Incessant Expressions

In the last 6-8 months, we’ve really ramped up our efforts to go as green as we can feasibly afford to, financially not physically. The steps are simple enough that just about anyone can do it: use CFLs (compact fluorescent lights), recycle/reuse what you can, buy sustainable/Fair Trade certified/certified organic products (from furniture to foods), reduce energy usage or use sustainable energies. Things like going off the grid and complete sustainability is far too impractical for most people but it’s what is typically called “total (or heavy) green”, doing what you can do is “light green”. We’ve chosen the latter with huge success. Tonight alone we threw out 50gal. of trash, 14gal. of which we did not or could not recycle so we simply reduced our disposable waste output by 75%, which was my lowest prediction on what we would end up doing. Recycling 36gal. of waste only cost us $8US for two large 18gal. bins which we had to buy since we cannot be provided new recycling bins by the city.

Going light green is the most feasible option for people, financially, because it requires such slight changes. Going total green is a heavy cost in both time and money so there’s a much bigger trade off between doing what you can and doing everything you can. Just converting to more sustainable energies will cost you at least six figures for a moderate to total conversion and doesn’t even take into account the lifestyle changes you’ll have to enact just to do it. When going light green, you barely have to change your lifestyle so it’s easy for anyone to do it. I mean, $8 for recycling bins is very cheap compared to purchasing solar panels and wiring your home for an alternate energy source even with a grant or assisted funding (you’ll easily run up a $20,000 bill just on materials alone). I’m going at this a bit more gung ho than my girlfriend as I’m looking at every little thing in order to cut down on excessive waste, from water to electricity. I’m now taking navy-style showers and cutting power to as many devices as I can during the night so this can help balance out when she takes a long shower or leaves the TV on.

We’re now working to take this to a larger scale, outside of ourselves. It’s going to be a challenge but we’ve got some ideas cooking that will at least help other people if we can’t affect the segment of the population we’re hoping for. We just have to start making time for these projects which, in my opinion, can be far more important than our current schedules include activity-wise.

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