What's the least green thing you do?

I eat a lot more veggies than I used to.  Just last night we made pasta primavera, in fact.  Though I did consult with Betsy to make sure she'd eat the dishes I didn't want (like the artichoke ones)!

I'm with Deej on this one - I fly a lot and flying is one of the easiest ways to contribute Tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

We need teleporters STAT!

Haha, teleportation would solve so many problems!

Seriously, how can you not like artichokes?!?!?!?!?  What about marinated ones? Do you like marinated ones?

I'll eat artichokes in literally any form, so maybe i got all the artichokey genes.

No!!  Yuck.

Spinach Artichoke dip is the best!  Put enough cheese on anything and it will taste good.

 OK, I admit it.  I'm ashamed, but......

I have terrible allergies this time of year, and I'm constantly blowing my nose.  I use paper tissues, and few awful about the waste - but a handkerchief just won't do it!  I take allergy pills, which helps a little.  But I do not throw them out right away - if I can reuse them, I will (doesn't that sound gross?) - but once they're dry, they're alright.  But, please, don't tell anyone!  (lol)

What a radical response that of yours. i have so many acquaintances that do such great things for the environment and the community in which they live and they happen to be parents!

It is an unrealistic assessment to perhaps expect people to stop having children. I hope in the future the children have a greater opportunity to do their share for the environment but i hope people continue having children because someone has to care for us when we get old, and I don't just mean that our kids will take care of us. We need professionals to care for us when we are no longer able to do so. 

The thing about being green, and please correct me if I'm wrong, has to do with responsibility to the community in which we live and not only the environment in general. The earth is big, no revelation there, and we individually occupy a tiny space of it. I don't want to bore anyone with this but the other day i went to an organic store that sells anything you probably would want. Its employees only buy and eat organic but imagine my surprise  when the cashier gave me a receipt without asking me if i needed it. At other non-organic shops they usually ask me if i would like my receipt or not, and i usually decline. i asked the cashier if the machine gave one the choice to select a particular receipt to be printed or not and he said that it did but it was ok that it had printed because the paper was recycled.

To me the one un-green thing a person can do is what i tried to describe above, use something for the sake of using not thinking about the byproduct or the waste created. The moral is that even though i received a receipt printed on recycle paper, it was resource that could have been saved because i did not need that receipt. Never mind that it also used electricity and ink, all of that wasted because someone forgot to ask whether or not i needed the receipt. So being organic isn't always the equivalent of being green. We all have the potential for having these conflicting things in our lives when we try to live mindful of the environment.

Do people realize you think, that being green is more than using recycled paper or recycled products? 

What about NOT consuming? How about using less of everything, less shampoo, LESS WATER, less gasoline?

Being green to me is being respectful of the resources that we could but choose not to use and when we do, using and re-using them. Our children are precious. i should know, i have one child and i chose a natural approach to bringing her into this world without consuming the drugs that would have made me more comfortable. 

Your post just made me think, hope it makes sense. I do many un-green things myself.

Thanks for reading

Edited by compostmyworld - Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:24:21 GMT

I started composting fairly recently, and sometimes I get pretty lazy to go out to the compost bin and submit to the garbage disposal tactic...also, I forget to recycle sometimes, and end up feeling guilty about it later.  Also, water bottles are not recyclable...but if you can reuse it for something else, it can be in your home.  I stopped buying bottled water because of the fact that it ends up in the landfills. 

there are probably too many to count lol, but my biggest green sin is probably baths. That is my unwind time by myself. I take a bath almost daily and at least every other day. usually about an hour after my husband comes home I disapeer with a book and unwind in a nice hot soapy bath. I dont' know if i'll ever give it up. But one of the first things we plan to get when we can is a solar powered water heater, so that will make it a little better ;-)

It's been a while since my first post about my least green-ness...I'm no longer driving to work (we moved Huddler HQ up to San Fran) so that one is off the list.  But since I spent some time on the Food Consumption and Production wiki...I guess that one takes the cake for me.  I have to admit...I drink a fair amount of coffee, at least as much as the "average" American (since 24.2 gallons works out to about 3.7 16-ounce cups per week).  I would say I get my 16 ounce bottle filled with coffee 2-4 times every week.  Ehh....I guess I can console myself a little thinking the coffee trees soak up a bit of carbon dioxide.

We go to the farmer's market every weekend now, so I can check that one off the list.  And I very rarely eat beef.  The only problem is that my wife hates pork and fish, so sometimes when we do get meat it has to be beef.  Like I wanted to get some pork and turkey sausage, but we ended up getting beef instead.  But we don't eat a lot of meat period.

I still use a fair bit of energy for electronics though.  But I don't leave chargers plugged in unless they're in use.

Here are my sins, in order of carbon (I think):

Flying to vacation (Japan and NYC recently)

Owning 2 cars, one of which (though biodiesel) gets low mileage

Going out to dinner (double-bad, usually eating meat and driving to get there)

Driving to locations within 5 miles (I'm a bit of a rain-wuss compared to other Seattlites)

Buying a new outside soaking tub.

Whew.  Gotta really pay attention to this incomplete list.  Seeing it in writing makes me double-take.  Why is it so hard to walk my talk happily?

For me it would have to be flying at least a couple of times a year (but being so far away from my family I have no other choice), and.... long showers. I like water too much and forget about the time when I'm in there. Maybe a timer would help!

Oh yeah...Aaron's post reminded me that I do eat out more than I should (which produces 100 times more CO2 than buying local ingredients, according to a UK study).  I don't usually drive to restaurants in San Francisco but I'm not exactly vegan...

I am of two minds on this, but I tend to look at the hard math first and foremost and that very clearly lends itself to not having kids being one of the greenest things you can do.  The amount of carbon a single human creates (not to mention the resource depletion and waste) is very very rarely overcome in a human's lifetime, no matter how eco-friendly you try to be.  Matress in post #50 actually hit it on the head with a reasonable conclusion that the "least green thing I do is not committing suicide".  I don't at all advocate environmental suicide, but you do have to work really hard to make sure you and your subsequent spawn are net GHG savers instead of creators.

That said, I have a child (one, with no more coming thanks to some eco-friendly male surgery) and we're doing our damnedest to give her the best possible shot at being a GHG loser.  Our home is sunlight lit, well insulated, solar-hot-watered.  Our cars are biodiesel when we have to drive, and we live as green as we can in as many ways possible.  I think one child is okay, since it's technically still ZPG if we don't have two.

Overall, though, humans are currently a pretty brutish lot and we should well consider the impact of making a new one if we can't manage the current ones we've got.

own...and drive an SUV.

Oh...actually acording to some other posts, I guess having my DD & havng plans to have another baby in 2 yrs...would probaly be the least green thing I'm doing.  But, what good would preserving the earth be if everyone stopped pro-creating (not, that this would actually happen)?  Eventually, everyone would die off...and all the efforts would have been for nothing.

Okay, I can't seem to pick just one, and since I'm trying to think of one, I have come up with many!!  Now I'm mad at myself!  But I think if I had no money worries, I would be able to avoid all of these!!!  Green choices are often too expensive for me to justify :(

-addicted to a few disposables:  tissues, toilet paper, feminine products, straws (if it is cold beverage, I have to have a straw, I usually drink room temp water to avoid this)

-clothes (I buy whatever I can afford, but I do donate them after I am done with them)

-food (I hate veggies, I eat beef, I can't afford most of the organic/natural stuff!! but I have been switching to turkey steaks and ground turkey)

-laziness (I forget to compost and I get angry when too much recycling piles up and sometimes just throw some into the trash on garbage day so I don't have to sort it all last minute BAD!!!!)

-car (10 years old, 20 mpg if I'm lucky but I only drive it on rainy or really really cold days or to go long distances otherwise I drive my electric scooter)

Somehow I feel like my excuses are good enough, but they aren't :(  However, I have an even longer list of good things, so I'm not completely evil.  Small steps are still steps!!!!

 taking baths, lots of them. my apartment is frigid in the winter.

For me it's water consumption and my drive to work.

I only work 4 days a week, but it's 45 miles each way... wow.  I am trying to get a position at the hospital that is 10 minutes from my house, but ... need the position to be open for that to have a chance of working out.  I do drive a '05 Prius, which helps, but still - 90 miles a day.  Not good.  (my wife works like 5 miles from home so it does average out to a bit better :-)  LOL

Water - well, we have a family of 5 and we try to watch our shower time, turn off water while brushing, have reduced bottled water by about 60% or more, etc.  But every so often I have to hose the gutter out in front of my home (like once or twice a month) as the street sweeper just makes a mess, and grungy grime builds up and needs to move "down stream".  Not hosing garbage, and I do use a dust-pan to scrape the bulk of the dirt and leaves out ... but - well - you would just have to experience it.  I also am kinda a neat freak about it.  I am trying to lessen this activity - probably 50% less than a few years ago...  :-/  

I get that all the time when people ask me if I want to have kids, and I tell them bluntly nope. They also tend to get a bit offended by the facts when I answer their next question: why not?

I am still starting out on my green journey so there are a lot of things I have not transitioned yet. My least green habit is my trash. I really don't recycle much at all (no local recycling program or recycling center) but I do try to reduce the amount I throw away. I also try to buy items that have very little plastic and are packaged in  recycled paper. I like to think that if I have to throw things out, at least I can be sure its biodegradable.

I am also still pretty new to getting as green as I would like to be, but I would say some of the worst habits I have is not recyclying, using plastic one use bottles, and I reading alot of magazines.  I do pass what magazines along that I can, but some are for my needle crafts, so I need the contents.

I continue to upgrade computer equipment on a regular basis and until about a month ago, I never really considered where the waste was going.  I take the old stuff to Goodwill, but who knows what they are doing with it.  I saw a show, can't remember now which one--that showed a city in China where there are piles of toxic computer parts.  HORRIFIC pollution...I am now very concerned about technology waste.

I met these folks at SFGreenfest and they are seriously on top of this problem: http://www.greencitizen.com/

Okay, I admit to owning and driving an SUV, but almost strictly with my toddler.  The rest of the time I drive an electric car.

International traveling.

where is the teleportation device?

 I have to say that I used to leave my computer on 24/7 for days at a time when I lived alone. I know it was a bad thing to do. But now I turn it on and off accordingly.

Yesterday, I actually had a conversation with my brother about travel.  It looks like he might be going to Hawaii in the not too distant future...flown in his girlfriend's friend's private jet.

It's amazing how many emissions result from air travel.

Quote:

That's great you've changed that behavior, marcierizzo!  Sometimes it's harder to break away from the smaller habits like that.  I have to admit...sometimes I space out on unplugging my cell phone charger if I'm in a rush in the morning.