How Green Is Your Valley?
Published July 11th, 2008 in It's Really Just All About Me....
It’s official. I’m actually quite sick of the word “green” now.
It’s not that I don’t firmly believe in the practices of reuse, reduce, and recycle. I’m just sick of the word.
Everyone and their mother and their mother’s mother seems to be using it now. And it’s going to do more harm than good.
However, I am curious about what you folks think. As I’ve been preparing to buy and renovate a house to make it and my family more eco-friendly and Earth-conscious, I’ve been mulling a few concepts and asking myself some questions.
What I want to know is… are you green? Do you consider yourself green? Do you embrace, espouse, or follow any green behavior? (Yes… there’s that nasty word again… )
If not - why?
If so, what do you want to change to do more?
Do you think being green has any affect?
Curious George-type minds want to know… As I talk to people, I’m starting to get a sense of a wall being built up between what people want to do and how to go about doing it. It’s hard to put a finger on, but I’d say that it’s… not a fear of the unknown. But maybe it’s a fear of change. A fear of assuming guilt.
If you start thinking about being green, acting more green… will you feel more guilty about not doing enough? Will the knowledge of how bad things are weigh you down?
It could be that “green” conjures up images of all those ultra-left wing, liberal, hippy feelings that the tree-huggers might have. I don’t know.This is sort of a stream-of-consciousness sorta thing. I don’t have any answers. But I am wondering what others are thinking about this (if at all…)
Let me know what’s going through that pretty head of yours.
I have been more conscious of being “green” the past six months or so. I’ve started to replace the old bulbs with the newer, low energy ones. We’ve switched from harsh chemical cleaners to more organic ones and we’ve emphasized recycling more.
Now that our kids are transitioning out of diapers I don’t have to feel as guilty about how many landfills we filled up over the last three years.
The one thing that I would like to do with my house is install instant hot water heaters under each sink so we don’t waste water waiting for it to get warm. I’m also tempted to install the motion sensors on our faucets that will shut the water off the way they do in public bathrooms. Our kids are fascinated with water right now and I’m constantly having to police the sinks so they don’t waste water.
I did read somewhere that some respected scientist in England has said it’s too late to go green. We’re already screwed and if we had wanted to make a difference we should have done this forty years ago.
Good luck.
I try not to be as wasteful, especially with gas.
Meaning I probably won’t get that 8 miles-per-gallon Ferrari after all.
Thanks for admitting that you’re sick of hearing “green.” I am too, especially when someone tries to make a political issue out of it. Like you though, I agree that everyone should make some efforts. There probably would be more progress if some people weren’t so preachy about it. I’m sure some people dismiss it as just another political agenda. That’ll change in time though as more (mostly younger and I’m including us in “younger”) people accept conservation as just a responsible way of living.
I’ve changed to some better bulbs when they need replacing, and obviously try to keep gas consumption down. I throw less away too.
I also don’t buy into the “it’s too late so why bother” argument. Even if we accept that as true, there’s no danger in changing.
We have always been on the greener side of things, although I have one seriously hippie-green (as in: re-uses cloth for toilet paper EVEN FOR HER GUESTS) former roommate who puts me to shame and because of that comparison, I encourage eco-friendly behaviors and products but I do not consider myself “green.” I am more of an eco-freak (I think that’s the PC term) than Donald is, but he tries to humor me. The reasons WHY and the ways HOW and the belief about whether or not it actually affects anything at all? I could go on about that stuff all day long.
The only thing I hate about “green” is the political agenda that comes along with it. Should people really use the environment as a political gimmick? I don’t really think so. Then again, I’m not a tree-hugger and I don’t devote my every waking hour to salt-water irrigation, I just try to buy local and make my own cleaning supplies and use energy-saving bulbs. Do I think it makes a difference? Not much, not much at all. But if I inspire one other person to grow a vegetable garden and if I raise two children who instill in my grandchildren the value of using composting organic diapers and if each of those children in turn inspires one of their friends to carpool or ride a bike more often…well, then, I suppose that my little insignificant actions today may indeed help out more than I realize.
I wholeheartedly believe that it is too late environmentally-speaking to turn things around, HOWEVER I believe with equal fervor that it is not too late for people to change their behaviors and adapt to the consequences we have brought upon ourselves. I think we’re a smart species and that if we use our brains we might yet come up with a solution. Not one that will fix everything, mind you, but something that will help. And help enough.
That said, I should clarify the last bit as well. I don’t think it’s too late to bother. There is no such thing as being too late to bother. I think the opposite is true: it is too late not to bother.
Dude, I have a web site called GREEN Mom Finds and even I’m sick of the term since we bought the domain name last September. I don’t, however, get the impression that most of our regulars are zealots of ultra-lefties or dirty hippies or anything extreme. They actually seem very average, FWIW.
Our biggest change as not using any more bags at stores. We bought fold up shopping bags that roll up to the size of a Twinkie and use them in every store we go into. No more paper or plastic bags. (Envirosax: http://www.envirosax.com/)
We’ve reduced bags by at least 40 per month between regular stores, supermarkets, and farmer’s markets.
We compost (because our landlord has composting facilities), recycle, and use cloth bags (sometimes: we get some plastic bags to dispose of our kitty litter) at the grocery store. I use baking soda to clean the stove and bathtub. Sometimes I hang up laundry to dry instead of using the dryer. We try to buy local produce. We only have one car. We buy/trade lots of used stuff.
I think the key is just to pay attention and try to be conscious of your decisions. Things can go overboard in either direction, and sometimes you have to compromise.
I’m sure we could do more. We could get a more fuel-efficient car. We could use less water. We could grow our own vegetables. Some of those things will happen eventually.
The only “green” I have in me, if you can even call it “green”, is recycling all the paper, plastic, metal and glass that’s approved recyclable.
We live in an apartment complex that doesn’t recycle. Each week we save our recycles and then every Thursday night, like thieves in the night, we run them over to the neighborhing blue recycle bins. IT’s easily 5 bags a week X 52 weeeks in a year. That’s a small but noticeable difference.
Are we green, then? No, I’d say we’re blue.
I guess my best answer is that I’m trying to be green, but never sure how well I’m succeeding. We recycle, reuse plastic bags that we have, switch out light bulbs to the low-energy bulbs as soon as they burn out, and try to buy our produce locally grown. (And are now starting to grow our own.) We also drive a lot less now, and combine trips to save gas.
I guess we don’t do as much as we could. Some changes are horribly expensive to start with - sure, they’ll save the planet and save us money in the long run, but at the moment we don’t have the means to drop the money upfront.
We are probably the most green on our block! We recycle everything possible (even our two year old knows that paper, plastic and cans go in the back garbage can and regular garbage goes in the front). All of our lawn care is completely natural–no chemicals (compost tea is voodoo according to my hubby–it completely revised our dead lawn).
The house we bought was built green–the builder had to go through certain certifications, etc–we have the highest rated insulation, we have an instant on hot water heater, we have the correct light bulbs, etc.
One thing we don’t do, although we do on occasion, is use reusable bags at the grocery store–but we do reuse the paper bags we get from there for holding recycling materials, etc. We also reuse the plastic bags (from the grocery store, from the newspaper, etc) to wrap those ucky-stinky diapers–cannot wait until this one is potty trained. We even try to use natural cat litter–our old cat is ok with it the new kitten hasn’t gotten used to it yet!
Good luck!
I may be the “greenest” one in my family, which isn’t saying much. In fact, one of my brother’s has taken to calling me Kermit. He immediately thinks of me when he reads about Zap cars…. we were a carless family for more than a month, although we did find it necessary to rent a couple of times to make it to t-ball games.
We don’t buy bottled water, we try not to buy food that comes in a lot of packaging (like those 100 calorie pack things), I bring my own bags to shop, my air conditioner has cobwebs on it, we’ve changed out the lightbulbs and we try to walk where ever we can — which is almost everywhere we need to go. I haven’t gotten to growing my own food yet because I was cursed with the opposite of a green thumb. I would like to raise chickens but my husband is blocking me there.
I try to use baking soda and vinegar and other natural cleaners wherever I can and I absolutely refuse to use any sort of “throw away” cleaning item, like swiffers and the like.
There, that’s about as green as I am so far… I’d call it more of a yellowish-green.
1. I’ve been neglecting the entire blogosphere, not just your blog. I’m terribly behind and I apologize unreservedly.
2. We moved from the Chicago burbs to Boulder, CO a year ago and HELL YES i’m greener now. Boulder’s culture is all about organic food, Earth-friendly products, hybrid cars and recycling is a freaking religion. Everybody here brings their own shopping bags to stores, something only weirdos do in Chicago. But take my Swiffers away and I’ll break your neck!