So today is Blog Action Day where everyone is supposed to blog something about the environment. I originally wasn’t going to blog anything, since I couldn’t really think of anything to say, but then I read Ben Carey’s post and realized I did have something to blog about. He talk’s about how elimination is better than reducing, reusing, or recycling. Lately I have been trying to do a couple things for completely different reasons that have ended up having a good effect on the environment, I thought I would talk about those things since I think they often the easiest things to do.
1) Lately I have tried to limit the amount of diet drinks I consume. I realized that a lot times having a Diet Dr. Pepper would make me more hungry, and I started to wonder what all of artificial sweetener and preservatives were doing. I decided to switch to un-sweet iced tea. I didn’t really think about it from an environmental angle until I realized I was taking recycling out much less than I used to. Instead of 24 12oz cans a week, the waste I ended up with was some tea leaves and an empty wrapper.
2) Recently I also decided to kick microwave popcorn, again the trying to go natural angle. I went from a bag a day (which had to be packed, shipped, thrown out, etc) to a bottle of seeds every couple weeks.
3) For the last couple of years I have been trying to go digital with all of my documents, usually scanning and then shredding the documents. Due to my aversion to doing the actual scanning and shredding I have tried to find every possible way to get documents digitally. PDFs are much better than paper, mail, etc.
4) Lately I have been trying to download music whenever I can (usually through eMusic or Amazon MP3), this saves the resources used to make CDs, drive to the store, print my receipt, etc.
I think the best way to have less of a negative impact on the environment is to find ways that make life easier, better, or more convenient. What have you been doing lately that has inadvertently helped the environment?
-James
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