Simply Green - Introduction

     To say that something is “green” or something that one does is “green” denotes an item, product or action that is environmentally friendly and therefore good for nature. There are many people who put a lot of effort into being green, while there are some who really don't care. I would suspect that, if you have continued reading to this point, you are most likely closer to the former than the latter. If you tend toward the 'don't care' group but are willing to continue reading this blog, kudos to you.

Have you ever found yourself a bit overwhelmed by all of the ideas, programs, and campaigns that want to tell you how to be green? There are a lot of people who think that being green requires a 'signed-in-blood' commitment, significant time and a substantial monetary outlay. That's really not true. Let's use the example of putting an aluminum can in recycling instead of throwing it away. So often we environmentalists get caught up in telling people the damage an act does instead of showing the tremendous benefit and savings of not doing some acts. That's true of the aluminum can. “I'm just one person,” or "it's just one can," you might say. That's very true, but you are one of 350 million people just in this country. According to the Keep America Beautiful website (www.kab.org) if you recycle one can you have saved enough energy to run your television for three hours. KAB also wrote that “The amount of energy saved just from recycling cans in 2010 is equal to the energy equivalent of 17 million barrels of crude oil, or nearly two days of all U.S. oil imports.” Wow! Think about recycling your next 24-can case of soda! That's a lot of punch for almost no effort. Hopefully “Simply Green” can help some people get past the 'it takes too much' roadblock to being green or greener. To others it might be just some more ideas, but that's good too.

The idea of Simply Green is that being green doesn't require a tremendous amount of special energy, extra time or participation in campaigns or programs. Being green is more about our life-style and how we think. Based upon that premise Simply Green is going to be a series of blogs that share minor adjustments in life-style or habits that can make a big difference to the environment. These ideas will take no extra time, or at worst a few minutes of your time. They will not inhibit your modern life-style and they will frequently save you money. If you are willing to save those aluminum cans and take them by a recycling plant, you will actually get money. Doesn't that sound like a win-win situation? You can make a positive impact upon the environment with minimal effort and no ill effects.

If you like the idea – or at least are willing to check out the first blog – let's get started. The first Simply Green idea I'd like to share is the newspaper. There is no categorical ranking or symbolism involved with this choice. I picked it because it is something that I just encountered two days ago.

I was standing in line at a Schnuck's Grocery store on Sunday morning around 7 am. The lady ahead of me plopped down a gigantic pile of newsprint. The top banner read “New York Times”. No one picked it up with one hand. It was massive. My first thought was 'how many trees did that take?' I remembered having seen some statistics about newspapers so I went looking. The New York Times prints an average of 1,217,201 newspapers every Sunday. This printing takes an average of 63,000 trees. That works out to be >19 trees for every newspaper. You can do something simply green by reading your newspaper on-line. Staying with the example of the New York times, the NY Times has an impressive digital program. The hard-copy Sunday Edition costs $5.00 in New York and $6.00 elsewhere. To get the New York Times on-line for an entire week costs $3.75/wk for for web and smartphone access, $5/wk for web and a tablet and $8.75/wk for all digital access. Obviously you can read the New York Times for an entire week for little more than the cost of a single Sunday hard-copy issue. Of course there is the down side . . . you are using electricity which may use coal. From what I understand it is really almost impossible to determine how much energy is really used for us to spend time on the internet, but here are some number of which we need to be aware. According to Michael Bluejays Saving Electricity website a lap top, modem, and router for an hour takes 15-45 watts. According to the US Energy Information Administration it takes 0.00052 short tons or 1.05 pounds of coal to generate 1kw/h (1000 watts) or 0.0168 ounces for 1 watt hour. That means that if you spend an hour reading the New York Times on-line you are using up to 0.756 oz of coal. But, we can argue, all of that energy might not be coal generated. Fair enough, but then there's the student who pointed out to the professor that when you download something from the internet you can't just take into consideration your own computer. There are other computers – servers – that must be considered. In other words, we can't really say how much coal we might cause to be burned but it is probably going to be measured in ounces. We do know that if we do not buy the hard-copy we are truly effecting the number of trees cut down to make paper. It is a small but significant act that can save >19 trees a week, if you read the New York Times, and save you money. That sounds like a win-win situation to me.  

One other issue probably needs to be addressed in this first offering. I have heard people say that they are fearful of doing things like not buying a newspapers because it will put companies out of business and people out of work.  This is not new. When the automobile was invented and people started using cars instead of carriages there was an outcry on behalf of the carriage industry and livery stables. What happened?  New industries emerged to which these could transition. Soon you had automobile plants employing the carriage makers, automobile repair shops and a new industry - the service station. This pattern has repeated itself over and over throughout human history. Sadly the newspaper will most likely be a thing of the past by the next generation, but the newspaper companies themselves are leading the way in developing replacement industries. Thus The New York Times On-line. They're being pro-active and we can use that to our benefit as well as the environments.