Where can I educate myself about my personal impact on the environment and how to lessen that impact?

September 17, 2005 2:48 PM

Where can I educate myself about my personal impact on the environment and how to lessen that impact?

Id like to know stuff like what happens to the things I throw out, what is the best way for a westerner create as little environmental impact as possible, etc. Like what kinds of things should I avoid buying, what are the best habits for use of energy and water, etc. If I could become aware of a few key habits I could change or a few of the worst offenders commodity-wise it would be worth it.

posted by who else to science & nature (11 comments total)

You may want to check out Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. It's my favorite in this realm because it has enough detail to mean something, yet not so much that it's hard to understand/read/care. Also, the group that put it together is rather reputable.

An exercise that might interest you is the ecological footprint. The idea is to estimate your impact (based on CO₂-equivalent emissions, amount of water used, or in this example, planets to sustain your lifestyle for everyone on earth). Though each particular footprint has its own assumptions and biases, they can give you an idea of which of your behaviors have the greatest effect on the environment.

Off the top of my head, the things I know are the environmentally-worst in my lifestyle are a predilection for air travel and inability to give up meat.
posted by whatzit at 3:04 PM on September 17, 2005

Ah, I had been to that ecological footprint site recently but had not clicked on 'what you can do - individuals'
posted by who else at 3:34 PM on September 17, 2005

Also it occurred to me that there has to be some good video series on this topic, Ill see what I can find...
posted by who else at 3:47 PM on September 17, 2005

For people who don't have time to read the whole UCS guide, here's a couple summaries from the Amazon reviews. Kerry Walters:

The virtue of this Consumer's Guide is that the authors help us separate the urgent from the not-so-urgent, the easily doable from the this'll-take-more-time-and-effort. They pinpoint three major areas in our consumption in which we can make immediate changes that really do impact for the better on the environment: vehicle usage, how we heat/cool our homes,and what we eat. Almost all of us use our cars more than we need to, and a growing number of us have vehicles much larger than we really need; all of us can do better about insulating our homes, cutting down on electricity, and using environmental-friendly appliances; and we don't really need to eat as much meat as we do--growing food animals is a colossal waste of grain protein as well as a major water and air polluter.

Erika Mitchell:

... they go on to make the following suggestions to address these specific items: choose a place to live that reduces the need to drive; think twice before purchasing another car; choose a fuel-efficient, low-polluting car; set goals for reducing your travel; whenever practical, walk, bicycle, or take public transportation; eat less meat, buy certified organic produce; choose your home carefully; reduce the environmental costs of heating and hot water; install efficient lighting and appliances; choose an electricity supplier offering renewable energy.

The authors also point out some non-issues, like landfill space, paper vs. plastic shopping bags, disposable vs. cloth diapers, styrofoam cups, and cotton vs. synthetic materials for clothing. In each of these cases, either the environmental harm of the item is often played up out of proportion to the harm caused by other consumer activities, or the two choices are more or less equal in terms of environmental damage caused. The authors argue that if we really want to make a difference, we need to focus our efforts on the big items, like transportation, food, and housing, rather than on these minor items. There's no sense putting a lot of effort into using cloth napkins instead of paper while ignoring the fact that you have an old water-hog clothes washer and an electric full-time water heater in a room lit by incandescent bulbs.
posted by russilwvong at 4:22 PM on September 17, 2005

The Centre for Alternative Technology have been running a self-sufficient community in Wales for about 30 years - there's plenty of tips on their site about reducing your impact on the environment. Their "How Green is Your Lifestyle?" questionnaire is a good place to start.
posted by blag at 4:44 PM on September 17, 2005

The Canadian government has a program called the One-Tonne Challenge which challenges every Canadian to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by one tonne per year (the average total being five tonnes per Canadian per year). They've produced lots of handy material on that aspect of your quest (here)
posted by winston at 6:37 PM on September 17, 2005

Not quite the answer your looking for, which I believe was answered quite well up above - there are simple and financially small things you can do:

• compost all your compostable material


• install rain barrels under your rainspouts (you can get plastic ones for $50) - the advantage to this is that you can reuse the water for your garden


• get a tankless hot water system (going for $1000, you'll end up saving money within a couple of years)


• reduce and reuse, reduce and reuse, reduce and reuse - from saving your grocery receipts for grocery lists, ie, to making pads of paper out of scrap paper


• don't use chemicals on your lawn and garden - there are ways of keeping the snails and dandelions at bay without pesticides.


• grow a vegetable garden - even a small one is better than buying at the market, which you have to drive to, and the produce gets trucked to


• get solar panels


• don't use that air conditioner! It's not too bad on the pocketbook, install awnings over windows to keep out the sun - it'll help


• power companies are now offering for a slightly increased rate the option to use renewable and reusable energy sources - see what your utilities offer you


• write your congressman about your concerns for the environment - ask for/about incentives to homeowners to go green
  

There's tons more things you can do and there's lots of material on line you can access. The unfortunate thing is that in N. America, it takes money to be able to live in a harmonious way with our world. You have to make the choice to do these things and then follow thru with it.
posted by ashbury at 8:22 PM on September 17, 2005

There is a great book available in the Uk called The Good Life. Basically a journo from The Guardian tried to live as eco as possible for a year and wrote his findings week by week in the paper. At the end he provided this guide. I eat local organic produce, recycle when and where I can, use all sorts of biodegradables, go on eco friendly holidays etc etc. And by this book's standard am still an abject failure. There is no hope... (?)
posted by brautigan at 10:38 PM on September 17, 2005

I have been looking at the detailed spreadsheet that you can download at whatzit's ecological footprint link. They seem to think that nuclear generation takes as much fossil fuel as burning of fossil fuels... Pretty strange.

Also, the spreadsheet is in global acres, the online survey is in global hectares, but my result is about 4 acres on the spreadsheet and 5 hectares in the survey... I'm sure I am underestimating things a little on the spreadsheet, but the results are off by a factor of 3 (2.5 acres per hectare).

The unfortunate thing is that in N. America, it takes money to be able to live in a harmonious way with our world.

I don't know about this...

I live in a small apartment and I have never owned a car - these are easy to accomplish in North America, though not as easy as they should be. This lifestyle turns out to be very inexpensive - no insurance premiums, no mortgage, no car payments, my rent is similar to the taxes on a very modest home... Environmentally conscious food might be expensive, but not having any money I wouldn't know.
posted by Chuckles at 11:34 PM on September 17, 2005

Here is their comment on the nuclear footprint issue:

The Ecological Footprint of nuclear power is more controversial. On the on the one hand, nuclear power does not generate carbon dioxide emissions, aside from the energy embodied in a nuclear plant's construction and maintenance. On the other hand, it does create wastes that must be dealt with over many thousands of years. Accidental contamination from nuclear energy, such as at Chernobyl, has made sizeable areas of productive land unfit for human use. In addition, there is a security concern, since radioactive material can be used for weaponry. Our current approximation of these variables gives each source an equal impact per energy unit. Taking nuclear energy out of the Footprint accounts would reduce the worldwide Footprint by less than four percent.

Silly...

There are so many other factors that need to be considered too. If I buy Coke I am paying for the opulent lifestyle of all those marketing people, but if I buy the same quantity of PC cola, then what? The price isn't that different, so where is the money going? Waste due to economies of scale maybe? I wonder though, maybe the extra profit on PC cola is subsidizing local bottling plant's bids for Coke production contracts - that would be funny...
posted by Chuckles at 1:17 AM on September 18, 2005

Chuckles, issues like the one you pointed out (nuclear energy) are present in all ecological footprints, they each have their own assumptions, and, yes, shortcomings.

The main use of the ecological footprint concept should be to get a feel for major factors and how some aspects of behavior may relatlively affect your impact. The numerical results, as you said, can be questionable and certainly shouldn't be used for anything where accuracy is important.

That said, places that offer footprint surveys tend to have other resources or links available that provide the kind of information the poster was looking for.
posted by whatzit at 1:05 PM on September 18, 2005