h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Other than recycling our aluminum cans, paper and glass, what can individuals do to help improve the environment and conserve our resources?

Oh, this one's easy (in theory)! Buy things with less packaging, buy locally produced organic food (if you can find it), use durable bags for shopping (M&S are doing some really great green ones), reuse plastic bags, reuse envelopes. Buy fewer and better quality ... well, most things, eg clothing, furniture.

http://www.adbusters.org/home/

Use user friendly transport - public transport, cycle, walk , where possible.

Plan your menus and cook food yourself, rather than using convenience food . Plan meals on a weekly basis , so you waste less food . Buy from Fair Trade suppliers.

Get organically produced clothing, female products, linen. It's nice to wear, however it *is* expensive.

Use a roll-on rather than a spray deodorant - for health reasons as well - or get one of those neat crystal deodorants - I use one and they last ages. Buy shampoo without sodium laurenth. Keep your hair its natural colour. Buy CFC free fridges and freezers.

http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/jul/organic.html

Buy fewer presents at Christmas:

http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/

I when I think of all the things I *should* be doing. Oh, I do some of them, some of the time, and one or two all the time.

A certain Flanders & Swann song comes to mind.

I wonder what the percentage is of people who actually are trying to improve the environment? It seems pretty hopeless.

We don't have good public transportation in the states except in the large cities. Most neighborhoods in the smaller towns don't even have sidewalks.

The city I live in encourages recycling, but it isn't mandatory. There are supposedly penalities for not complying, but they are never enforced.

And there isn't anyplace locally for me to buy 'green' products. Everything has to be mail ordered, which makes the prices even higher.

We need some consumer responsibility, but we also need some regulations to force the manufacturers to be responsible, as well. And to go back to the era when appliances were intended to last a lifetime. Built-in obsolescence. Make everything wear out quickly so we'll have to buy new ones. Keep those ships from China loaded and in transit.

H

I always remember the story of the crabs, washed up on a beach, trying to get back to the sea. There was someone throwing them back. Along comes someone else saying - there's too many - you can't make a difference. And the first person, picking one up says and s/he throws another back, 'Well I made a difference to *that* one, and *this* one' - throwing another. That's how I feel. The more of us that do these things, the better. Individually it may not seem much, but collectively, it will.

That's true. Even if it doesn't seem like we're making a difference, at least we aren't making it worse. And doing nothing would definitely make things worse.

The crab story is a good one.

Are green products readily available in the UK?

H

Yes, - at a price, Hypatia. Well, that is to say, organic food products are often at a premium price, although there are some where the price is similar to their non-organic counterparts.

You can buy organic cotton clothing and linen, which is generally at least twice the price of non-organic stuff. You can buy organic cotton tampons and towels - again more expensive and the range of sizes is much more limited - you can even buy re-usable ones! There are lots of eco-friendly stuff for kiddies, including reusable nappies - I know someone who used these. You can buy recycled paper products, eg toilet rolls and writing paper. You can buy green shampoo (organic ingredients and no sodium lauryl sulphate/sodium laurenth - although some organic shampoos do contain it, so you need to be careful), which are about 1/3 more expensive than non-organic. You can buy organic wool mattresses, which are *horrendously* expensive, wind-up radios, solar powered lighting, etc, etc.

http://www.greenpeople.org/

Mind you, according to this source, only 5% of us live green lives:

http://www.edie.net/gf.cfm?L=left_frame.html&R=http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/6628.cfm

Until the prices come down I don't see it catching on.

There is one small store in the next town over that has organic produce. Of course I grow most of my own fruits and vegetables, so that isn't as big a problem for me as for some people.

Perhaps the government could subsidize organic farmers and give tax credits to companies that produce earth friendly products. Then the prices could be reduced. but I don't think it's liokely that that will happen. At least not in the US.

H

I live in an apartment building with no room for a garden, and I don't really have enough money to afford organic produce, so instead of shopping at Tops or Giant Eagle, I go to a locally owned food market. The produce they sell there is usually locally grown, or at least grown in the US, where (most) regulations are at least somewhat enforced.

Buying meat products from local farmers and butchers is also good for the environment. All Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (factory farms) release exorbitant amounts of pollution. Somehow, they're getting away with breaking the law: no CAFO would be profitable if all the regulations were enforced. Until we get some honest people in the EPA, buy meat from small farmers.

Also, I belong to this website http://www.care2.com They have petitions you can sign and all sorts of articles about what an individual can do to help the environment. They also have "races" for the rainforest, big cats, primates, abandoned pets, children in poverty, and the fight against breast cancer (not an all-inclusive list). Sponsors will donate money to organizations like The Nature Conservancy, The Breast Cancer Fund, The Jane Goodall Institute, and the ASPCA each time you click. Maybe we could form an H2G2 racing team? If you want to register, let them know that imamullen referred you.

Not come across this website before - here's an interesting thing in it:

http://www.care2.com/frame_news.html?url=http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-19/s_14176.asp

Ooh-er! I'd heard of it by a different means - a recording from Ra Uru Hu made yesterday.

It seems like I can't go five minutes without hearing about mass extinctions- probably because I'm in paleontology this semester.

Mass extinctions don't really bother me: they happen all the time throughout geology, and live always bounces back. What really depresses me is that people seem to think humans are going to survive the one they are currently causing.

Bottom line: by being environmentally conscientious, we won't be saving the Earth, we'll be saving ourselves.

Sorry about the attitude,

I think what many people don't get is that we *are* the earth. The way we treat others is a reflection of what we think of ourselves. We are all connected. Who was it said, 'Any man's death diminishes me?'

Farmers growing organic produce have a real hard job in the UK. They have to produce green vegetables etc. for 3 years before they are recognised as being organic. And now the Blair government want to start scattering genetically modified crops commercially - amd organic produce has to be grown miles away from GM crops.

In Newcastle upon Tyne we have a two-weekly collection of paper, cans, plastic etc provided free of charge by the City Council, which at least shows willing.

And (going back a few postings) my children were raised in washable nappies fastened with a safety pin - I was quite nimble at holding a struggling child and wrapping it securely up! I don't think disposable nappies were obtainable then.

Jazzme

I respectfully disagree with you on GMO's. I think they've gotten a lot of bad press. There are some (like the Bt corn, which produces its own pesticide) which are simply a bad idea. However, a lot of the GMOs are modified so that they can produce more food with less, and without them, we wouldn't be able to feed as many people. Not only that, but GMOs could hold the cure to a lot of terrible diseases. If I'm not mistaken, some cows were engineered a few years ago to produce a protien in their milk that would help hemophiliacs (SP?).

If you want to get technical, humans have been producing GMOs for as long as there has been domestication of animals and agriculture through selective breeding and hybridization. It's just that with genetics, we're actually going inside the cell so we can see what we're doing, and giving it a fancy name.

Akron has a recycling program, but it's not that great. And I live in a multitenant building that doesn't follow it, so I have to give all my recyclables to my friend, who lives in a house with curbside recycling. Which reminds me... I have a pile of cans and milk jugs sitting in my kitchen that needs attending to...

Later

Scandrea,

There's a lot of people this side of the pond - particularly those in my age group, who remain unconvinced about GM crops. I know the principles on which the cellular changes are based but many UK citizens would like more time and trials to be spent before we commit.
The side effects on wild life are not yet fully understood - and once we loose a species (because their food supply has been destroyed) there's no turning back. The UK skylark is a case in point, not yet extinct but going that way.

And your American squirrels are playing havoc with our red ones !!!!

I agree entirely with you jazzme. I think that GM crops need to be treated with a great deal of care. They have definitely not proven themselves. Because some of it is cross-species, they have to treat them so that they don't reject the 'alien' genes. Once they start cross-pollinating with other strains (and I would be furious if I was an organic grower whose livelihood was put at risk by having my crops contaminated by GM stuff), there's no turning the clock back.

Me, I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

Ah ! a kindred spirit.

It's all to do with cash for the greedy!

Yes, indeed. Particularly the crops with the Terminator gene, which means that farmers can't harvest the seeds from the crop, so they have to buy new seed each season from the agrochemical company. And it contaminates the crops of their non-GM neighbours, resulting in a more meagre crop for them.

Hey, singing fish

It looks like we won - the Germans have backed off - not going to make enough money out of it after all. all round.

Jazz

Sorry about the squirrels, but if it makes you feel any better, my Mom back in the country is constantly at war with the house sparrows and the starlings to keep them out of our wren and bluebird boxes!

Like I said, there are good GMOs and bad GMOs. Terminator gene: bad. Engineering a rice crop to produce vitamin A so that poverty-stricken people won't go blind: good.