Earth Day

Happy Earth Day everybody!

I spent the last week banging the environmental drum and teaching Austrian students about Earth Day. For the most part students seemed really interested and excited to talk about ways to reduce human impact on the environment. The things they liked the best were things we can do without changing our lifestyles. It turns out we waste a lot of energy--energy that we can save without doing anything radical like spending thousands on a solar energy system.

We had a lot of great discussions and came up with some goals that the students promised to think about for the rest of the year... hopefully they will stick to it! If nothing else, their parents will appreciate the lower utility bills.

I am even taking one class out to pick up garbage around town--a real Earth Day activity that US school kids will be doing around the nation today.

Finally, I wanted to mention/comment on a response I got from a particular student. He said, "I don't think it's important to do anything for Earth Day. It's not like what we do makes a difference." I think this attitude is really common and very understandable. I feel like this too, sometimes. However, if you actually think about this attitude, you quickly see how sad it is. Speaking hypothetically, even if global warming is natural and not caused by people, there is no reason to handle our environment as if it is a disposable good. As the saying goes, "Don't shit where you eat." Why would we want to throw trash where we walk, live, or drive? And if somebody else throws trash where we walk, live, or drive, why wouldn't we want to pick it up? If you can't convince yourself it makes an environmental difference, then at least clean up out of egotistical self interest: a clean neighborhood is a beautiful neighborhood, and a beautiful neighborhood has higher property values.

Every bucket, --even the bucket that is our in-need-of-a-good-spring-cleaning environment-- is filled with individual drops. If you refuse to put your drop in the bucket and never do anything to reduce your impact on the environment, then it is your fault that the bucket never fills up. Just sayin.

Hopefully you are all participating in the festivities today by doing the two most important Earth Day related activities:

1. Taking Action.
This is going out and doing something nice for Mother Nature that you normally wouldn't do. It can be picking up trash in your neighborhood or along a country road, putting up bluebird houses (ask the landowner first--he/she will say yes--especially if you are going to maintain the houses in the future), or installing a compost bin for your veggie scraps.

2. Make Some Goals.
This means taking a look at your impact on the environment and making goals to reduce this impact over the next year. A lot of things require a lifestyle change, but don't despair! There are a lot of things you can train yourself to do that make almost no noticable change on your day-to-day life. The only place you will notice these changes is on your utility bill! Most people can easily cut their utility costs by 15-20%.

The following are some things I talked about with my classes to save energy and help the environment. They are all things you can do without a big lifestyle change.

• Pick up trash when you go walking. Walking by litter on the street is just as bad as putting it there yourself.
• Use a cloth shopping bag. Bringing your own bags when you go shopping makes a huge difference, both in the energy cost of disposable bag production and in our environment and landfills. By number (not by volume) 10% of all trash found in the ocean is a plastic shopping bag. I guess having your wild-caught Alaskan cod pre-packaged is an advantage for some people?
• Turn off lights you don't need. If you aren't in the room, the light can just as easily be off. The idea that turning the light off for 10 minutes actually uses more power is a myth. The reality is that if you are going to be gone for more than .2 seconds, you are wasting power by leaving the lights on.
• Don't leave appliances on stand-by mode. Unplug appliances if you can, or turn off power at the switch. Otherwise your appliances are still sucking current. (This really does suck up a lot of power--a TV that is turned off is still sucking power from the outlet. The same goes for your computer, DVD player, and even your cell phone charger whether or not it is charging your phone. According to Wikipedia this cleverly coined "vampire power draw" amounts to up to 10% of your electricity costs. Want to cut your electric bill by 10% next month? Kill vampire power draw.)
• Shower, don't take baths. Ok.. Ok.. everyone knows this. But how about taking a "navy shower"? Turn on the shower long enough to get wet, then turn off the water to lather up and scrub. Then turn the water back on to rinse. Maybe you dont want to do this every day (I love a hot, relaxing shower too), but doing it for 50% of your showers will still save buckets of water. It's not that bad, trust me.
• Buy green energy. Call your electrical company and see how much more it would cost to buy 100% of your electrical energy from wind or solar power. Often it is less than $5/month more. If you do this and kill your vampire energy draw you will probably still be saving money. True capitalists will love this--vote with your dollar and make a difference!
• Buy local and seasonal products. Lower transportation costs (and less pollution) and lower production costs for something out of season (Strawberries in January? They don't even taste good, and they were either grown expensively in a green house or shipped up from Mexico. Neither one makes me hungry).
• Buy things with less packaging. Why pay for decoration that you are going to throw away when you get home? Envision that all that extra plastic and cardboard sitting in a land-fill rather than decorating what you are buying. It will end up there soon enough.

Lastly... really... I'm just about done... If you want to learn a little about the history of Earth Day (A Wisconsin holiday, I am proud to add), click here. You can read US Senator Gaylord Nelson's (WI) recolections about the founding of Earth Day.

Every day is Earth Day!