So I watched the program that aired on Nat Geo the other night entitled "The Human Footprint" where that examine what each persone consumes, discards, and purchases throughout their lifetime. Now granted the amounts were averaged, but it is quite amazing to see what an effect an individual has on the environment. The show was actually so-so in terms of entertainment, but it made a just point. Do you do anything to decrease your carbon footprint? *RANT I'M SURE YOU'VE HEARD BEFORE* I am not a tree hugger by all means, but I have long highly believed that one day all the crap we throw away and consume will catch up to us. It's not IF, but WHEN. We as Americans are slobs. We throw away everything and take no consideration as to where it goes from there. Have you ever been to a landfill? It's sickening! Mountains of trash releasing God-knows-what into our streams. People think that they alone cannot make a difference, but you can. Plant a 10 trees in your lifetime and you would be doing alot, though it seems so little. Replace 3 lighbulbs in your house with compound flourescent bulbs and you will not only lower you bill, but help the air. Small changes in your daily lifestyle can make a big difference. Not only that, alot of states, including my own does not make recycling mandentory, so there is plenty of landfill here. OOhhh how I love living in my own trash. *END OF RANT* So what do you do? Anything? Recycle? All the aluminum scrap from my cases and the cans from the sodas I drink get turned into money and recycled. I turned my water heater down 2 degrees and put an insulating blanket on it. My electric bill dropped $30! Our generation has to give a Sh*t because WE WILL be affected by it. Thanks for hearing me out.
I recycle as much as I possibly can - basically what the council will take If I had a garden I'd do kitchen biodegradable too but it's not so easy in a flat We hardly ever use our heating due to living in a 1st floor flat with people above and below us who obviously like a warmer climate Saves on gas bills too
I think all councils in the UK provide a recycling collection service now. The one I have here in cardiff is great, get a green bin bag, fill it with pretty much everything and throw it out the door every other week. Back in bristol though you get a tiny box that stores hardly anything, and they basically only take alu and glass, whereas here they take stuff like tetra pak and plastic bottles. The service is there so I do it, but I do know people who don't do it, even though they hardly have to do anything. I'm not the best at conserving energy, I like to have my PC on all the time, but I use fluorescent bulbs, keep my TV off standby, etc. If it's not going to inconvenience me too much then I have no problem with it.
recycling isn't the easiest thing to do in my parts. We have 3 boxes for plastic, glass and carboard (alu goes in one of them too) It's never clear when which box goes out and never easy to get the box to the front drive as they're so small and get collected about 3 weekly. We have to clean out our tins, bottles etc. (don't understand their reasoning for that but it isn't an extensive chore) but basically, it isn't simple to recycle here but every little helps. Landfills disgust me, I swear someone with mental disabilities came up with the idea.
I'm already doing the most important thing possible -- not having any damn kids. Useless gesture that it is; ironically enough, socially responsible people refraining from further overpopulating the planet just serves to breed that responsibility out of the population, making the problem worse in the future.
You're the wrong side of Idiocracy. As for me... I switched to CFL bulbs and have always recycled, but I don't do anything major to be "green". I think it's mostly just a stupid thing that's become the latest marketing craze. Carbon credits, anyone?
We recycle pop can, we have a gray-water system, replaced our new lightbulbs, and we have a small garden ohh and we plant 200-300 trees every year
i recycle as much as i can and save energy where possible, but energy savings come almost entirely from financial motivation...
We dont do it here for one reason. Its too damn anoying, you have to clean out all ur bottles etc and have to take the labels off, certain things go in the black box others in the green one. I mean cmon, no-one has the time for that crap. When we used to go down to devon it was simple, Green wheely-bin for recyled stuff eg. Plastic and the black one for rubbish. Why cant it be like that here?!
Amen to that, even though I dont pay the bills, I do a simalar thing with my driving just to save petrol not the environment. Where I live its pretty good... Big Black wheelie bin for rubbish Big Green wheelie bin for recycling, 2 of them for my family because we are just so damn great we recycle so much Big Brown wheelie bin for garden and kitchen waste. The only problem is the collection, because the collection is now every other week a lot of people put recycling in the rubbish bins because they simply cannot fit any more in the green bin, even with 2 big green sulo bins we fill it right up. My local council never used to collect glass to be recycled because they didnt have the facility, which was most confusing for the young people in the area as they get taught right from primary school that plastic, paper and glass can be recycled. Also I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes I almost feel compelled to pollute and not recycle purely because of the amount we get told that we have to do it, by popstars who fly around the world doing gigs and play in stadiums using my more lighting that my house would use in a year, and politicians who still get driven around in their jags and big german tanks cars.
Nope. I use recycling bags because else the council won't take it and I think it's a bit too rude to chuck it in someone's front garden, I save energy to save on the bill. A Cat Rapes Dog song title puts it best: "**** nature". All in all, do we really want to save mankind/earth (and by earth, mankind)? I think we've done enough damage to, well, ourselves - it's time for god, if he exists, to start over.
yeah, you, number 37 in the chart of biggest producers of CO2, should continue not caring until number 91 does something about it..... i am considering 2004 values on co2 emissions per capita. edit: from wikipedia edit2: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_co2_emi_percap-environment-co2-emissions-per-capita
That kind of attitude makes me sick, you are responsible for the effects of supporting your lifestyle, nobody else. China will start to care when WE, the consumers in rich western economies, start demanding that the products we consume in such obscene quantities are produced in a responsible manner, RoHS and WEEE was a step in the right direction but a very minor one in terms of climate change. At home we recycle paper, glass, plastic and metal, organic waste gets composted and goes on the garden and we get veggies delivered from local producers every week, packaged in paper bags Unfortunatly at uni (bristol) things are a little different, because Im in halls and we have commercial waste collection the council wont provide recycling collections for us. Which is daft if you think about it because you have 40 people concentrated in one place from a group that are maybe more likely than others to recycle and in a phase of their lives where they're setting habits for living. It would seem to make sense to me to provide recycling bins so that people can get used to it and get into the routine but apparently they wont, and we have tried to get them to. I guess because we dont pay council tax they dont want to know although they do collect from the houses on either side of us... Moriquendi
