Almost every sit­u­a­tion where we make a deci­sion involves some compromise.

Break­fast cereal ... I love non-standard less-sweet vari­eties that can’t be found in the Kellogg’s or Post sec­tions of the super­mar­ket. So my search for inter­est­ing cere­als brought me to Big Lots. (I’m a Big Fan of Big Lots.)

I found a trop­i­cal fruits cereal there, from Poland, of all places! Then, I noticed that Big Lots imported it from Poland. There aren’t many trop­i­cal fruits in Poland. So the fruits were grown in Africa, flown to Poland, and then the end prod­uct was flown to some ware­house in Colum­bus, Ohio. Then they were trans­ported to Den­ver. And trucked from the local Big Lots ware­house to my local sub­ur­ban store.

That’s a lot of car­bon footprint.

But how do we avoid that? It’s not easy. Trop­i­cal fruits aren’t grown in Den­ver either. But I like them.

How do you decide which prod­ucts you buy?

This is a re-post. I thought you might enjoy this lit­tle idea that orig­i­nally appeared on Octo­ber 7, 2011.

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 that’s laid out where you can do your errands close to home.

Most Amer­i­cans are faced with a choice when they enter a big retail store... go through the auto­matic doors or the push-open doors?

If you are in a wheel­chair, there’s not much of a choice. But for the rest of us, I’d urge you to choose the man­ual side, because:

1. You will get some addi­tional exer­cise that would not oth­er­wise be part of your life.

2. You will save the energy that it would take to open the doors.

3. You will save the store the cost of the elec­tric­ity it would take to open the doors.

If you make this choice enough times, you will make a dif­fer­ence. If every­one you know makes this choice, we’ll all make a sig­nif­i­cant difference.

The Chinet Cor­po­ra­tion came out with a prod­uct that should never have been released to their ador­ing pub­lic — take­away cups to use in the com­fort of your own kitchen. The idea is, you brew your own cof­fee, mix it with your favorite milk and sugar sub­sti­tutes — and then put it in this dis­pos­able cup with a lid. That way you don’t have to wash a cup. You can just throw it away when you get to your office!

I might sug­gest — buy an insu­lated mug with a han­dle — and wash it. Land­fill con­tri­bu­tion? Zero. Wal­let depre­ci­a­tion? Zero.

And on their home page, they have the bold­ness to say, “Help Pre­serve Nature, Learn More”. Admit­tedly they try to be envi­ron­men­tally aware in some of what they do — but sell­ing such a com­pletely unneeded prod­uct is not respon­si­ble. Shame­ful, even.

Apolo­gies to those of you who wanted a light and fluffy post for your Friday.

Update: See the com­ments. I changed the title in Shane’s honor. He has a good point. (I had titled this post, “Evil and bad” — a bit excessive.)