Enviroment-friendlyness

[TerokNor]

Do you pay attention not to use up energy or water plenty and unnecessary? Do you sort your rubbish (paper, glass, plastic, biological ...)? Do you buy products from your region often? Do you not use your car for ways you could walk? etc.

Or do you not truly care and just want to live as comfortable as possible, no matter what will come after you?


--> How enviroment-friendly are you?


TerokNor

 

[Mr. B]

Not very... I do have kill-a-watt power meter on the outlet that powers my computer and TV... mostly as a curiosity. I turn off lights and such when I'm not using them but I'm not crazy enough to think I'm helping 'save the world' ...just saving myself a few cents on the bill.

I buy local when I can, but again, the environment isn't a motivation there.

We used to recycle newspaper, cans and plastic but there hasn't been any recycling pickup in New Orleans since Katrina.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I'm not especially conscious how much energy/water I'm using, but I suspect I'm using less than average since I don't own a car, have no air condition and seldom shower longer than 5 minutes or so. And I do recycle; it's no big deal for me, the containers for glass/plastic/metal/bio are right next to the container for other trash, so it doesn't really make a difference for me.

 

[Jenee]

On a scale of one to ten, I'm probably a six. I recycle and turn off lights, use reusable grocery bags and glass dishes, and try to reduce the amount of things that go in the garbage.

But, I don't have a hybrid, or solar power or anything really major.

 

[Goliath]

Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing? Well, I say--hard cheese!

But seriously--I do make some effort to be green. I use public transit, I recycle, I try not to waste electricity or water. Nothing extraordinary.

 

[Vulcan Princess]

I recycle, use a reusable water bottle, cloth napkins, and cloth menstrual pads. (Sorry guys, I know you probably didn't want to hear about periods.) I do all this stuff because it's good for the pocketbook. I use a reusable shopping bag when I remember, but there are times when I'm on my way home from work and I need to pick up something and I don't have my bag with me.

I live in a pretty eco-friendly area, and I'm considered fairly normal around here. I have some friends who are way greener than I am.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I recycle a fair amount of stuff - our community does it with plastics, aluminum cans, and paper, and my store recycles plastic bags. Plus I've gone paperless with just about everything I can go paperless with. I do it because it's easy and convenient.

If my city had decent mass transit, I would use it as well.

I will not, however, be forcibly guilt-tripped into overhauling my entire life just to appease the radical environmentalist fringe.

 

[milo bloom]

We recycle as much as we can, have a compost pile, use reusable shopping bags, reusable water bottles, cloth napkins in the kitchen and cloth in the bathroom (as Vulcan Princess does, but even further...), and we cloth diaper our little one. We have gotten away from using really toxic cleaners (for home or body) and always buy cage free eggs.

Are we saving the world? If enough of us do these things, certainly.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

One thing I haven't done yet is gone to CFLs. The reason for this is that I have a lot of recessed lighting fixtures in my basement, and CFLs (as they are now) generate too much heat to be used in situations like that.

 

[Roger Wilco]

^^
Huh? CFL's get hotter than regular light bulbs? That seems kind of counter-intuitive to me.

 

[ares93]

hmm, i consider myself very environment friendly. i drive a prius with a broken hybrid engine. runs solely on petrol, never on electricity.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

^^
Huh? CFL's get hotter than regular light bulbs? That seems kind of counter-intuitive to me.

I may be wrong, but the little I've read made it sound like it isn't dangerous to put them in an enclosed fixture, they just don't last as long as they would otherwise.

To answer the OP:

I use some CFL's. Have ceiling fans instead of AC. Don't have a TV, not for environmental reasons, but it has that benefit, too. Have always been good about turning out lights.

I've cut back on newspaper/magazine subscriptions (still gotta have my Sunday NYT in print, though). Pay bills on-line and am starting to go paperless on other business stuff.

I recycle pretty much everything. Carry a reusable water bottle and shopping bags. Donate anything that can be donated instead of discarded.

On the other hand, my computer is on virtually 24/7, and my car gets only decent mileage.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I worked out that my carbon footprint is about 1/3 of the average Australian.

This is achieved by

a) The fact that I don't drive. I either walk or I catch a bus.
b) I live in a state where 95% of the energy is hydroelectrical
c) I shop using renewable bags. I would be quite happy for Tasmania to ban non-biodegradable shopping bags (lick South Australia has done)
d) I never water my lawn
e) I grow many of my own vegetables. If I don't grow them I try to buy them at the Saturday market (which means they are grown locally).
f) I buy the majority of my clothes at op-shops (i.e charity shops)
g) I use energy efficient bulbs
h) I don't have a clothes-dryer. My clothes are all dried outside on the lines.
i) I use my recycle bin

Ways in which I am failing

a) I buy the majority of books from overseas
b) I have my groceries delivered - this probably uses up less energy than someone driving to the supermarket but more energy if I walked down to the shopping centre and carried the groceries home (this is something I can't do any longer because of failing health).

 

[Amaris]

Well, according to Nature.org's calculator, I'm 17 where the average American is 27, so that's not too bad. I do what I can, but some implementations are costly, things I simply cannot afford. I change my lightbulbs to CFLs, I walk to nearby stores, I try to keep my A/C and heating costs down, though with the electric company always raising rates that's near impossible, and I recycle newspapers and aluminum cans. I do these to get money, granted it's not much, but when the alternative is simply to throw them away, it's not bad.

 

[thestrangequark]

I recycle, use a reusable water bottle, cloth napkins, and cloth menstrual pads. (Sorry guys, I know you probably didn't want to hear about periods.)

I've thought about these, because pads and tampons are just so wasteful, but I just don't think I could do it. I dislike pads to begin with, and then the thought of washing them is just...unpleasant. I've been thinking about the cup for a more environmentally sound alternative, do you have any experience with that?

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Well, according to Nature.org's calculator, I'm 17 where the average American is 27, so that's not too bad.

It's excellent, actually.

Much to my embarrassment, I came out a bit above average, mostly because I had to tell the calculator that I'm one person in a 3-bedroom house. Of course, the calculator doesn't know how tiny the house is.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Well, according to Nature.org's calculator, I'm 17 where the average American is 27, so that's not too bad.

I got about 11, but I don't know how Italian average compare to the US average. I'm pretty mindful of environment (I recycle whenever possible, keep my consumption of electricity low, use public transport to commute, own a car with a high mpg ration, buy local, etc). Nothing that really impacts my lifestyle except using my brain a couple of times more a day. My biggest share of environmental debauchery is plane travel, but they will pry my holidays and business trips from my dead, smog-covered fingers.

 

[farmkid]

I recycle what I can. My recycling bin is usually about as full as the garbage bin, so about half of my family's waste is recycled. A lot of our produce is grown locally. The last few weeks we've been canning a lot of the stuff from our garden and what we've gotten from neighbors or local orchards. I think we have about 150 quarts of various things in the basement right now and my wife is currently working on a batch of salsa (most of the ingredients of which is from our garden). You can't get much more local than that. We use CFLs, run the AC and furnace as little as possible, and turn off lights when not needed. I drive an old Civic that gets 35-40 mpg. We use reusable grocery bags most of the time--several of which are some bags my wife made from Capri Sun and Koolaid drink pouches, so even the bags are recycled.

The one thing I don't worry about is water. That's because we have a well and a septic system. All of our water comes out of the ground and then goes right back in, so we really can't waste it. We just use a little electricity pumping it out of the ground, but that's really not much.

 

[Amaris]

Well, according to Nature.org's calculator, I'm 17 where the average American is 27, so that's not too bad.

It's excellent, actually.

Thank you! I do try, I really do.

Much to my embarrassment, I came out a bit above average, mostly because I had to tell the calculator that I'm one person in a 3-bedroom house. Of course, the calculator doesn't know how tiny the house is.

We live in a 3 bedroom house, although two of those bedrooms are questionable at best.

Well, according to Nature.org's calculator, I'm 17 where the average American is 27, so that's not too bad.

I got about 11, but I don't know how Italian average compare to the US average. I'm pretty mindful of environment (I recycle whenever possible, keep my consumption of electricity low, use public transport to commute, own a car with a high mpg ration, buy local, etc). Nothing that really impacts my lifestyle except using my brain a couple of times more a day. My biggest share of environmental debauchery is plane travel, but they will pry my holidays and business trips from my dead, smog-covered fingers.

Whereas for me, I don't travel by plane at all, so that probably saved me a few points, too. I would love to, though. I've never been on a plane.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^^
Huh? CFL's get hotter than regular light bulbs? That seems kind of counter-intuitive to me.

CFL FAQs

Specifically:

Totally enclosed recessed fixtures (for example, a ceiling can light with a cover over the bulb) create temperatures that are too high to allow the use of a compact fluorescent bulb.

As I said, I have a lot of fixtures that are exactly that kind.