mbschlosser asked:
I want to know why almost everyone I know disregards the earth - refuses to buy alternative products with less packaging & even worse… they don’t recycle? I keep hearing people say that recycling is worse for the enviroment because of fuel/energy used to reuse the materials. How is that worse than the rape of earth for the resource to begin with and then the fuel/energy used to create the item? What about the fuel used to transport garbage to landfills and the cost to bury the garbage / rent the land? When will people start valuing the earth and realize that the point of no return is so close? Do you live green? Why or Why Not?
I want to know why almost everyone I know disregards the earth - refuses to buy alternative products with less packaging & even worse… they don’t recycle? I keep hearing people say that recycling is worse for the enviroment because of fuel/energy used to reuse the materials. How is that worse than the rape of earth for the resource to begin with and then the fuel/energy used to create the item? What about the fuel used to transport garbage to landfills and the cost to bury the garbage / rent the land? When will people start valuing the earth and realize that the point of no return is so close? Do you live green? Why or Why Not?
I live green because I care about the environment. My home uses less than one-third the national average energy consumption, I bike to work, I drive a Prius, etc.
Too many people are simply too lazy and selfish to make a few simple lifestyle changes for the benefit of the environment.
Lot packed into that Q. The best things you can do to live a green lifestyle is to limit your consumption of everything and limit the size of your family. If you do not produce waste, it does not have to be disposed of. There are costs in processing, production distribution, use and disposal of every item you buy. So use less of everything.
There are a lot of people who are actively living a green lifestyle. This is on a continuum though. We must try to appreciate all efforts that are made. I know as time goes by I get greener and greener.
How can we change the others? It is a case of not making it an option. Charge the real cost and the real costs of manufacture, distribution, disposal etc in the price. We are all guilty of greed. Even when we are aware we fall into the trap of greed. Educate and do what you can but try to be tolerant of those who have not embraced a green lifestyle as much as you have.
No I dont live green. But I do recycle. And I have bought a van that gets better gas mileage. And if you want to call me selfish be my guest, but In my profession we dont get paid what we are worth. So I cant afford an alternative fuel powerd car, truck, etc. Can you design one so I can purchase it? So I guess go ahead and mark me thumbs down, but most people just cant afford to go green, and still feed their children, and pay all their bills. Blame our Government!Rebubs, and Dems alike are just using the Enviro as a tactic to get votes!
Of coarse i live green I’m an old hippie that the world looked down on years ago . The establishment use to kill my kind unless we fell in line and help to pollute the earth . Hopefully you younger generation will have it in you to change things and rid yourselves of the establishment. Careful because they are giants with allot of power and influence but remember you have far more strength in numbers about 90% more if you all pull together.
You pretentious little fool.
Many of the people that you complain about actually waste much less energy and contribute much less to Gloabal Warming than you do.
You are contributing far too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
You had better get busy doing a better job at reducing your waste instead of sitting on your fat behind complaining about other people.
I live green.
I ride my bike to/from work. I own a Ford Focus (34 mpg). I use canvas bags at the grocery store (Whole Foods has great bags for a couple dollars). I use energy-star air conditioning that only runs when I’m home and is temperature controlled. I use energy saving fluorescent bulbs. I recycle cans, plastic, plastic bags and batteries. I buy locally grown produce (less fuel/transportation costs).
Everything makes a difference. We need to micromanage our environmental footprint and pressure congressmen to macromanage it. With cleaner air, we can decrease asthma and lung disease.
If you can only afford to change one light bulb, do it! Every bit helps.
Many of the so called “greenies” are merely spoiled children living off their parent’s money.
They do no useful work, or very little work at best.
Rather than do something productive with their lives, like you they lie around and whine about the rest of us that have created useful lives for ourselves and have been able to get reasonably well paid jobs to support ourselves.
Instead of whining about other people you need to go out and get a real job so that you can support yourself, and you need to move out of your parent’s home and get a home of your own.
This will help you get out of your bubble and get a sense of reality.
It’s no longer an option, everyone needs to go green to help the planet we all live in. There are degrees of going green though, one person might only be able to change out bulbs, recycle, use less plastic, turn off lights, buy locally, etc. Another person might be able to buy the latest electric vehicle, buy solar panels for their home, use organic and seasonally produced food, etc.
But regardless of income, location, education, etc.. we all can do something and we all can contribute to the planet in one way or another.
If ya want me to get any greener tell Algore to send me some greenbacks, lots and lots of em so I can go solar and take a chunk out the grid. I’m strictly in it for the the money.
I agree to go green but why don’t companies start going green and stop packaging materials so much. I know if they weren’t they would break etc. But their is a carseat manufacture that isn’t packaging their carseats in boxes anymore. I know their are pros and cons on that but if everybody were to save it would make a different. Going green can be expensive if you plan to do it to your house, vehicles. I do go green but can’t afford to change my house and vehicle. Why aren’t trash trucks hybertrucks
I do live green.
WHy? my parents taught me too ( I am 30). I grew up in a tropical island where resources needed to be conserved, where we had water shortages, where a waste landfill ended up in the lagoon after a hurricane (and I could not go to my favorite beach anymore for 3 years!)
well that taught me a lot. Then I moved to the USA…. and I was horrified how much people consume here. I was never a big consumer, but now I only buy food (local or/and organic), second-hand clothes, made in USA sneakers (new balance), I plant some of my food too, and that’s pretty much what I consume. I bike every day as a mean of transportation, I recycle everything. and i pick up trash when I walk my dogs. I don’t use AC and taught my American husband that summer is summer: wear light clothes and drink water! we do have a ceiling fan that we use when it’s too hot to sleep.
And I will adopt my kids when I am ready to have kids, and will raise them as my parents raised me.
And I can’t stand when people say being green is not affordable!!!! stop buying junk = save money to buy green stuff! and second-hand stuff is much cheaper!
I noticed though that people around me started to pick up on my habits, and stopped thinking I was “extreme”. nothing “extreme” about reducing one’s impact on earth.
Good question!
I’ve made some green choices, such as not driving or even owning a car - I use public transport or walk. I see my mother throw away stuff grown in our garden because she didn’t use it to cook and it kills me inside for it to not go on my compost pile to feed the garden - it just doesn’t seem right. I don’t want to be a fanatic, I don’t have time to sit around and come up with ways to use less, but I do have some basic principals that I hope to inact in my life through the next few years that will make an over all difference. Mostly I don’t live green because I wasn’t raised to, I don’t live on my own yet I’m not done with school, and I don’t really have much say in anything to do with how I live other than selecting my personal care products and occasional food shopping.
I think that having an alarmist view that all of this is a crisis really takes away the fun and interest in choosing products and foods that are good for a person and the environment, and I think that there are tons of things that are green and fun and interesting - but when someone puts a spin like “you have to or we’ll all die” on it it creates the wrong atmosphere takes away the fun. Mostly I just have fun with it, learn as I go along, and consider my ‘green’ choices to really be just a part of learning about the world I live in.
And, I don’t recycle, because we don’t have a recycling plant anymore where I live - it was hit by a tornado about 7 years ago and never rebuilt. Sad, but true.
God gave us the earths resources to use, and He gave us nature to subdue, and that’s what I’m gonna do.
I will use “green” products if they are as good or as efficient as non-green products, but otherwise forget it.
Wow, you packed a lot into “one” question.
Is my family “green”, yes, I would say we are.
Do I buy alternative products? Not very often….of course we are not big consumers either. Many alternative products have simply been invented to fill the “green” nitch in the market…they are not actually that much better for the environment. CFL bulbs are one such product. They actually use more energy to produce than they will ever save. They also contain mercury, which is being deposited in landfills and garbage cans everywhere since people are not recyling them as hazzardous waste. America is basically trasfering the energy usage (from manufacturing and shipping them) to China,and reaping the bennifits of lower power bills.
Just because it’s labled green does not mean it’s earth friendly. There is also a great deal of hype about the hybrid cars. How earth friendly is it for me to rush out and buy one of these newly manufactured cars (with those huge batteries that will eventually have to be recylced), when I can instead keep driving my 21 year old pickup truck which gets 26 mpg, or my 11 year old car which gets 36 mpg?
Perhaps people should do as I do, and buy in bulk, and cook from scratch (since most of our garbage is generated by the kitchen). I buy wheat in bulk..we have about 600 pounds of it on hand right now. I grind my own grain, and bake my own bread from scratch….no plastic bagged store bought stuff for us.
I milk the goats by hand, and make our own diary products, like cheese, yogurt, and butter…no plastic genorated there.
We butcher our own animals for our meals…no plastic, or styrofoam genorated there.
Much of America gets its power from coal fired plants. So what if I take a load of newspaper into be recyled at a paper plant which used coal fired power. New trees are not having to be cut down to make the new paper products…..but more coal is having to be mined from the earth. Which is better? At least if they harvest new trees (specifically grown as a crop, not old growth forest) the trees will be replanted and replaced as is done by any farmer farming a crop. Who’s going to replace the coal in the mine?
If more people purchased in serrious bulk, and not convience foods, we would really cut down on the amount of trash. Our house produces one bag of trash, every 6-8 weeks. Most of it are things like shampoo bottles (I buy the largest size possible) or syrofoam which a ceiling fan came back in (no A/C for us).
How about rural people, such as myself….it is 120 miles round trip for me to go to a recycling center. How often should I spend the fossil fuel to drive to a recycling center?
(The answer would be once a year)
Some items like soda cans are very environmentally friendly to recylce. It takes 80% less energy to recyle an aluminum can, than it does to mine the aluminum to make a new one. Yet what does one do, when everyone is investing in energy hungry things like giant TV’s, DVD players, and all the electronic goodies, and the aluminum recycling plant can make more money selling their energy back to the utility company than they can recycling the aluminum?
Do we live green? In a nut shell, yes. I raise most of our food, purchase in bulk, or at the farmers market. My husband works on the big commercial wind turbines (actual green energy).
We are building a straw bale house, R factor 56 for the walls alone (average house is only R factor 13!!), we will live on a permaculture farm (already do), we will produce our own biofuels, and not put money into the pockets of big oil, or terrorist who would kill Americans. We will adopt, instead of reproducing ourselves…far too many people in the world already.
Most importantly we are very nearly self sufficent, and ready to take on whatever the world sends our way.
~Garnet
Now that I have children, I am more aware of going green. I want them to grow up taking care and taking pride in things around them. They have taught me so much. Yes, I am on my way to a greener living. My only regret is that I waited so long before I took a step.
I think one main problem which deters people from recycling is confusion about what their local authority is able to recycle. In some areas it is possible to put glass in the green bin, not in mine. Some areas recycle Polysterene, but not here. I work in a large district hospital, we use plastic milk cartons in vast quantities. Daily huge amounts of paper and cardboard are sent to landfill because the cost of recycling is prohibitive as the local council charge the hospital for it to be collected as it is a “commercial unit”
Why do you start from the premise all use of the earth is a rape? Do you wish to die? How about animals that feed on one another ;is that okay in your master scheme or should they all be vegans? How about cats? Ever see them torture a mouse that they’ve caught? How about the way predators kill their prey? Eagles rip their prey apart while it still alive. Do you still think nature is benign?
No and i dont care. look people our parents and grand parents screwed this planet up. so has corporations. there is no helping it. the earth had a plan before we got here and it has a plan for when we leave. i believe the earth was made for life for one reason and one reason only. plastic. the earth didnt know how to make it and now that it has it, the earth is done with us. you hippies really p**s me off.
I am tired of people trying to make me feel guilty for wanting to have food, clothing, and shelter. I also refuse to feel guilty for wanting to get to work on time so I can feed, clothe, and shelter myself. Go green on your own time.
Well now that you put it that way… No. I have no problem with the way you live your lifestyle if you choose to go green but when the attitude that goes along with the lifestyle is so self-righteous - that’s what I do not agree with. It’s great to be passionate but not when it makes you so judgemental of someone who disagrees with your passion.
yes I am a greeny, and get more green everyday. It takes alittle research, but you’d be surprised what you can do without. having a niece that is dying of cancer woke me up.
There are some great web sites on making all kinds of health concious items, all green and natural. From soap, to cleaning products, it is alittle work but so much better for us and the earth.
i went green on the first sigh of global warming and i being trying to spread the word since. but i’m also involved in helping kids in africa. So far i’ve changed my light bulbs and take smaller showers, dry my cloth outside and i’m working on taking the bike to work and school. Also plant flowers. I don’t know if it will help but at least will breath better or so i’ve heard.
I absolutley live green. Its not hard to do. Once you have all the proper information.
I am a member of a online community 7.3 million strong. PLEASE everyone who is reading this answer and considering going green please check out the link below. Surf around the site, become a member, Educate yourself. Its for everyones benifit.
Peace
GG
I certainly do. We have done more damage to the earth in the past 200 years then ever before. I want to turn those years around in my lifetime. I recycle everything in my power, i compost, i enter competitions (like Green Nation), i use solar power when i can< we are trying to get a hybrid, we eat organic, and we compost as well as by things made from recycled materials. I certainly agree with you, and i look forward to seeing you make a stand for our earth… before it is to late.