Happy belated Earth Day, y'all. I've been thinking about "the green life" a lot lately. I think it started two months ago, when I stumbled upon a TEDTalk called "Paper Beats Plastic? How To Rethink Environmental Folklore," by an environmental designer. It's a little long, but I recommend queueing it up to watch when you have a moment. It definitely changed my perspective about a few things.
It woke me up to the impact of my little actions, and how they add up. Spoiler: electric kettles in Britain (high tea country) cause the country to have to borrow power from France during commercial breaks; because paper bags are heavier, they add up to a negative environmental impact faster; and refrigerator size has increased a full cubic foot over the past few years. On top of the enormous energy output of our fridges, they are so big food gets lost in there. In the U.S., 40% of the food we buy for our homes is wasted.
This stuff is crazy.
Other things, too, contribute to my intensifying interest in lowering my impact. The Franklin Institute (named after the illustrious Benjamin Franklin) dedicates an entire room to the study of electricity. (The global warming room leads right into it.) These exhibits feature interactive machines, including one that measures your carbon footprint. I don't remember now what mine was, but I took another ecological footprint survey yesterday that told me it would take 4.6 earths to support our global population if everyone lived like me.
And, to be honest, it also has something to do with the fact that I pay the monthly utility bill at our house. 'Nuff said? If the power company offers me a way to cut my usage and cut our bill in the process, I take it.
But it is interesting trying to make these kinds of lifestyle changes not at St. Olaf, which is full of people who eat locally (and sometimes even grow their own food) and ride bikes everywhere and recycle or repurpose everything and take infrequent showers (don't worry, Oles, I say that with nostalgia, not disgust).
Once, on alumni weekend, I met the guy who started St. Olaf's now robust and omnipresent recycling program. It's so omnipresent, in fact, that I was surprised at how young he was. He only graduated in 1998, but his project made an enormous cultural shift on a campus used by over 2,500 people every day. Imagine that impact spread over the past 16 years!
That's not to say that every person at St. Olaf was environmentally conscious to the same degree. But it was a pretty big part of the culture there, and for the most part we shared a similar kind of environmental folklore. Now I live and work with people who learned different versions of those stories. These people aren't necessarily in the habit of recycling. We all have different preferences and tolerances for heat and cold. We have different relationships with paper towels and plastic bottles, with screens and with printing. And we have learned differently our role in the world and how to care for it. My roommates, bosses, coworkers and friends don't always go along with my eco-friendly plans (though, to be fair, sometimes they do). At work I'm the crazy hippie who eats greens and convinced them to stop buying water bottles and get a cooler instead; at home, I'm the "unconventional one," obsessed with reusing jars and turning off lights.
And there are other external limitations. An electric car, for example, is not an option for me right now. Solar or wind power is not available in my neighborhood, in my current home or office. There is no bus or train that runs between my house and my work, and the roads and neighborhoods that take me there are not bike-friendly.
Maybe I'm just making excuses. But it's never easy to change lifestyle patterns, particularly when I'm running my dollars and my hours down to the quick on a regular basis. There are other things that take precedence.
But I really would love not to contribute to the downward spiral of this world, so I'll keep plugging away. After awhile, the little things will add up.
It woke me up to the impact of my little actions, and how they add up. Spoiler: electric kettles in Britain (high tea country) cause the country to have to borrow power from France during commercial breaks; because paper bags are heavier, they add up to a negative environmental impact faster; and refrigerator size has increased a full cubic foot over the past few years. On top of the enormous energy output of our fridges, they are so big food gets lost in there. In the U.S., 40% of the food we buy for our homes is wasted.
This stuff is crazy.
Other things, too, contribute to my intensifying interest in lowering my impact. The Franklin Institute (named after the illustrious Benjamin Franklin) dedicates an entire room to the study of electricity. (The global warming room leads right into it.) These exhibits feature interactive machines, including one that measures your carbon footprint. I don't remember now what mine was, but I took another ecological footprint survey yesterday that told me it would take 4.6 earths to support our global population if everyone lived like me.
And, to be honest, it also has something to do with the fact that I pay the monthly utility bill at our house. 'Nuff said? If the power company offers me a way to cut my usage and cut our bill in the process, I take it.
But it is interesting trying to make these kinds of lifestyle changes not at St. Olaf, which is full of people who eat locally (and sometimes even grow their own food) and ride bikes everywhere and recycle or repurpose everything and take infrequent showers (don't worry, Oles, I say that with nostalgia, not disgust).
Once, on alumni weekend, I met the guy who started St. Olaf's now robust and omnipresent recycling program. It's so omnipresent, in fact, that I was surprised at how young he was. He only graduated in 1998, but his project made an enormous cultural shift on a campus used by over 2,500 people every day. Imagine that impact spread over the past 16 years!
And there are other external limitations. An electric car, for example, is not an option for me right now. Solar or wind power is not available in my neighborhood, in my current home or office. There is no bus or train that runs between my house and my work, and the roads and neighborhoods that take me there are not bike-friendly.
Maybe I'm just making excuses. But it's never easy to change lifestyle patterns, particularly when I'm running my dollars and my hours down to the quick on a regular basis. There are other things that take precedence.
But I really would love not to contribute to the downward spiral of this world, so I'll keep plugging away. After awhile, the little things will add up.
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