Category: environment | Page 4 | Shiny Bits of Life

October 24, 2011October 30, 2011

Leaves suggestion

Staging area for leaves Initial disclaimer: if your municipal or private trash collection service collects leaves and mulches them, ignore this post!

However, if your trash service does not collect organic waste – and you don’t have a neighbor who can use them in their garden, this suggestion is for you…

If you have trees in your yard (if you have a yard) and they are dumping down the leaves, I have an idea for you.

Don’t rake them up and put them in plastic bags to be taken away by the trash truck. Put them into a staging area and then fill your garbage cans each week till they are gone.

The leaves won’t go away. They’ll wait patiently until your garbage cans have enough room. If you’re in a windy area, jump on the leaves so they become a more solid mass.

Disclaimer: I realize that composting is an even better solution, but if you don’t have a garden, you have to do something with those leaves.

October 7, 2011October 1, 2011

Exercise and save time

Choose to walk You know you need to exercise. I know that I do. You know that you need to run lots of errands each week.

Why not combine the two?

Riding your bicycle or walking to that place will take you more time. But you have to go there anyway! Why drive to the gym and run on a treadmill when in the same time it would take you to do both, you could save fuel, help the environment and enjoy being outside?

Disclaimer: I realize this only works if you live in a town big enough that you can do your errands close to home.

June 28, 2011August 10, 2011

Tesla in Colorado

Tesla makes very fast electric cars. Very fast expensive electric cars.

Boulder has had a showroom for a while, but Denver recently got one – in a mall! (Funny enough, the Boulder store is now missing from their dealership listings page.)

The store is small. Just two cars are on the floor. But at $140,000 each, I’m not surprised.

The Roadster is the only model currently available. It’s basically a Lotus Elise at more than double the price. That’s a lot of saving the whales you can do for the difference.

January 28, 2011January 22, 2011

No bag please

Most of the time when you go shopping in the USA, the person behind the counter automatically puts your purchased items in a plastic bag. That’s a bad default. Instead, they should provide a bag only if you ask. I’d go so far as to say they should charge you for that bag. Then many would begin bringing their own bags.

In 2007, San Francisco was the first American city to ban the use of plastic bags. 775,000 gallons of oil were used to make the plastic bags San Francisco used the year before. (Info from SFGate.com.) Think of what a positive impact their legislation has had!

In many parts of Europe, that has been law for an even longer time. And in some European stores, you cannot get anything to put your shopping in. (That can catch an outsider by surprise.)

The only good thing to be said for plastic bags is that they keep plastic bag manufacturers in business. And provide jobs. However, that’s the same logic as saying it’s good to keep making high-alcohol sugary pop drinks that appeal to teenagers – because those companies employ many people.

Occasionally I do get a bag, when I forget to bring one with me. I’m not trying to be legalistic – but I am hoping that if you buy and use reusable bags, you will enjoy the positive impact you’ll be making.

I give my brother credit for the idea for this post. Thanks Bill!

January 7, 2011January 3, 2011

The downside of retro

I was surfing Svpply* on a Sunday afternoon. I came across the highlighting of this 1976 Ford Bronco.

Yes, it may be cool, but I wanted to remind you that it puts out roughly 20 times the amount of pollution that a more modern vehicle does. So if you buy one (or something similar)… for the sake of the air I breathe, please drive it just on Sundays.

* Thanks to Andrew Swanson for the site suggestion.

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010

Black Friday reflections

Black Friday fuels the American system. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily – but it can be bad. When the price drops so low on an item that we must get it – even though we have one already that maybe isn’t quite as good – that’s not good.

Lest you think I am preaching from a lofty tower, my family and I visited at least two large stores to take advantage of some of the sales. So I’m preaching to myself on this, too.

So, you ask, what does this have to do with aluminum lobster pinchers? On Thanksgiving, when we were attempting to find an obscure serving utensil in one of our drawers, we uncovered this. It was a free promotion from Lexus, back when the economy was humming enough that manufacturers gave away such things. They were selling a lifestyle. One that is not who I am. So last Thursday, it was entered into our to-the-Goodwill (charity shop) bin.

Be true to who you want to be.

For those not in America, “Black Friday” is the day after Thanksgiving – when retail outlets have crazy sales with amazing prices – often starting at midnight on Thursday night – which isn’t the nicest thing for those working at the stores. It’s called “Black” Friday because it’s the day stores hope to sell so much that it moves their financial bottom line out of the red (unprofitable) and into the black (profitable).

October 27, 2010October 26, 2010

China is better than you think

China gets a bad rap for how bad it is, environmentally. Their negative reputation is true in some cases – but not all.

A few weeks ago, I was in Hong Kong (admittedly the most western-leaning part of China… but still China). I saw this great sign on a container for plastic utensils. Starbucks was simply asking the potential user to consider going without – for the sake of the environment. I’ve never seen that in the States (in the case of plastic utensils).

October 13, 2010October 13, 2010

Cool but wasteful

Vuka. It’s a new-to-me “Intelligent Energy Drink”. My 14-year old son bought it because he thought the bottle was cool. And it is.

However, his comment on what was inside: “pretty disgusting”. He also described it as a “fake energy drink”.

My take: the container is hugely wasteful. The bottle is heavy-gauge aluminum and must have accounted for half of the cost of the product. If the lid were up to the same standard of permanence, it would be a nice thing to hang onto. But it will probably last for about two refills and then strip out. Sad.

Update: See some interesting comments and a rebuttal in the comments.

October 7, 2010October 4, 2010

It’s that season

Elections are coming up in America. Our mailbox provides abundant evidence. A flyer from one political candidate or another comes just about every day. Sadly, most of the ink is spent on saying how bad their opponents are.

I wish there was an “opt out” button.

October 6, 2010October 3, 2010

American excess

A local bakery / restaurant from a well known chain throws out four huge trash bags of perfectly good bread and pastries every night at closing time. Some nights, very kind people pick up the excess and bring it to homeless shelters or similar. Most nights, it goes into the nearby dumpster.

This chain has ten stores in the Denver area alone. That amount of waste is mind-boggling.

I do not fault them.

Who is at fault for this kind of waste? The American consumer. The manager of the store told my friend who makes those charity bread runs, “If we didn’t have every single item in stock, we’d get complaints from customers who missed being able to buy their favorite item at the end of the day. Then we’d lose them as customers. They would go to another shop.”

We are guilty as a country.

Solution? The years I lived in England, stores would regularly finish their stock near the end of the day. Customers would just buy a different item – or go to a different store. No one would get upset. I would propose that we simply lower our darn picky standards – at least in this case. How would this happen? I don’t have any idea. Do you?