Earth Day!

[tarotgal]

Happy Earth Day!



This is from Jessica, the president of my old college environmental group. I thought I'd post it here as it's a very good list:

Here at the Top 5 things you can do: (in my opinion) to up you environmental
stewardship! I say keep the list going and add on....

1. Go Vegetarian...better yet Go Vegan! Meat is one of the most destructive
industries to the environment. Don't be a green hypocrite - realize the
unnecessary air, water, ground pollution as well as wasted resources that are
attributed to the animal industry.

2. Drive Less: Bike or Walk more. Live near a Train stop if possible and
take the T or Bus. If you do own a car try to purchase a hybrid vehicle like
the Toyota Prius or Civic Hybrid or other smaller cars that are fuel
efficient. DO NOT BUY SUVS.

3. Do NOT buy bottled water as much as possible! Not only are the plastic
bottles completely wasteful but allowing a company to privitalize a public
resource is extremely destructive to that local community and the profit goes
to the corporation not the community. Imagine if your well was empty because
Coca-Cola bottled water from your community's reserve? Oh wait that already
happened in India.

4. Recyle. Some of you will laugh because recycling is so like "duh" but
there are still millions of people that don't do it. So do it! Yeah some of
it does get trashed or dumped on a developing world, we know this, but a ton
of it still goes to recycling plants and is actually put back in our society.
Better yet - support recycled products and buy post-consumer plastics, paper,
glass, and aluminum!

5. Use cloth bags when shopping - not just for groceries but for anything.
Also bring the produce plastic bags back with you so you can reuse them. At
the same time, have a water bottle like a Nalgen (well don't buy a Nalgen cuz
of their parent company but other groups out there make them) and have one
that you can reuse and refill and will last forever. Use tupperware and glass
containers, not plastic bags to pack your lunch so you can reuse them.

5 1/2: Take care of yourself! Buy non-chlorine bleached products like toilet
paper, paper towels, tampons, pads, etc. you don't want dioxin going into your
body! Try to purchase organic produce and products as much as possible from
the lettuce in your grocery store to the tofu on the isle and even the clothes
you buy...

Comments

[vatergrrl.livejournal.com]

I moved into the heart of a big city about eight months ago, and I absolutely adore it! I can walk to the supermarket, the local yarn store(s), bookstores, and nearly everything else I need. Although I miss being able to see greenery out my window (apartment faces a parking garage -- thrill!), the ease of city life is worth that small loss. The proximity means I can push around my little shopping cart or carry lesser loads in my backpack, most of the time.

And I'll say this: if I could afford a Prius, I would have one RIGHT NOW. One of the ladies in my local Stitch n' Bitch has one, and I was able to ride in it on a trip to (what else?) a knitting/crocheting/yarn convention. Dang, but that Prius was amazing, so quiet and fuel efficient, and really much larger than I would have imagined. Once they start hitting the used car market, I think I might bite.

The bottled water thing: ghods, yes! I'd add to that the "morning Starbucks/Dunkin' Doughnuts" rush I see all around me. I understand some folks might feel they're in a hurry, but how effing long does it take to brew coffee at home (with a perpetual metal filter) and pour it into a (perpetual) travel mug? It's cheaper, too. :)

[tarotgal]

If there's one thing I like about big cities, it's the fact that you can walk everywhere and/or take public transportation. That's one of the things I absolutely loved about visiting Seattle or New York. Of course I wouldn't last a day in NY with all the commercialism and the attitude. But you're absolutely right about having everything so close. Plus that equals extra exercise which to me, at the moment, is a good thing. I'm very envious :-)

I've never ridden in a Prius, but after my current car I think I'll be doing the Honda thing for a LONG time. Very awesome to hear you liked the Prius so much, though! That's very encouraging.

I'm honestly not *that* down on the bottled water thing *guilty gulp* I need something to drink by my side almost constantly throughout the day. Usually I re-fil from the tap and re-use a bottle for a week or so, then I ditch it in the recycle bin because studies now show plastic bottle degrade after multiple uses or something. Point is, I recycle it afterwards. LOL

As for coffee... most of the "serious" coffee drinkers I know use special coffee shop travel mugs. But I ABSOLUTELY agree with you about the industry. All those cups and napkins and tops and sugar packets and straws for all those people... every day... sometimes more than once a day... it's insane! I don't drink coffee often (maybe 12 times a year on average) and I buy coffee even less. But I try to buy shade-grown coffee whenever possible. It's a little more expensive but at least I know how it was made and by whom. I like Starbucks (now that I live somewhere where we don't have any independant coffee shops *sob*) but most of the time the whole industry in general really gets on my nerves.

As my heroine Dar says:
I finally learned that the market's righteous holler
Comes from a pale face on a paper dollar
And I betcha got few bucks in your hemp wallet
So throw a tiny wrench in the fiber optic wires
Morals are cheap and you can be the buyers
We can let 'em poison and perish foreign lands
Or we can play the greed right into our hands

Everybody says it can't happen here
Everybody says it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, things change and they all take credit

So ask why there's only forty songs on a station
And ask your cafe about their coffee's plantation
And why is it Arizona hasn't gone solar?
And tell your print shop that hemp grows faster
And it doesn't mean a back room clear cut disaster
The market doesn't care but it wants to understand
And you can play the greed right into your hands

Smiling man says it can't happen here
Channel 4 says it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, the change comes and they all take credit

So roll up your pennies and do your battle
The chairman will start quoting Chief Seattle and
Put little tree frogs on their letterhead
'Cause the market resists and the market absorbs
With a five-pointed leaf on the cover of Forbes
The very same people turned valleys to dams
These are the ones that drain prairies to sand
And they'd just as soon you didn't know this land is your land
But we can play the world back into our hands

Malcom's gonna say it can't happen here
Rupert's gonna say it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, things change and they'll always take the credit

Hell the change comes
Let's let 'em take the credit