It's Not Easy Being Green

< Sara steps on her soap box >

Everyone who knows me knows that I try to do good by the environment. I recycle, I conserve, I reduce, I reuse. Of course, people can always nitpick and find ways that I can do more (ride my bike to school, for example, instead of driving), but I do what I can.

I finally read the March issue of Glamour, which had a green theme. They interviewed celebrities about what they do for the environment, and they get pretty extreme, doing things that us normal folks can't do, like turning off the lights when we leave a room or turning off the water while we brush our teeth. If I were a celebrity, I would be ashamed to cite these as examples. They couldn't talk about reducing the heat/cooling in the unused parts of their mansion or that their personal chef carries groceries in canvas---rather than plastic---bags?

Since the University of Delaware only recycles paper, I recycle our lab's cans and plastic bottles. Sometimes, Housekeeping throws out our recyclables, but usually, they leave them for me to recycle. The 2007 Senior Class gift was $62K to support a recycling program. I am totally psyched by that gift. That is just awesome. After I start my job and start getting paychecks again, I'll see if I can support that fund.

I have been printing out lots of drafts of my thesis, so I print with 4 pages to a sheet of paper. In part, I do that to save paper and to make up for the dumb things I do--like printing out postscript or printing multiple copies of a paper to Lori's printer before I realize that I'm printing to the wrong printer. I try to build up a little environmental "credit" so when I screw up, I don't completely ruin the environment.

Wilmington has started a recycling program recently. I had read that Delaware only recycles about 10% of their garbage, where as neighboring PA and NJ recycle around 30%. Residents get credit for their recycling in the form of coupons for places like Happy Harry's (a local pharmacy chain). Frank's parents are trying to recycle, which I am very excited about, but they don't know what can and can't be recycled. Larry (Frank's brother), April (Larry's wife), and I all took turns going through their recycling and telling them what can't be recycled in Wilmington (paper towels, plastic bags, plastic wrapping). If they're representative of the people recycling, I hope this program doesn't fail. I think I finally got them to understand the difference between "can be recycled" and "recycled in Wilmington".

Today's environmentalism is yesterday's common sense. My grandma would tell you to turn out the lights and turn off the water. She unplugs appliances when they aren't in use. (Glamour said that 75% of an appliance's energy consumption happens when it isn't in use so you should unplug appliances. I need to look into that a little bit more to see how much extra energy they use--if it's just that these appliances use so little energy when they're used or what.)

< Sara steps off the soap box and finally goes to bed, content in having completed her blogging for June. >