TV programme "The Good Life" was in the US (or elsewhere) but it was a comedy set in the UK. It was set in some middle-class suburban leafy housing development. The main characters were a couple who jacked in their old lives and lucrative professions to become self efficient & live a more environmentally acceptable life. Each week we'd laughed at their attempts at rearing pigs, or getting their sick hens to lay eggs only to discover that they were all male. As a foil, their neighbours were entirely the opposite and very wasteful. They laughed at each other across their wooden fences. Ultimately, as kids my brother & I could identify with that as I think in the 1970's certain families either immitated the lifestyle or were the source of the original idea! It wasn't considered freakish at all, but the 1980's put an end to it as it was deemed that if you didn't take holidays abroad, bought expensive consumer goods, owned a foreign car or used had far more than you really needed - you were a failure! We hadn't heard of Nike, we didn't have a colour TV (infact for the first 5 years of my life I never watched TV for more than 1hr a week), we'd never seen a fast food joint, we didn't own an expensive branded anything and we lived in the Highlands of Scotland in a small cottage despite my father being a manager. We lived like that bloody TV programme and for years afterwards I suspect we resented it and subsequently forgot the importance of it. It was seeing my first Spielberg film that seriously pissed me off. All those suburban US houses with kids that seemed to have parents that pissed off to work and left them completely on their own with every luxury at their disposal. I had never heard of pizza delivery until I saw E.T. and seeing the BMX bikes freaked me out! I wanted one and I joined the consumer race that very night in that crappy little Perth cinema. I don't think we are the only ones. It's difficult to explain this sort of thing to our kids. They are so used to consumerism and having lots at their finger tips. When I mention that only 3 years before I was born man first landed on the moon in black & white they look at me in a strange "you are old" way. We never had the likes of the items available now. I think that this accounts for my continued interest in games equipment. I really wonder what is coming next and what my kids will accept as normal will potentially blow everything that has been before it completely out of the water. Where I am going with this is that I am old enough to remember when things were different and I realise we can never go back there. Technology will always progress, lives will change, politics, economics & resources are bigger shifters in the patterns of our lives than we think. When people begin to say with conviction that certain issues seriously matter then irrespective of whether they believe it or not, politicians will bend over backwards to ensure changes occur. It's clear to me from the responses here that the message is definately getting through and people are changing their habits and consider the planet worth considering. Better still, the link between saving money and being less wasteful is very evident in the responses. Money always gets people moving!
Things must be very different in Sweden as if you don't use power in the UK, then the meter doesn't tick over and the electricity company makes nothing from you. There is NO line rental as such or overheads being added onto the bill silently and invisibly.
I try to be environmentally efficient, but I don't go ridiculously out of my way to save a plastic bottle or anything like that. If my bike was in operating conditions, I'd probably at least use that to go to the store, but I usually wind up driving. If I'm especially bored and in a mood in that I don't mind having people blowing their horns at me (fucking idiots), I'll walk to the store. I liked walking when I was at school, though. A lot of people are lazy and would rather drive, but a nice walk is good for you and gives me an opportunity to think about different things. A friend and I had an interesting conversation when we were walking across campus one day. He threw away a plastic bottle in a trashcan, since East Carolina doesn't have a lot of opportunities for recycling. Somehow this got us on the topic of recycling... Him: "I usually don't recycle. I just don't care all that much, and it's pretty inconvenient anyway." Me: "So, if they had recycling bins next to the trashcans, would you still throw the plastic bottle away in the trashcan?" Him: "Probably." Me: "Wow. You're an asshole." I think if recycling and efficient methods of using energy were more convenient then more people would get into it. One of the reasons I built my computer with the case I did is because it came with an energy efficient power supply, and that at least makes me feel a little better about leaving it on most of the time.
Interesting you should mention that. I was recently scanning through a Sunday magazine (one of these usually self congratulatory additional pieces of crap that come bundled with your newspaper so by the time you have finished reading all 300 pages of the newspaper, magazine, entertainments addition, sports edition & home section it's Monday!) and it mentioned a device that has just been patented. I am damned if I can remember the name of it, but it connects to your meter, or somewhere visible in your home and gives you a readily viewable display of your total power consumption. I personally think this is the sort of device that would draw people's attention to their power consumption in an understandable way. It apparently gives you a series of green, then orange and red LED segments. The higher your consumption the closer you get to the red LED's! About 6 mths ago I did something similar with the dial on the meter. I switched all my appliances off and then switched various things on / off to see the main culprits in my electricity usage. Out went the old fridge freezer, out went the old boiler (the pump was a bitch!) and I am still trying to save up for a new bathroom so I can finally get rid of the shower. Man, that really shocked me. That one device is literally shafting my bill each month so we have cut down on the time we take in there until I can get a better one. Anyone tried wind turbine generation yet? I'd love to hear what happened as I did hear one report from a school not too far from me who slashed their bills by only £2.00 ($4) a year when expecting a massive reduction. h:
For me it's probably in my blood; I was born in San Francisco and was raised in the East Bay <10 miles from the leftist epicenter Berkeley. I've been recycling cans/bottles/biodegradables for as long as I can remember, in fact that's how I bought my SNES at 8 years old. Something that everyone can do is buy canvas grocery bags instead of wasting paper/plastic and reuse trash liners. If so much shit didn't have packaging a lot of the world's waste would be gone.
APE, do you know how much those panels cost to install/how big/efficient they are & whether your folks were able to get any federal/state level assistance for doing so? I looked briefly at the idea of solar panels a while ago, but they were still fairly cost prohibative. However, I was listening to an NPR radio report a while back where there was talk of much more efficient cells coming along, which might change the overall balance of costs vs benefits. Solar power is already being generated by some power companies in the SW US - it's still small compared to energy usage, but it is a start - take a look at this page for one of the generating sites -> http://greenwatts.com/pages/SolarStats/SolarDescr.html If there is one thing that I'd wish the US policymakers would grasp more firmly, it's a move to make public transit systems more available/feasible. It's slowly happening, with the rise of light rail systems in many cities, but the car is still very much king here. The first thing you notice as a European in the States, is just how dependant you are on the automobile in most places.
Just remember, it's not "Save the Planet". It's save the enviroment so we don't all fucking die. The planet will be just fine. But doing "green" things is in our own best interest.
It' no good to be wasteful for the sake of being wasteful, but I don't break my back trying to save the whales. For the way we're currently living, there are too many people in the world. If all 6 billion of us lived like Americans, Canadians, British, etc. We'd need 3+ planets to support our resoruce uses. So we have 2 choices: live in the dark ages, or stop having kids, so that a large number of people die. Of course, doing your part to not kill the whales is always helpful, but unless AIDS gets us all, or Nuclear Holocaust with Iran takes out most of Asia\Africa, either we eat the planet dry, or someone's gotta starve.
I just flushed my toilet 14 times....for entertainment! I'm off to go burn all these plastic bottles now. (I try to recycle stuff, but we never have at home. I don't produce a ton of garbage though, nor do I drive. I always cut the soda can holder things when I use to drink soda though, save the ducks!)
I've been driving my car all Summer to work and back, and I've only put 90 miles on it so far. I don't really get the point of driving around and wasting gas for the hell of it...
Thats all people do around here. I don't like cars or driving so I get crap for it, but I'm the one with an HDTV, a good computer, and a 360. They have a car and gas. Hoo-rah. I like the outside though. Just not cars. The only way I like cars is blasting music in them.
Ever since I've been driving my car around, I kind of wanted to give it an "Orky" theme from Warhammer 40K and get a digital horn that goes "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH" but I changed my mind. For one thing, that would be suitable only on a monster truck.:lol: I thought about somehow painting this on the hood, too. I'd probably need a stencil or something though.
OH::noooo:OH::noooo:OH:OH:OH::noooo::noooo::noooo:OH:OH::noooo::noooo:OH::---noooo:OH::-DOH::-DOH:OH::noooo::shrug:
Er back on topic. I think I am as I do a lot of use as little energy as possible; don't smoke, drive or eat meat; recycle a lot; don't use plastic shopping bags; buy second hand games; didn't buy a Wii :thumbsup: ; and have a solar power battery charger but then I remember that I fly the equivilent of once around the world every year....
