Happy Earth Day!

happy earth day! -- how weird is it that we have a "day" for this?
anyway.

what are folks doing to be greener this year? how's it going?

i'm:

- working on making it a habit to always carry an extra reusable bag, so i don't need to get plastic bags all over the place. that's going pretty well. i still forget sometimes, but i've cut down A LOT.

- replaced some (i know, i know) of my bulbs with CFLs. i loathe them, and i'm not willing to replace the others (sorry), but i will keep these.

- stopped drying my clothes and other small items in the dryer. still doing sheets this way, but still, a massive improvement in energy use -- and spending. i've found that putting some baking soda in the wash water makes things less crunchy.

I read something recently about Europeans using almost half the amount of water per person, per day, than Americans do, and in particular how much we waste every time we flush a toilet.

I experimented with a recommendation I found on-line, to try and reduce this by placing a container filled with water in the cistern (I recycled a 1L selzer bottle, but had to cut the very top off in order for it to fit) and it does work.... now wasting one litre less every time we flush the toilet.

It's a small thing, but it's a start.

Also : taking advantage of Park Slope Food Coop's addtional plastic recycling
http://foodcoop.com/go.php?id=112&PHPSESSID=c458fb9d9136061e4317bf1cc80b858c

The thing that gets me is that most businesses in NYC do not recycle. I thought there were laws?

eatshoplocal wrote: happy earth day to everyone - i went vegetarian to do my part (the most environmental impact you can make)-

good for you (and LandMine) for doing so.

i think that from an environmentalist standpoint, it would be great to see more emphasis placed on eating less meat, as opposed to none. i'm not willing to stop eating meat entirely, and often i feel that this is presented as an all-or-nothing option.

Underhill_MT wrote: [quote=MeredithB]The thing that gets me is that most businesses in NYC do not recycle. I thought there were laws?

Funny enough, the residential buildings are the ones who receive the most tickets for improper recycling when there are businesses who don't recycle a thing out there! I got a ticket once when I first moved to NYC for trying to recycle a clearly recyclable container that didn't have an opening smaller than the container itself (aka a plastic Chinese take-out container). Ugh.

San Fran started a 3-bin system where the city will pick up for free the following items: recyclables (way more than what NYC processes unless you count the Food Coop's program) and food scraps. The city charges for garbage collection. The result? A massive increase in both recyclables and composting. The city saved some crazy amount of emissions each year from food rot in landfills alone. Pretty awesome.

Ithaca, NY had a similar system when I went to school there. It worked well. Every time someone brings it up for NY, people say it won't work here because too many people will dump their trash on public property or other people's private property to avoid the fees. Personally, I'd like to think that NYers aren't more likely to do this than other people.