What's the least green thing you do?

For a long time, I think it was our bag consumption.  Not just plastic and paper bags, but those produce bags.  They gave me a lot of guilt.  We bought some reusable ones, so now I just need to remember to bring them with!

Due to bad allergies, I go through a lot of kleenex.  My husband has tried to convert me to hankies, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.  I plan to start buying recycled content tissues though!

Which I guess leaves me with water consumption.  We are in an apartment with one of the old toliets, so I know that uses a lot.  And we are without a dishwasher, so handwashing also wastes a lot of water. 

I just moved into a new place (much smaller...my footprint is lighter than ever), but that's the first thing I noticed was that it seems to waste an unbelievable amount of water hand washing everything. I'm trying to be as careful as possible (a shallow soapy pool for scrubbing, then quick rinse), but still feels like a lot of water for very few dishes.

You hear a lot about having a second dish tub for rinse water, but I worry that the rinse water would get soapy and not do the greatest job.

When I wash, I try to wait until there are several clean items in my soapy water, and then rinse them at the same time.  I feel like this somehow saves a tiny amount of water, because you aren't always reaching up to turn the tap on and off.

Personally I don't have a tub - I just soap up a sponge and clean silverware off as I rinse it.  For bowls and pots and plates and such I usually put some dish soap on them and add some water and let it sit - effectively using each one as its own tub.  That way it uses less water than filling a whole tub for each wash.  Plus then you don't have a tub taking up half your sink space.

I don't fill the tub all the way- really, it works just like filling the sink.  And to keep the water from getting cool, I periodically will rinse clean dishes with hot water over the tub.

Tubs might not be for everyone, but I like them because it feels cleaner than my sink, I worry less about dropping dishes and breaking them, and my super tall husband can set the tub on the countertop, which is a better height for him to wash dishes at.

I suppose we could rinse over an empty tub and save that water for plants...

The un-greenest thing I do is drive a car. Period. I drive very little but any driving has an effect. I don't  think I so anything else ungreen. I have children but do not believe that having children is necessarily un-green. There are ways to live that do not impact, or have little impact. North American's would have a hard time living the way we do and that is the real problem, imho.

My family has some land up in Humboldt County in California - we've got a pretty basic cabin up there (running water, electricity, wood stove, solar oven, and that's about it).  Definitely no dishwasher. 

So the routine is also to use tubs....we have one with some soap and one for rinsing (and then we have the dish rack for air drying).  Two tubs actually works well for us because my grandmother passed down the art of not putting too much dish soap in the wash tub (for the harder dishes, we let them soak first so that it's easier to scrub and we don't get as many suds in the rinse water.)

It keeps the water consumption pretty low because we don't run the faucet at all during the washing process.  We also use biodegradable/natural dish soaps so we can use our "greywater" system (which really just means having the water run down the hill to water the trees and whatnot). 

At home, my mom has actually taken up keeping a bucket in the kitchen and so she sticks that under the sink when she's rinsing vegetables or any dishes so that the (essentially) clean water can go outside to the garden.

While statistically dishwashers probably use less water than handwashing...handwashing doesn't have to be all bad.  And dishwashing (if you run the machine before it's full) isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be (oh, especially if you have to pre-rinse first).

Yeah we you consider pre-rinsing, the potential for running the dishwasher before it's full, and the electricity it uses, I think hand-washing is pretty comparable to dishwashing in terms of total environmental impact.

Flying back to New Zealand every couple of years...

I know it's really bad. I'd go by boat if I had the time!

I keep my computer on pretty much 24/7.  This, a few a few other Vampire things, like the cable boxes for the TV.  I do pay extra for 100% wind power through Clean Currnets (MD/DC) so I guess that's not so bad. 

Jim

That was the only way were permitted to do dishes when I was a child - one basin for soap, one for rinse.  When the soapy water got mucky, and the clear water got soapy - dump one and add more soap to the other.  Nobody ever got sick.

For years, I lived in places with double sinks - that was great, I could just wash in one side.  I tend to wash and leave everything to rinse all at once.   I have a small single sink right now (with no counter space) so I find I am just running the water a bit more.  When I notice that, I just fill up the kettle with hot tap water and soap everything off and rinse as much as I can once everything is soapy and sitting in the sink.

But, I am human and weak and susceptible to the convenience of just running the water...

Well now you guys have got me curious.  I think sometime I'll try to remember to measure my fawcet flow rate and use a stopwatch to calculate how much water I use when doing dishes, and whether it's better or worse to use tubs.

I originally read this as susceptible to the convenience of running water!  Oh, aren't we all.  I bet people who haul their water from the river use a tiny percent of we indoor plumbing types.

Dana- the secret is to start washing as you fill the tub, because then you can rinse your first few dishes with the water going into the tub.   And as I said before, you don't need to fill the tub all the way, I usually go for 1/3-1/2, depending on the size of the items I need to wash. 

But then you're getting the dirty water in the tub.  That seems counter-productive.

From my experience, the tub water basically loosens the food, and then you rinse it off into the sink.  But if you're rinsing the food into the tub, it seems like it would get the tub water extra dirty.

I drive to and from work about 120 miles per week.  We moved across state lines so my husband could get lowered pharmacy school tuition.  Despite gas costs we come out tens of thousands ahead per semester, of course that might change if things don't improve!    I traded in my car for a Toyota Matrix that gets me about 32 miles per gallon for the average tank, so that helps.  I love my job, and I love our home...    we have bought some carbon credits when flying but honestly can't afford to both put gas in the car purchase carbon offsets...  so I'm trying to do everything I can in other areas to offset the impact of my commute.

The dishes you are rinsing were just washed, and therefore are clean.  You start by washing the least dirty items.

When I rinse glasses, the water that collects inside, I dump into anything that needs soaking.  After it's soaked a bit, I rub it a little with my fingers, dump that water out, and welcome it into to the soapy tub.

mmm....theres no place to shop for organic clothing around here. so if i need something its usually, inorganic, not fair-trade, fabric which is drenched in chemcials, pesitcides and whatever else. also i need to be more aware of what kind of packaging i'm buying when food shopping.

If this is true then I guess the least green thing I do is not committing suicide ;)

Sunshine- if there are any thrift stores near you, that can make your clothing greener.  Not only are you reusing, but since the clothing has probably already been washed a dozen times, you'll decrease your exposure to the nasty chemicals.

Least green......there are so many to choose from.

Driving long distances for entertainment and buying bottled water are probably the worst.

I'm about to start making my own wine. Fermentation is a process where yeast turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The CO2 is released into the atmosphere and I'm not going to be doing any carbon sequestration.

On the other hand I will be reusing wine bottles to store the wine when it's finished...

I wouldn't worry about that - the CO2 released is just part of the natural carbon cycle.  That wouldn't contribute to global warming any more than breathing (not at all).  It's really just when we either burn fossil fuels (re-introducing carbon which has been trapped for millions of years) or damage natural carbon sinks (i.e. cutting down forests) that we're contributing to global warming.

Originally Posted by bethfreeman:

I think having kids is the least green thing you can do.   I know that's not a popular opinion.

The earth can only support so many people sustainably in a way that preserves the environment the way we'd like it to be - clean and ample water, air and food for everyone.  I have seen various research on this topic, and the number that most researchers (the ones I've read) seem to agree on is about 1 billion.  This is the population that would be reasonable to expect in a world without oil.

Too many people is the real reason we're in the mess we're in. 

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I disagree. First of all, the reason that we are in the shape that we are in is because we are not using the resources that we have efficiently. If (most) everyone had a smaller carbon footprint, the earth could support us just fine.
 

As far as having children not be a "green" thing to do, not so. Have kids and from an early age, teach them to be good stewards of out natural resources and you'll increase the percentage of people on earth who are doing things correctly. Don't worry, if we get too out of hand the earth will correct things and start over. If every house had solar cells, maybe a wind generator and throw in some bio-waste fuel generation, we could all live rich lives with no oil whatsoever. My opinion.

As far as the earlier post RE: Global warming skeptics, look at this:

http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentid=4870
 

As far as the least green thing for me? I also really love that shower but the water comes from a well and goes right back in the ground.

So then other than the fossil fuels used to transport/process meat (maybe a bit more than what is used to transport/process veggies), how is eating meat so incredibly ungreen? Isn't it also just part of the natural carbon cycle?

Three main reasons:

1) It's a waste of resources.  It takes a lot more resources to grow the crops to feed the livestock to feed the humans than it does for the humans to eat the crops directly.  Which feeds into point #2:

2) Land use changes (i.e. cutting down a forest to make pasture land) are the single biggest contributor to human greenhouse gas emissions (technically electricity&heat is bigger, but it's broken down into a bunch of sub-categories).  Hence my mention of damaging natural carbon sinks in the post above.

3) Ruminant livestock (i.e. cows and sheep) also emit the carbon as methane, which has 20 times the global warming potential of CO2.  So while the amount of carbon in the system isn't changing, it is being released in a more damaging form.

On top of that, factory farming is also harmful to the environment for several reasons.  For example, it creates lagoons full of animal sewage with nowhere to put it, and these can leak into waterways.

So when you add up all those factors, livestock contribute to 18% of human greenhouse gas emissions, as I discussed in the Vegetarian Curious wiki.  That's a pretty staggering number.  As a person who likes eating meat, I hate to admit it, but we do need to reduce our meat consumption.

Yeah come to think of it, I'm kind of surprised you COULD order one of my grocery boxes!

But I always used to think that there weren't a lot of vegetables that I liked, and when I started making a list of them I was surprised by how many there were. I also think that most of the time when people dislike something they just haven't had it prepared well.

But by the same token (me not wanting to eat veggies) I can point out that you don't need to eat veggies to be a vegetarian. I always got mad in restaurants when their idea of the vegetarian alternative was a disgusting plate of grilled veggies. I was like, "I'm not a vegetarian because I LIKE vegetables!" That's what cheese, eggs, and fake meat are for! Mm, fake meat.

What is the least green thing I do? hmmm. I always think that it's putting diesel in the car when I haven't managed my time well enough to go to the one local biodiesel station when it's open. Oh, but you know what else we do? Scoop the cat litter into (recyclable!!) plastic bags to throw it in the trash!

It's silica crystal cat litter, and I don't even remember whether that's supposed to be biodegradable or not, so that might be bad enough on its own. I need to get some biodegradable bags for it, because dumping cat poop directly into the kitchen trash can is not an option either. (On the other hand, I don't see how anything biodegrades in a landfill.)

No way. It's a joy!

The way I see it, shaming/guilting ourselves for the times that we don't go out of our way to be eco-friendly is way more immediately harmful to us than driving an SUV or whatever. And it consumes the emotional energy that we could be using to, you know, leap the next unnecessarily high environmental fence while we wait for society as a whole to become more eco-friendly. So, screw "weakness." It is an occasional splurge that, hopefully, brings you joy on the way to our eventual eco-paradise where all fashion will be organic, solar-powered, fair trade, vegan, shipped using zero emission renewable fuel, with the proceeds going to fund retirement homes for cows.

And then you could get a solar-powered battery charger and you'd be golden! :-D