Discover has a site that I really like called Green Planet. They have sections and articles about almost every kind of eco-friendly topic. The site covers topics such as fashion and beauty, food and health, home and garden, as well as technology and travel. Almost everything we do impacts the environment in which we live. I learned this lesson years ago in two separate incidents.
Lesson One: Lowering My Consumption
In the mid-80s I took a trip to Tanzania. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. While I was there I stayed with some friends of a friend. I had a great time and got a chance to see all kinds of exotic wild animals such as giraffe's, zebras, a hippo, elephants, and others. But what really impacted me the most is that the people I was staying with had to be super careful about their consumption habits. The littlest thing impacted me the most. To this day it has changed the way I live my daily life. One night after dinner they were washing the dishes and I saw them washing a plastic sandwich bag. At first I didn't get it. "Why are you washing that?" I asked naively. But their answer was so obvious that I should have known. That's what really shook me up: the answer should have been obvious, but it wasn't. "We can't just run down to 7-Eleven and buy more. It's a four hour drive to the nearest store." And besides that, they didn't have a garbage service. They had to either bury, compost, burn, or drive all their refuse away.
But why should I be any different? Shouldn't I make the best use of the products I buy? Why can't I use a plastic sandwich bag until it's unusable. And it isn't just sandwich bags, it's everything. Because we have weekly garbage pickup we can't be bothered to wash and re-use plastic bags. But the reality is our garbage doesn't go that far away. We are throwing away far more than we need to. So I've learned to wash those flimsy sandwich bags and I've learned to compost. You can too, just read a book like Complete Book of Composte and get a little compost keeper for your kitchen (Norpro Ceramic Compost Keeper, White). You'll be on your way to a healthier garden and a healthier planet.
Lesson Two: Reducing My Impact
In the mid-90s I went on a week long backpacking trip in Yosemite. If you walk around out in the woods you might be like me and think you're taking care of the earth if you pack out what you pack in. As the slogan goes "leave only footprints, take only pictures." But on that trip our guide had what might seem like a strange rule: don't leave any footprints. We all had to walk in a line and stay on the trail. As it turns out, millions of people hike around in Yosemite and even though one person's footsteps won't hurt the forest, when you do that a million times you leave a wake of devastation in your trail. The grass can only bounce back so many times before it withers and dies. If all the hikers follow the same trail then all we end up with is a six inch wide dead strip instead of killing the whole place.
One human living out her life on this planet can't do much damage. The ecosystem in which we live can absorb anything we throw at it. The earth is huge and I'm a small part of it. Even if I drove a Hummer around all day and had a fire in my fireplace running constantly it wouldn't matter. But when six billion people do that same thing it's like all those hikers in Yosemite. We devour the earth like a swarm of locusts. One little locust can't eat very much, but when they swarm it becomes life threatening. One swarm in 2004 was 230km long and contained an estimated 69 billion locusts. We're no different, our collective impact on the ecosystem can have disastrous effects.
Our carbon footsteps are just like our physical footsteps in our national parks such as Yosemite. We all need to make a conscious effort to limit the damage we are causing.
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