There are so many ways to be more environmentally caring that it’s hard to know where to start, and even more difficult to know what value to put on each effort, or if that should even be done.
Take yesterday for example. I had a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon, and knowing that I had another errand to run near to the doctor’s office, I decided to drive my car to the doctor’s parking lot, have my appointment, and then leave the car there while I walked to the nearby locale to run my errand -- which seemed like a good thing.
But first I felt bad while driving my car, since in theory, I could have ridden my bike -- if I owned one. But if I had ridden a bike, I’d probably want to wash up a bit by the time I got the the doctor’s office, and that would waste water and possibly add some soapy residue to the water system. So driving seemed like an okay idea, but I figured I’d better not use air conditioning, so I opened the windows instead. I also chose a route down side streets so I could avoid having the car idle while stopped at traffic lights. And I think I actually got to my appointment in less time than I would have otherwise, so maybe I learned a lesson there.
All went well with my appointment and my errand, until I tripped over some broken sidewalk while returning to my car, and scraped both my knees and one hand, and likely sprained my thumb. My lesson there is either that walking is dangerous or that I need to practice it more.
Since I was bleeding and barely able to turn the steering wheel with my injured hand, I drove home the more direct way, and stopped at many traffic lights which meant that the car was idling frequently. The bigger problem (in addition to the blood) was that if not for my injuries, I would have run a few more errands on the way home, including buying some “green products”, which would have saved me another car trip today, which would have saved fuel overall, and reduced emissions.
Instead, I went straight home, and cleaned my various wounds. I used some of our super-absorbent paper towels to soak up and wash off the blood, and then felt guilty about that since there wasn’t that much blood and I might have managed it without paper towels. Or maybe I should have used a washcloth to stem the flow? But the washcloth is made of cotton, and farmers use a lot of pesticides while growing cotton and I didn’t want to be encouraging that. And I would have had to clean the washcloth afterwards, using up water and electricity and adding more soapy residue to the environment.
I considered saving the paper towels so that I could re-use them in case I later spilled something on the floor, for example. But as wiping the floor with bloody paper towels seemed wrong somehow, I decided to throw them out, adding guilt to my pain and future mass to a garbage dump.
And since I was in pain and unable to cook, Tom brought home some chicken and side dishes from a take-out place, packaged of course in disposable foil pans and plastic containers -- and all inside a plastic bag inside a paper bag. After eating, I rinsed the food containers for recycling, but at what cost in water?
And all this was because I hadn’t driven the car to my second errand.
Since I was bleeding and barely able to turn the steering wheel with my injured hand, I drove home the more direct way, and stopped at many traffic lights which meant that the car was idling frequently. The bigger problem (in addition to the blood) was that if not for my injuries, I would have run a few more errands on the way home, including buying some “green products”, which would have saved me another car trip today, which would have saved fuel overall, and reduced emissions.
Instead, I went straight home, and cleaned my various wounds. I used some of our super-absorbent paper towels to soak up and wash off the blood, and then felt guilty about that since there wasn’t that much blood and I might have managed it without paper towels. Or maybe I should have used a washcloth to stem the flow? But the washcloth is made of cotton, and farmers use a lot of pesticides while growing cotton and I didn’t want to be encouraging that. And I would have had to clean the washcloth afterwards, using up water and electricity and adding more soapy residue to the environment.
I considered saving the paper towels so that I could re-use them in case I later spilled something on the floor, for example. But as wiping the floor with bloody paper towels seemed wrong somehow, I decided to throw them out, adding guilt to my pain and future mass to a garbage dump.
And since I was in pain and unable to cook, Tom brought home some chicken and side dishes from a take-out place, packaged of course in disposable foil pans and plastic containers -- and all inside a plastic bag inside a paper bag. After eating, I rinsed the food containers for recycling, but at what cost in water?
And all this was because I hadn’t driven the car to my second errand.
At the end of the day, had the environment come out ahead? I know I hadn’t.
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