How "green" are you?

[cantdrv55]

I'm wondering if I'm the last Pelican to bring my own bag when grocery shopping. Been feeling guilty lately so now I bring my own bags. Nothing fancy, just trying to reuse paper bags and even a couple of big backpacks.

The next green thing I'm going to try is to do a better job of sorting the trash. I realize now that there's all sorts of stuff I should have been recycling all along. I may have to ask for another recycling bin.

If I keep this up I might turn into Vash, except I can't cook.

[borakikay]

Originally Posted by cantdrv55

I'm wondering if I'm the last Pelican to bring my own bag when grocery shopping. Been feeling guilty lately so now I bring my own bags. Nothing fancy, just trying to reuse paper bags and even a couple of big backpacks.

The next green thing I'm going to try is to do a better job of sorting the trash. I realize now that there's all sorts of stuff I should have been recycling all along. I may have to ask for another recycling bin.

If I keep this up I might turn into Vash, except I can't cook.

Wow it's not to hear that the you bring some thing to help some recycling thing. I loved green but i can't be a recycling. lolx

[oldE]

Here in the Annapolis Valley of western Nova Scotia, we have been doing the 'trash sort' for years. It helps there is a cardboard recycling plant in the area. The system is far from perfect, but it does help.

I was a while getting on to the grocery bag idea. Finally got enough bags for a 'full load' in each vehicle and return the bags to the vehicle when they are emptied. That way, they are there when one of us realizes we have to pick up something.

29 years ago, we built a house with 6" of insulation in the walls and 80% of the windows facing south. On nice days in the winter it relies on passive solar. I built a solar collector a few years ago to heat a rock 'heat sink' under the floor of the sun room. I usually see temps around 50 degrees C in the air going down to the rocks during the day. The only problem with the system is I failed to put enough insulation around the rocks when I built the heat storage twenty four years ago.
Last winter I installed solar domestic hot water (vacuum tube system which works very nicely even at -20 degrees C) and have been very pleased with its performance. I am in the middle of trying to add a space heating loop to the tank, which might help heat the house through the night if there is some hot water to spare. We'll see,

Does it count I am on my 4th diesel VW? the last two are able to travel 1100 km on a tank in cruise (only about 1000 km on my wife's daily commute).

I have pumpkin cooking at the moment. My wife does the garden ever since the asparagus incident of '95. Most of our potatoes come from our garden, as do the carrots, garlic, onions and seasonal veggies and tomatoes. Apples come from a local producer (can't quite see his farm from my front window, trees in the way), maple syrup comes from my brother in law. No big things, but a lot of things that work for us and help support our community.

Les

[azasadny]

Not at all...

[GH85Carrera]

Not very, but some. I recycle my newspapers & magazines & aluminum. I drive cars that were made in the 80s.

I never ever litter at all.

[cbush]

I hate the term "green". Seems like a scam/ marketing ploy to me. It is too bad though, because being environmentally conscious is important for your pocketbook and the planet. We make choices every day, and those choices can have a big impact.

We do what we can- reuse grocery bags, recycle, drive fuel efficient vehicles (well except the 993 which is a gas sucking hog, but it isn't my daily driver), and invest in upgrades and appliances that make our home more energy efficient. Really no reason not do do these simple things. We also volunteer regularly to pick up trash along the river, and do other things to help keep our community tidy.

I am seriously thinking about adding solar power to our home, but still have to do a little more cost benefit analysis.

I remember all the ads from the 60s, like the crying Indian and such. They had a big impact on me. We have come a long way since then- so whatever bandwagon (Green) gets the current generation to take these issues seriously, I guess that is good. I wish folks would do more.

I like this quote--"Save the planet, recycle an old Porsche"

[Dottore]

Originally Posted by oldE

Here in the Annapolis Valley of western Nova Scotia, we have been doing the 'trash sort' for years. It helps there is a cardboard recycling plant in the area. The system is far from perfect, but it does help.

I was a while getting on to the grocery bag idea. Finally got enough bags for a 'full load' in each vehicle and return the bags to the vehicle when they are emptied. That way, they are there when one of us realizes we have to pick up something.

29 years ago, we built a house with 6" of insulation in the walls and 80% of the windows facing south. On nice days in the winter it relies on passive solar. I built a solar collector a few years ago to heat a rock 'heat sink' under the floor of the sun room. I usually see temps around 50 degrees C in the air going down to the rocks during the day. The only problem with the system is I failed to put enough insulation around the rocks when I built the heat storage twenty four years ago.
Last winter I installed solar domestic hot water (vacuum tube system which works very nicely even at -20 degrees C) and have been very pleased with its performance. I am in the middle of trying to add a space heating loop to the tank, which might help heat the house through the night if there is some hot water to spare. We'll see,

Does it count I am on my 4th diesel VW? the last two are able to travel 1100 km on a tank in cruise (only about 1000 km on my wife's daily commute).

I have pumpkin cooking at the moment. My wife does the garden ever since the asparagus incident of '95. Most of our potatoes come from our garden, as do the carrots, garlic, onions and seasonal veggies and tomatoes. Apples come from a local producer (can't quite see his farm from my front window, trees in the way), maple syrup comes from my brother in law. No big things, but a lot of things that work for us and help support our community.

Les

That's pretty damn impressive! Well done.

[Rick Lee]

I can't remember not sorting garbage and recycling. And where I grew up, we had to pay to go to the county recycling center a few times a year. For as long as I've been living on my own we've always had two refuse pickup days per week - one for trash and one for recycling. I break down all cardboard boxes, separate plastic, glass and cans. Of course, I recycle my motor oil. I do not bring my own bags to the grocery store, however, because we reuse those plastic bags they give out as our only garbage bags. I might buy one pack of those big black plastic garbage bags per year for large cleanups or moves. Otherwise, we just use what the grocery store gives out. And today I'm using those bags to waterproof my belongings in my bike's sidecases, as I'm on the bike in rainy Las Vegas for a few days.

[VINMAN]

Originally Posted by cbush

I hate the term "green". Seems like a scam/ marketing ploy to me. It is too bad though, because being environmentally conscious is important for your pocketbook and the planet. We make choices every day, and those choices can have a big impact.
I remember all the ads from the 60s, like the crying Indian and such. They had a big impact on me. We have come a long way since then- so whatever bandwagon (Green) gets the current generation to take these issues seriously, I guess that is good. I wish folks would do more.

Same here.

I'm very big on recycling. IMHO we use way to much plastics nowadays. The vast majority of which is not recycled. We can only recycle certain plastic containers. Why not all plastics??? I use paper bags at the supermarket when ever possible. I am vehemently anti bottled water. mainly because i think its a scam, and self righteous thing and the amount of litter it contributes too.
Nothing infuriates me more then litter. I'm not a tree hugger by any means. But I am a huge outdorrsman. I hate seeing our planet and enviorment trashed.

[GH85Carrera]

I guess I did not even think about the motor oil. Of course I recycle that. I take old ni-cad batteries to a battery shop near my office. All of my used automotive fluids get recycled. We have a central office in OKC that will accept all hazardous waste for free. Just bring in your water bill to prove you are a resident. They take old paint, pesticides mercury vapor lamps and even electronics.

My office is down the road from a large wholesale food processing plant. They have a lot of minimum wage workers. Anytime I have something that has some use left but I don’t want any more I can put it in front of our building. When we upgraded the toilets at our house I put the old toilets next to the curb in front of our office building. They was gone in a few hours.

[Rick Lee]

And for my motorcycle trip yesterday, instead of buying bottled water, I filled my canteen with water from my Brita filter at home. Though I will probably have to buy some bottled water on the way back. When in the desert, I do what I have to do. My bike gets around 50 mpg and has a cat on it. It's my main mode of transportation. I put about twice as many miles on it annually as on my car.

[Lothar]

I depends on how sick you make me.

All kidding aside, since our curb side recycling program was expanded, there is not much left in our garbage can each week. I like stuff that reduces energy consumption in our house, like front-loader washing machine, and cfl's where they make sense. I love our gas tankless water heater. Best of all, being the only male in the house, I can now have a hot shower like everyone else.

[Scuba Steve]

I have no idea but feel free to judge...

Obsessive compulsive recycler here. I had to get extra recycle bins because the one they gave us when we bought the house wasn't enough. Luckily we don't have to self-separate. Everything removed for the home renovation I'm doing has been recycled in some form. Scrap wire and nails -> recycled. Habitat got the old appliances, countertop, sinks and everything. The only thing unable to be recycled was the old tile and thinset that came up + a few bits and pieces of sheetrock.

Lawn clippings and tree trimmings have been chopped up and distributed throughout the lawn. It might make a difference... from my perspective the yard looks great and I haven't had to fertilize in 2 years.

Cars - they're far from new but mine (2000 year model) is still young at 60K miles. I average 40-42mpg. Hers (1992 model) I guess you could say is green in that it's still going strong and well maintained. It looks like new but she's still looking forward to getting a Focus or something maybe next year.

I get plastic bags from the store but they're all repurposed as trash can liners for all the small cans throughout the house. Still have a few of the other kind though.

We've cut energy and water usage at home by about 40%. Mostly due to adding insulation, tinting and sealing where needed because in this part of the world heat is the concern. I also installed ridge venting and radiant barrier so the attic temp now tops out at around 105 (it used to be in the 140s).

[Henry Schmidt]

I live on a property with 400 trees.
Walk to work.
Recycle religiously
Offer a sanctuary for wild life
Recycle/ treat my own sewage and water the trees with gray water produced by showers, laundry and sinks.
Solar heat our water.
Offer housing for a least 2 bee colonies.
I restore old cars that when put back into use reflect a very small carbon foot print as compared to the production of a new car. Every new car produced potentialy has a huge carbon footprint perhaps more than it will produce it's lifetime. Imagine the pollution you get from plastics factory, tanneries, steel mills. foundries and paint production just to name a few.
Green?
I also believe that the eco-nasis that terrorize small children with fabricated fantasies about Global Warming and the evils of human existence do more harm than good.
We all want fresh air, clean water and a symbiotic relationship with nature but that should be the goal not an obsession.. Lifestyle choices foisted upon entire populations by unelected bureaucrats with the sole purpose of controlling the masses is tyranny by fear.

Rant over, move along.

[Zeke]

I comply, but I wonder at times what the offset is. The articles about CFL's and the Prius cars got me to thinking. Still, I won't wantonly waste or dispose.

Your waste oil from your 911 is probably clean enough to use in a lot of equipment before recycling.

[sammyg2]

Do not let them fool you into thinking that all that recycling is good for the environment. In most cases it is not. It is also much more expensive.

Aluminium is the most economically and environmentally logical recyclable, as it saves a great deal of energy to recycle it than to make it from virgin ore, and it can be recycled back into the same product. At least it would make sense, if there wasn't such a huge cost in CRV taxation and recycling rewards, all funded by the taxpayers.

Paper also gets a nod, it's much closer to the break-even point when you take into consideration all the polution from the trucks, the processing, etc.

Recycling plastic is a total joke. It wastes energy, it creates more polution, it is usually not recycleable into a comperably valued product, all it does it cost us all money and make the greenies have a warm and fuzzy. It costs more to recycle a bottle than to throw it away and make a new one, and since there isn't that much demand for recycled plastic and because it isn't that cost efficient, recycled bottles often end up in a landfill anyway. Obviously the best thing we can do is to not buy plastic water bottles.
Remember when we used to drink out of the hose?
Now they've brainwashed us into thinking that only expensive designer water is good enough. BAH!
If we really want to be green, we'll focus on cutting wasteful consumption. Re-using a grocery bag is a good example of that as long as it doesn't need to be washed very often.
Buying products that don't have elaborate packaging is probably the best thing we can do.
Buying something just to throw a large part of it away doesn't make sense.

Recycling
by Etta Sanders

8 April 02

Like many New Yorkers on the Upper West Side, Francie Williamson hates recycling, and loves it at the same time. A nurse who works a long day, she hates coming home to the chore of rinsing out the bottles and cans, and hates having them clutter up her apartment. But she likes the feeling that she has been part of a solution to the city's garbage problem that was long seen as a common-sense alternative to leaching landfills or polluting incinerators. So she fills her blue recycling bags with bottles and cans, and is herself thus filled with hope for the environment.

But the hopes of New York's recyclers were shaken when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently proposed suspending the recycling of metal, glass and plastic for 18 months. The program is expensive and inefficient, the mayor said, and much of what is in the blue bags does not in fact get recycled, ending up instead in landfills along with the rest of the garbage.

"We are not doing a good job," the mayor said, "and until we can it's just not worth it."

Others disagree, and in any case doubt that the mayor will be able to suspend what, after all, both state and local law require. The head of the New York City Council's new Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste, Michael McMahon, says he is not about to let recycling end. "Is it as important as education and public safety? No," McMahon said. "But it is almost as important. And the city has to be committed to implementing a good plan." (See McMahon's essay on Searchlight). This week, McMahon said, the city council will be making an announcement about an alternative proposal to Bloomberg's -- it will essentially be asking the state to take over the recycling program.

But thirteen years after the city council passed the first mandatory recycling law aimed at reducing New York's trash, many officials are focusing on other ways - such as incinerators (see story) -- to replace Fresh Kills, the city's primary garbage dump until it was closed last year after half a century in operation. In a city that generates 11, 000 tons of household garbage a day -- 22 million pounds! --recycling may have seemed like a good solution, but few think it is going to be an easy one.

THE COST OF RECYCLING
There are some people, most noticeably New York Times columnist John Tierney, who think recycling makes people feel virtuous, but accomplishes little, and at great cost. Half a billion dollars could have been saved, he wrote in his most recent of many columns on the subject, if a decade's worth of recyclables had been sent instead to out-of-state landfills. From the Department of Sanitation:

But the mayor himself was careful not to be so completely dismissive.

"We have two recycling programs, one that works and one that does not," Bloomberg said in his February 13th budget address.

The one that he says works is recycling of paper -- some 1,300 tons of it a day -- which pays for itself. The one that does not, the administration contends, is the 1,000 tons per day of metal, glass and plastic, which does not pay for itself.

Advocates say that such an assessment is unfair. They point out that paper recycling took time to turn a profit. It has taken a decade for the city to get to the point where 20 percent of all garbage collected from residences in the city is recycled. Only since April 2000 has curbside pick-up of recyclable material been a regular weekly occurrence in every neighborhood. Recycling, they say, has barely been given a chance. "This program has been a success," said Mark Izeman of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are more than 2,000 tons of material a day that don't have to be landfilled. And it holds the potential for further savings."

But with a projected $4.8 billion deficit looming in the city budget, "potential" savings may not be good enough. And indeed, while the cost of recycling has actually been slightly lower than the cost of trucking the material to out-of-state landfills, that will soon no longer be the case. The price that companies charge to process the city's metal, glass and plastic will soon increase to more than $100 a ton, nearly double what it is now. Add the cost of collecting it all, and the cost of recycling jumps to $239 a ton. By contrast, the cost of disposing of a ton of garbage, without recycling it, is $132. That is why the mayor projects that a halt in recycling will save the city $56 million next year.

CAN RECYCLING BE MADE COST-EFFECTIVE?

It admittedly faces a sharp challenge in the marketplace, where the value of most metals, most glass and many plastics is low. "The markets are not real strong for these commodities," said Allan Gerlat, editor of Waste News, a biweekly newspaper. "It's a nationwide thing. There's just more supply than demand."

But New York City could boost those markets by using its clout as a consumer to buy more products made from recycled materials. The city does buy some plastic bags, carpeting and garbage cans with recycled content, but other items, such as snow cones, park benches, playground equipment made from recycled materials, are often more expensive than those made from virgin materials.

Though the city has spent millions of dollars on public education campaigns about recycling, the word has not reached many New Yorkers, who still do not know what they should sort into the blue bags. "Despite the best intentions of residents, they put in plastic toys, plastic wrap, yogurt containers," said Steven Lawitts, the deputy commissioner for administration at the Department of Sanitation. "Many of these things have recycling symbols on them, but they're not in fact economically recyclable and they're not part of our program." That is one of the reasons why as much as 40 percent of what is put out in the blue bags is not actually recycled.

WHAT NOW?

New York City is not the only municipality that is struggling to make recycling work. The upstate city of Amsterdam (pop. 18,000), faced with rising costs and a belief that their recyclables were being dumped, stopped recycling at the end of 1999. Six months later they were sued by the State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, and forced to resume. Amsterdam is not anti-recycling, says Mayor John Duchessi, but they feel they are subjected to a burdensome state requirement that comes with no financial assistance.

The Attorney General has been meeting with New York City Sanitation Department officials, but has made no statement regarding what he would do if the city stops recycling. "Attorney General Spitzer recognizes Mayor Bloomberg and the city are facing tremendous fiscal challenges," says Mark Violette, a spokesman for Spitzer, "We're trying to balance the monetary needs with our conviction to continue recycling."

Meanwhile, the city officials are looking for ways to finance the operation. The mayor has suggested using the deposit money from returned cans and bottles. Others have recommended increasing the deposit to ten cents, with five cents going to the city and five cents being returned to the customer. The city council, according to McMahon, this week will ask the state to set up an independent recycling authority which will handle all city recycling -- paper, glass, metal and plastic. That authority would also act to try to develop markets and improve public education. To pay for the authority, McMahon said, the council will ask the state to amend the bottle law to redirect unclaimed deposit nickels from the distributors to this authority and also expand the deposit to more bottles. The original state bottle law, passed in the early 1980s before the boom in bottled water and iced tea, covers only sodas and wine coolers.

Although Mayor Bloomberg says he is committed to recycling, the program could be in jeopardy if he is successful in suspending it and then ties its resuscitation to a quick economic recovery or a change in the bottle deposit law.

John Tierney, in his New York Times Magazine article "Recycling is Garbage", wrote that paper is produced from trees farmed for that purpose and therefore does not cause the destruction of forests.

[peppy]

I have stopped dumping used oil on the ground.

[vash]

i am very light green. i dont blatantly destroy the environment. i recycle what i can, because my county makes it easy for me. we get a huge blue can, that we can dump into. i take my dirty oil into a household waste thing..i dont litter.

that is about it. bags at the grocery store? if i remember. if not, i would carry what i can in my hand, no bag. if i need a bag, whatever. i use the plastic bags to hold cat litter debris.

and i compost all my lawn trimmings, and some of my food scraps.

[Mark Henry]

We do our bit.
Recycling is easy because we don't have to sort, the recycle plant does it, just have to make sure that only "dry" goes in the bin. Here if you sell oil (FLAPS) you must recycle it for free, but we also have several hazardous waste days at the dump.

Our house and my shop is R-2000 spec with passive solar and a heatpump. We always bring our own reusable bags for groceries. We used to compost but the 20 chickens eat most of it now, plus give us organic fresh eggs. I have worked hard on our 23 acre nature preserve, lots of wildlife around here. I've transplanted/planted at least 500 trees myself. We have a large garden.

Water is the same stuff as in your bottles, most of comes from wells not far from here. Our well water is so good it's not even worth running through a brita filter, but we still do. BTW if you drink the cheap bottled water from Canada it comes out of Lake Ontario

[cbush]

Originally Posted by peppy

I have stopped dumping used oil on the ground.

I remember from the early 60s folks would drive their cars with two wheels on the curb over a storm drain. Would elevate the car so they could crawl under and drain the oil. They still dump it on the ground in much of the world

Yea, things are better now--but we can always do more.

Finding a use for recycled materials is still a challenge.It is interesting how they have taken old tires, and made them into a valuable commodity. So that is an example of progress in recycling.