Last weekend Judith, a friend from town here, came with me to Toon Town. I enjoy traveling with her because we always have some thought-provoking discussions. The big debate this time was on the environment.
We agreed on most things so it wasn't much of a debate I guess. The only thing we disagreed on was whether or not to let vehicles run without anyone sitting in them. It angers me when I drive into a mall parking lot in the winter and see a big truck running with no one in it. Judith argued that it's worse to start your truck over and over again; I say it's worse to leave it running, especially when the truck has been running for over 20 minutes. In fact, why do people really need big trucks like that anyway? I support farmers in driving these vehicles for work-related purposes but that's about it.
Anyway, that's not the point of this post. Judith was telling me about these people who limited themselves to one bag of garbage a month. I'm not sure I have the energy or discipline to challenge myself like this, but I decided that I can start off small. I decided that I was going to limit myself to one shopping bag of garbage a week.
I know it doesn't seem like a lot and I'm sure lots of people only generate that much garbage anyway, but I generally bring work home with me and I can create a lot of garbage from that. I'm also constantly throwing out stuff that I don't need/want anymore. I figured my challenge would be a lot more difficult than it actually was.
It's Wednesday night and my garbage bag is 2/3 full. (Notice I didn't say 1/3 empty, haha.) It's mostly food scraps, actually, and I'm realizing how much I could compost if I was set up for it. I'm already a decent recycler - I recycle absolutely everything I can, right down to empty granola bar and kleenex boxes. Considering I have one night left until I'm heading back to Stoon, I think I'm doing really well.
It's easy for me to say because I live alone and I solely control what goes into the garbage. But even if you live with others, I recommend you challenge yourself for one week. [Insert touchy-feely, pump-you-up comments here.]
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
My personal challenge
Posted by Meg at 10:22 PM
Labels: environment
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2 comments:
Those running trucks are my pet peeve. I can tell you from experience at work that if you shut the truck off every time you aren't using it, at the end of the day you have burnt way less fuel than if the motor ran the entire time. That would tell me that you can assume you have polluted less if you have more fuel left over.
Restarting diesels too often is bad for them, but once they are warmed up, they shouldn't be idling for more than 5 minutes or you're just wasting fuel. Gas engines they say use about ten seconds worth of idling fuel to restart.
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