- Tip one – use fewer bottles – was published earlier.
- Recycle. We’ve been recycling in Italy for so long that I wince when I see plastic and paper going into the general waste stream. Most parts of the US offer recycling now, and it’s not that much extra effort to do it. This includes composting food waste – your garden will thank you for that.
- Go paperless. Most financial organizations and other companies you pay regular bills to will be happy to stop sending you paper reminders – they can send them by email instead, in most cases you can choose how far in advance of the due date you want to be reminded. And most can be paid, automatically or not, directly from your bank, so you don’t have to write out a check and use an envelope and a stamp to get it there. Heck, don’t even send paper Christmas cards. Personally, I’d prefer you called to wish me a happy holiday, and with the phone plans most of us have these days, that call will be free, or at least cost less than a first-class stamp. One online friend has just eliminated the expense and hassle of wedding invitations and formal, mailed responses: she’s doing it all via a website.
- Another way to go paperless: Use cloth handkerchiefs instead of kleenex, dish cloths instead of paper towels, cloth instead of paper napkins – all can be used multiple times, then washed and reused. (“Eww gross, I don’t want to wipe my mouth with someone else’s napkin! How do I know which napkin is mine?” Personalized napkin rings.) Strictly avoid all those “convenience” wipes and other single-use cleaning products. Toilet paper and “women’s sanitary supplies” are probably unavoidable uses of paper, at least in American culture (hint: in India, you clean your butt with water, Europeans have bidets). On the other hand, with diaper services, cloth diapers are a viable alternative to plastic ones in this country.
- Do you really need newspapers delivered to your door? So many of those pages are just advertising anyway, and you know you’re never going to read it all. Why not just read the news you’re really interested in online? You can get the nation’s best newspapers right on your desktop every day, free gratis.
- Be conscious and conservative in your use of plastic. For example, instead of wrapping leftover food in plastic wrap or putting it in a ziploc bag, put it in a reusable plastic container with a lid. You don’t even have to buy those things, so many foods come in reusable containers (although the colorful one-pound margarine tubs of my childhood appear to be out of fashion now).
- Use less heating and air-conditioning. I wish the managers of public spaces and offices would practice this. It’s ridiculous to have to take a sweater to cinemas, malls, and restaurants in summer because the air conditioning is so cold you’ll get sick without it. Likewise, it’s silly to arrive at the office in winter and instantly have to peel off layers of clothing because the heating is so damned hot. And the thermic shock of going from outside to inside, or vice-versa, probably isn’t good for you in any season.
- Air-dry your laundry. Yes, there are some parts of the country and times of year when this works better than others. Where I’m living now in Colorado, a dryer is absolutely superfluous, even on “wet” days. The local homeowners’ association would probably scream if I put clotheslines in the backyard, and anything I hung on them would blow away anyhow, so I strung clothesline in the unfinished basement. I wash and hang clothes at night, they’re dry by morning. This also saves wear on the clothes, thus, in the long run, money. In Italy we’re still using wonderfully soft linen bedsheets handed down from Enrico’s parents, they must be over 30 years old.
- Garden appropriately for your climate and water supply. In Colorado, that means xeriscaping instead of a lush, green lawn, which will cost you hundreds of dollars a month in water, and then you just have to mow the damned thing – and mowers are a huge source of air and noise pollution. If your activities require a lawn, there are plenty of public parks around.
- You tell me! What do you do to reduce consumption, pollution, and waste?
Tag Archives: living in the USA
10 Simple Things You Can Do to Reduce Environmental Impact and Save Money
I’ve been back in the US for six months now, and here, as everywhere I go, I’ve been observing the local lifestyle.
Americans are increasingly concerned about their impact on the global environment, which is great, but many focus on expensive, grandiose solutions like “trade in your gas-guzzler for an expensive hybrid car”. In these cash-strapped times, there are far simpler things you can do. Yes, these are small steps, but if we all did them…
1. Reduce the number of beverage cans/bottles you buy
I see people buying boxes and flats of cans of soda, shrink-wrapped 24-packs of beverages in plastic bottles, etc. That’s an awful lot of packaging – which must be produced and then discarded or recycled – for you to drink a single serving of a beverage.
If you must buy packaged drinks, buy them in gallon jugs. If you must take such a drink with you, pour a portion into a reusable bottle.
“But that won’t preserve the fizz in my soft drinks,” you say. Myself, I rarely drink fizzy drinks except carbonated mineral water in Italy (and I’m doing perfectly well without that in the US). I don’t need the calories in “regular” soft drinks, and can’t stand the taste of artificial sweeteners (which, according to some reports, may be bad for you anyhow).
I mostly drink water, coffee, juice, and tea. I like plain iced tea in summer, but that can be hard to find; the bottled stuff you commonly see at convenience stores etc. is sweetened to an extent that curls my teeth. I make iced tea at home myself, boiling it on the stove and funneling it into an empty gallon orange-juice jug.
The only single-serving drink I can really see a use for is beer, and that comes in recyclable glass bottles.
A few months ago, some friends and I went for a hike in a California park. It was a warm day, and after a long, dusty walk I slurped eagerly at cold, fresh water from a park fountain. A child in a stroller gestured urgently at it, alerting his mother that he, too, was thirsty.
“Oh, no, honey,” she said. “Here, I’ve got water in a bottle.”
Yet another single-use plastic bottle filled by a bottler with filtered tap water that was probably less healthy and tasty than the tap water I was drinking.
…This is getting long. I’ll have to spread these tips over several posts. More soon!
Autumn in Colorado
The foliage is not as spectacular a New England’s, but you can’t beat that blue sky and a mountain breeze.
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Why I’m Volunteering for Obama
Today I asked campaign volunteers in Westminster, Colorado, why they are dedicating so much time to getting Barack Obama elected. Here are their answers.
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The Streets of Colorado
Last Sunday, a cold, dreary fall day in this part of Colorado, I went out canvassing to find out who’s going to vote for Obama. I arrived at the local HQ (a storefront in a strip mall near a Costco) around noon. A guy explained to me at length what I was supposed to do, over my increasing nervousness.
“Do I have to do this alone?” I asked. “I was told someone would be with me.” I didn’t feel confident about knocking on doors by myself. Having spent so much of my life overseas, most recently the last 17 years in Italy, I know that many standard American cultural cues pass me by completely unnoticed. And everyone’s armed in this part of the country (yes, including the liberals) – I didn’t want to miss something that might imply: “Get off my lawn before I blow a hole in you with my 12-gauge.”
Eric, the man who’d been training me, instantly agreed to go with me. On the way we chatted about more personal things and I learned, with no great surprise, that he, too, had been a Sun employee. He got laid off in July, calculated that he had enough money to retire early, and decided to devote his time to campaigning for Obama.
We had pre-printed sheets of paper with names, addresses, and (usually) political leanings for each of the people we were supposed to visit. These were organized by street and side of street (odds and evens), including a map showing the location of the targeted houses.
“Why are we going door to door instead of just calling?” I asked.
Eric’s an engineer, so he has studied the numbers behind his activities.
“This is more effective than calling. Studies show that, for every 14 doors you knock on, you persuade one voter. It takes 200 calls to do the same. This is a swing state, and Jefferson County has traditionally voted Republican. 200 votes could make all the difference here.”
“That’s a lot of doors,” I gulped.
We knocked on 34 doors in about 90 minutes that day. The people we had come to see were all listed as Democrats or undecided. We weren’t expected to call on any Republicans; the thought is that it’s too late in the game to persuade them. Now it’s mostly about making sure that people have their mail-in ballots and know what to do with them, or know where they can go for early voting (which starts Oct 20th in Colorado).
Many of the people on our list had already received their mail-in ballots, and some of those had already sent them in. Three or four refused our polite request to tell us for whom they’d voted. There are still people who feel strongly that this is a private matter, but Eric suspected that they had all voted for McCain and didn’t want to tell us that.
On the other hand, four or five told us they definitely had or would vote for Obama, and one said that her husband would also do so in spite of being a life-long Republican (they were both young).
We did the first street together, with me hanging anxiously behind, not liking the idea of disturbing people on a Sunday, though most took it well. At some places, someone was clearly home but did not answer the door.
Eric pointed out clues to the likely voting habits of the households we visited. A Subaru in the driveway indicated a liberal. On the other hand, 95% of the houses we visited or passed had four-wheel drive vehicles and/or trucks, so those aren’t necessarily a sign of conservatism. Every house seemed to have multiple dogs as well.
One house where I was just as glad no one answered had a jeep in the driveway hand-painted in camouflage, with various aggressive bumper stickers including one that said “Fuck Iraq” – an ambiguous statement at best.
We split the next street, one of us doing odds, the other evens. Eric was trapped for quite a while with a man who wanted to complain about the price of diesel fuel – the only canvasee who had shown much desire for conversation.
Then, frozen to the bone, we went back to the office. Happily, it’s supposed to be sunny and warm when I go out canvassing tomorrow.
