The Environmental Meme

FranIam tagged me for this one. It's not really a "meme" in the usual sense, but more of a challenge. A challenge to the participant to come up with one way to lessen his or her environmental impact in the coming year. Here it is word-for-word from Fran's blog:

Try to think of one way you and your family can lessen your environmental impact in 2008. You could consider doing something relatively easy--like giving up paper plates and napkins (yup, more dishes and laundry, but oh so worth it at trash-time)--or more difficult--like trying to carpool more (which can be a pain, but saves a ton in gas money, not to mention in saved emissions). It doesn't have to be hard--it could be something as simple as trying one of those new fluorescent bulbs in your desk lamp. How about it?

This isn't as easy as you might think. DH and I already do recycle our newspapers, bottles (both plastic and glass) and cardboard.

Luckily our town picks it up in front of our house or we'd probably be too lazy to take it to the recycling center.

I remember when I was younger my parents took their newspapers and bottles to the recycling center way "before it was cool" - before there was even curb pick-up of recycling. I have to admit I'd never have been so dedicated. It's easy to talk the talk about the environment, but not so easy to walk the walk. (I hate that cliche' but it's true).

We have been replacing our lightbulbs with the fluorescent ones throughout the house, so we can check that off.

DH used to take the train to work - which was environmentally good - but now drives due to a change in job location. And he doesn't carpool. Neither do I. And given how late I usually come to work and how late I stay, it isn't likely to happen in the near future.

However, we do have cars with relatively good gas mileage and do not own an SUV so we have to take some credit for that.

OK, so what can we do to lessen our environmental impact? Yes, it's the paper plate and napkin thing. I admit it. We use paper plates for dinner every night because we're so bad about getting around to emptying the dishwasher so that it's ready to receive new dirty dishes.

The funny thing is, when we're on vacation on Cape Cod and don't have a dishwasher, we actually use real dishes and just hand wash them. You don't need to empty the dishwasher first, you see. Another example of how modern conveniences actually make things more complicated.

The question I have, however, is this: What is the balance between the amount of trash generated, and the amount of waste of perfectly good trees, embodied in the use of paper plates, versus the energy and water used to run the dishwasher, or in the case of the cloth napkins, the washing machine and dryer? I would need to know which is worse before I commit to this!

Anyone have some statistics they could cite?

In the meantime I will make a partial commitment. Every other night I'll use real plates and cloth napkins. How's that? It can't hurt!

Now, who to tag?

Pygalgia
Randal
Enigma4Ever (Watergate Summer)

Have fun with it!