Inspired by Mary's Divorce = Anti-Green Selfishness.
You owe it to the earth to work it out, evidently.
In the future, there will be cars which will only emit pre-neutered kittens. However, this dream has not yet been realized. Until then, here's a handy guide to small changes the average American can make to save the planet. It’s not about giving things up, it’s about getting what you want in a better way!
*Use CF bulbs. Be sure to educate yourself about the proper disposal practices and hazards if you break one. It’ll scare you to death, but you won’t let anyone turn a light on in fear that one will burn out and you’ll have to go down to the disposal trailer that's only open on Wednesdays near the Dollar Store in the scary part of town.
Photo: makezine.com
*Refuse to drink beer from a can or plastic cup at a bar. First of all, it’s disgusting and it wastes packaging. Demand your beer on tap. Furthermore, if it’s Guinness, I’m pretty certain anything less is a venal sin.
Image: peeledcarrots.com
*Cancel your newspaper subscription. Sure, it’s nice to support your local paper and it’s terribly sad that they are all dying. However, there’s nothing in there that you can’t get online. Even Ziggy. Plus, imagine the horror of that guy down the street when he brings his Doberman by for his “morning constitutional” and the dog has nothing to shoot for.
*Use cloth bags at the grocery store. Every Walmart on the planet has them for a buck. It pisses off the cashiers, but you won’t have to worry about all that wasted plastic. Don’t worry about what you’ll use to line your bathroom trashcan, though. It is a scientific fact that you will forget your reusable bags one out of every five times you visit any store.
Image: blogspot.com
*When you do forget your bags, ask for paper. I’ve had this argument since I got my first job bagging groceries at the age of 14. We can grow more trees, we cannot grow more oil. Period.
*Allow your children to wear their Halloween costumes on Saturday. Sure, you get strange looks when you’re in the mall, but you’re recycling and the joy of a child is priceless.
The author, 1979
*Mow your lawn once a month. Actually, this isn’t my idea and I’m rather against it. But, it seems to work for The Man.
*Next time you visit a store which sells refrigerators, ask the salespeople why they are all running. Tell them you came to buy the most expensive one in the store but changed your mind because they aren't a responsible corporation. When they tell you it’s to enable you to see inside with the little light bulb, show them where their own flashlight aisle is located.
*Start a family gift exchange for your holiday of choice. The Man has seven brothers and sisters. If I bought something for all of them, one of the children would have to go to work in a sweatshop. A helpful formula for gift exchanges: If someone makes more than twice what your family does, give them an OxFam donation. You can never buy anything for them that will mean as much as two sheep and a cow will to a family in Africa.
*Ladies, I’m going to give you a gift. Did you know that you absorb four pounds and six ounces of makeup through your skin every year if you wear it every day? You’re welcome.
Image: redbrick.dcu.ie
*If you want a soda, buy it from McDonalds. They save 68,000,000 pounds of packaging per year just by pumping soft drink syrup directly from the delivery truck into tanks in the restaurant, instead of shipping the syrup in cardboard and plastic boxes. The Hamburglar, a quiet hero.
Image: wordpress.com
*Stop cleaning so much. You'll be surprised who doesn't notice that the baseboard behind the door you never close is dirty.
*A single bleach tablet in a toilet can help you avoid scrubbing your toilet for up to a month. (This offer is void if you have boy children.)
*Get a dishwasher. (Children don’t count.) You’ll use half the water and one-third the soap to clean the same amount of dishes as you would by hand washing. See? Laziness is GREEN.
*In all seriousness, get rid of your carpets. The Big GirlChild has asthma and she was able to completely go off her medications after we removed all the carpeting from our home. Whatever is under your carpeting is better. Imagine using a blanket for ten years that you could only spot wash and never shake out. That’s your carpet. When you see what is lurking under and inside your carpet, you’ll never have it again. Install cheap wood laminate if you can’t live with your current floor. We did it for $2300 for our three bedroom house, which is a lot less than carpet installation. We put it in ourselves. If I can do it, you can do it.
*Turn off your Christmas lights when you go to bed. Encourage your neighbors to do the same. I do, however, encourage you to turn them on for “special occasions," if 'ya know what I mean. It’s occasionally nice to feel like you’re doing it on the Vegas Strip.
*Finally, tell your kids the truth about Santa Claus, they expect less.
Image: The Last Days of Santa Claus, by Biljana Djurdjevic
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Ryan Soberg
Colony of Losers
astrid.in.lala.land
franishnonspeaker
Linnnn
vanessa seijo
Salon.com
Comments
Bump.
GREAT
Pfft!
Hey, if my future enviro-friendly car will emit kitties, does that mean it will run on catfood? Might not be cheaper since I am still not sure what the hell they put in it.
Thumbed for creative hilarity. Oh, and tree-hugging guffaws.
::goth-shudder::
On beer: I'm pretty sure you could live for months on nothing but Guinness and peanut butter.
On my living room carpet: I really don't want to think about what's living in there. I'll put in wood or laminate as soon as I can afford it.
On grocery bags: Although I try to always use my reusable bags, I often do forget them. When that happens, I just grab a handful of plastic bags out of the plastic bag recycling bin in the front of the store. Lots of grocery stores have such bins these days, so you may as well use them. MTK, you can also steal these bags for use in your trashcan.
Thumbed.
My Mom & Gramma use a Walmart bag stretched over a medium garbage can for their main garbage can. If you don't produce a lot of trash, that works very well. We also use a paper bag next to the regular garbage for the recycling. You can't get paper bags at Walmart, but you can at most grocery stores.
mabinogi - Guinness is the breakfast of champions.
I'm stopping cleaning today ... you may be getting an email from my husband later ... just letting you know!!!
I alreadt have the new bulbs. I bought them as soon as they came out. I use the bring your own bags too. I ofter have people tell me they forget them. I always ask if they remembered their car keys and purse. good post. thumbs up!
(Plus, any environmentally-related guilt I indulge in is all my own. Who are all these self-righteous greener-than-thou folks that everyone else seems to run into? I've never met any, though it seems to be required by law that any newspaper or magazine article that mentions Priuses also has to mention the supposed green arrogance of the people who drive them. Are the kind, unpresumptuous, well-informed but non-prostelitizing Prius drivers that I happen to know all freaks of nature?)
Ms. Irritated - Bring it on! He can talk to The Man about lawn care.
bearpaw - I only know one person who owns a Prius, personally. He's the pastor at our UU church. He's a decent guy. I think it's a lot more to do with perception vs. reality. In my world, everyone is just trying to keep their house. Green guilt is solely internal. It's nice. Even if I had the money for one, my kids wouldn't fit in it, so no judgment from my end.
Oh and holiday lights - LED lights (Light Emitting Diode) use a fraction of the energy used by conventional incandescent strands.
And don't forget rechargeable batteries.
By the way, have you ever written a bad post? I think not.
Lisa - I let natural curiousity take its course with the Santa thing. Trust me, by 10, you're both b.s.ing each other. Never lie. Santa is a spirit that helps Moms & Dads make Christmas. That is not a lie. ;) And thanks for the vote of confidence. From your keyboard to Zerry's ears.
The only downside to drinking draft at a bar is if the bar you're at has crappy choices. Most dive bars don't have Guiness on tap, so you're stuck with Lite - if you're lucky maybe Killian's or Goose Island. Those that do charge an arm and a leg for it, 'cause they're usually filled with the types of people who have bleached tips and mom and dad's credit card.
This was funny!
Maybe you should do it now before your neighbor thinks you were busted for cooking meth and that is why the hazmat team is there.
Adding this tip to your list: use a drying rack instead of the dryer. Or clothesline, if you have the real estate. I was able to cut my dryer use in half doing this, which saved me a lot of quarters. Living in a tiny apartment with no clothesline means I can't do towels & sheets on the rack and have to put 'em in the dryer, but I figure, "better is good." Small improvements add up.
I think you left out 'quit breeding so much'. Nothing can lower the carbon footprint of a human than not having a human. As usual, I loved every word!
Cool post though.
Rated.
Ah-men.
Thanks for providing yet another reason not to wear foundation, etc. Mascara and lip gloss suits me fine.
http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2009/11/doj-are-dirty-fascistic-bastards-they.html
http://joshfultonneedstostopspammingmy.blog.com/2009/11/spammers-are-dirty-fascistic-bastards.html
It's very enlightening.
(I like paper bags because they stand up! I use them for trash bags. Trying to figure out how not to make so much trash!)
Cute kitty too!
"Only if you water with rainwater?" Do you think the fruit and veg you'd be buying if you didn't grow your own would be watered with collected rainwater?
This is the kind of stuff that makes people nuts about saving energy. You can never do enough, grow your own and you get lectured for not collecting rainwater. Collect the rainwater and you'll probably get lectured for freezing your crop instead of building a root cellar. Build a root cellar and . . .
The high end models are now coming through with LED lighting, which saves more energy, and likely won't burn out during the lifespan of the fridge.
..And a new fridge is pretty much guaranteed to be more efficient than the one it replaces, as well as replacing that CFC-12 fluorocarbon with a (slightly more benign) version.
Hey, I'm green! I just thought I liked wood floors and not washing dishes and living in a building with very little grass, but I'm an environmentalist. Plus, I don't endanger any wildlife because of how I never leave the city, unless you count tourists as wildlife.