Greening Your New York Life: An Introduction

I feel it is important to start this blog by exploring what one's personal priorities might be as they strive to reduce their individual impact on the earth. Is it better to purchase reusable grocery bags or go with plastic and spend the extra cash on the more expensive organic berries? Should you buy organic cotton or bamboo fiber clothing? To recycle or not to recycle?

These are enormous, hotly contested issues that I could never do justice to in a single blog post. What I would like to do instead is give a general overview now of the areas of the average New Yorker's life that leave the biggest footprint and examine each one individually in future posts.

To guide me in this effort I headed over to the library and picked up a copy of The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, written by members of the Union of Concerned Scientists. These delightful nerds suggest consumers focus on three specific areas: transportation, food, and electricity consumption. I will also review clothing choices and household cleaning products, and just might horrify all of us by looking at the impact of dining out versus cooking for yourself.

In some instances I will dare to disagree with the scientists' opinions. For example, I was shocked when The Consumer's Guide suggested that it wasn't worth worrying about our frequent (and single) use of plastic shopping bags and disposable cups. Their argument: these items make up such a tiny percentage of our trash that our time and energy is better spent on other forms of waste. But in the United States alone we consume 2.4 million tons of these non-biodegradable, petroleum-based bags every year. Think about how painless it would be to switch to using one of the dozens of fabric bags you have in your apartment right now as your grocery shopping bag. Or how simple it would be to shove an extra plastic bag into your purse or messenger bag in the morning in case you made an unexpected shopping trip that day. It's such an easy way to reduce waste and oil consumption--so why not do it?

The same goes for disposable cups. If you simply must have a $3 coffee from starbucks, why not bring your reusable travel mug from home for them to fill? And if you have a sink, a sponge, and some dish detergent in your office, there really isn't any reason to use disposable cups every day. And just think of how cool you'd look drinking your coffee from one of these!

I will post ruminations on other easy ways--as well as some more challenging ones--to reduce your impact on the environment in the coming days. In the meantime, go dig out your tote bag collection before you finish your weekend shopping!