Monday, October 15, 2007

Blog Action Day

Although my previous post was, at least in part, about the environment it was not actually intended as part of Blog Action Day. I actually didn't know about Blog Action Day until Darren mentioned it in the comments on that post.

In his post, Darren asked "what is your big eco-sin?" Like most of his commenters, I try to be good to the environment:
  • I don't own a car - I take the bus to work and for most of my transportation around the city, and I joined the car co-op for getting to hockey games
  • even when I do take a co-op car, I usually try to do multiple things on a given trip (such as go to the grocery store after my hockey game) in order to minimize the number of car trips I take
  • I'm a vegetarian and I don't wear leather
  • I use a travel mug1 to avoid using paper cups and I bring my own Tupperwear container to the cafeteria to avoid using Styrofoam containers
  • I bring my own bag to the grocery store so I don't have to take plastic ones
  • I recycle anything that can be recycled2
  • I turn the lights out in the bathroom, the kitchen and the photocopy room at work when I leave them3
  • I use the back of old printouts as note paper before I recycle them
  • I don't buy anything new if I can get it used instead and buy almost all of my clothes in consignment & thrift stores
  • I rarely fly anywhere4
But I do have one big eco-sin. I leave my computer on. All the time. 24/7. Even when I'm at work all day, my computer at home is on. And the main reason I do this is a rather ridiculous one - when I come home, I like there to be messages waiting for me. Even though I haven't had my landline and it's accompanying answering machine for months now, my natural inclination when I walk in the door is to look for the little flashing red light telling me that someone cared enough to call me! And since I don't have that anymore, my msn serves that purpose. With my computer on, people can msn me all day long and when I get home, I have messages waiting for me. OK, now that I write that down, I see it's silly. Starting tomorrow, I'm shutting my computers off when I leave.

On a related note: why, since the librarians have been on strike for four months, were all the lights on in the local library branch when I walked by there tonight?

1A friend of mine said that he feels if he can't have his act together enough to bring his travel mug with him, then he feels that he doesn't deserve a coffee. I think this is a good philosophy
2and in light of the 4 month garbage strike that has, mercifully, just ended, this is a real sacrifice as I can barely fit in my kitchen because I have so much recycling piled up in there!
3and have noticed that some of my co-workers have started following my example
4Although, truth be told, this has more to do with my lack of money (thanks, $70,000 of student loans!) than with a conscience choice to fly less

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If that's your biggest eco-sin, you're in pretty good shape. I give you permission to whack a couple of baby seals in celebration. I call it the 'mammal offset' program.

Anonymous said...

I second Darren's suggestion :)

The lights on at the library - the settlement the city reached was for all staff *except* librarians, and they were supposed to be meeting with the city to reach some kind of agreement. I suspect that's why the lights were on.

Tod Maffin said...

Can I just say how awesome it is that you always footnote your posts... written like a true acedemic. :)