1 post tagged “environment”

First of all, I'm not a militant environmentalist. But I know stuff. And I know we've got serious problems.
There's more to it than carbon footprint.
Here's a list of things I've done to cut down on my impact.

Starting with my most egregious offense I've got a big honking, gas guzzlin', SUV. Except it's not.
It big and honkin',  we dubbed it the QE2.
I bought it used. That's like recycling cars, right? It's gets almost as good mileage as my stick-shift
6 cylinder two wheel drive Ford Ranger. I was completely surprised by that.
We needed to seat six, and climb snow covered gravel roads. It does a fine job and I could have done a lot worse.

I replaced (all-but-one) windows and doors in my house with vinyl argon-gas double paned glass.
My gas bill dropped noticeably.

Where practical, I'm using fluorescent light fixtures. Not just CFLs,
I've changed out lighting fixtures that have a permanent ballast.
(new technology is improving the mercury fingerprint all the time.)
"L2" tubes (in the garage) seem to be a big improvement over the old types.

My wife makes me recycle everything.
Woe unto me, if I should toss a plastic grocery bag in the trash.
I can see cloth grocery bags in our near future.

I tie a knot in the tops of the plastic bags that the laundry gives you to protect your clothes and use them as trash bags. I asked them to not use them, and finally, they got the message.

The little red baggies that the news paper comes in makes the best doggy poop bags ever.

I replaced an old (about 2.5 gal/flush) leaking toilet with a new 1.6 gal Kohler. It works better than the old one. I like it so well, that I'll replace the other toilets, soon.

MISC Thoughts:

I'm not taking direct credit for this, but switching to LCDs over CRTs for TV and computer monitors has got to be making a difference in power consumption across the country. I just haven't seen any studies on this yet. I'm sure there are some out there.

There is a grass roots interest in new nuclear power plants. I'm interested in this, too. It seems to me that advances in technology should make new designs safer and more efficient. I'm not sure that our old fears are still valid.

Comments?