I am with you all, I know something has to change. I try to be as environmentally-conscious as possible, but even I could improve.

The biggest thing we do is we recycle everything! The only thing we don't do is compost, but it's been on my mind. My family has always recycled bottles, but now I also recycle cardboard, paper, tin cans, plastic containers, everything. I have spent some time in the last few years in Mexico and it is really hard for me to throw things in the trash, because (at least the area where we stayed) there was no recycling. In NYC with my friends a few years ago, we walked for blocks and blocks holding our empty water bottles because we couldn't find a recycle bin. We have a few people contracted at my company right now from the USA and Mexico and while I was on vacation for a month, our recycle bin disappeared from our department. Paper was piling up on my desk so I found another in the administration area and brought it back. I was working late one night when the cleaners came by to empty garbage cans and I noticed all of these workers have just been throwing stacks and stacks of paper in the garbage just because the bin wasn't there! I know it's just a little part in the big picture but it bothers me! It is so easy to do.

I try to buy as many products as possible that are made in Canada, and I try to use natural products whenever possible.

Jim, I had no idea about palm oil! I am going to look into that. Thanks so much for the information!

As for cars and pollution, I think it's going to change in a big way. A few of our city buses now run on bio-diesel, made from canola oil, and canola is abundant around here! When we were in Europe recently, I watched a show where a guy is making his own bio-diesel and many London taxis are now using it.

More and more companies are now offering hybrid vehicles, and even electric cars. Chevrolet has the Volt, and I'm sure others will be following. My fiance and I carpool to work but it would be nice to have something more efficient and better for the environment, so we've been looking at our options.

By the way, the guy in London was using waste oil from nearby restaurants... oil that would just be thrown out and polluting the water systems. He gets the waste oil for free, does whatever he does with it, and then fills up the cabs. Now there's a forward thinker! It's one guy who is making a big difference.

Glad to see you back, Gail. You brought up some good topics that definitely could be explored further. That's what's great about more people participating.

I know you were just posting the title of the doc in the thread. But, I wonder how many see that and just pass on it. There has been a fair number of views, though, so many do see but just don't post. That's what's sad about some threads here.

Lindsey, nice to hear that Canada is making bio-diesel from sustainable oil. Europe made the palm oil crisis much worse by using it for a bio-diesel.They realized the ecological damage it was doing (actually creating a bigger carbon footprint than gas when all was said and done) and also that it wasn't such a great oil. Norway and the U.K. have since provided a few billion to restore the lands. Sadly, right behind this, China is cutting deals to destroy even more land for palm oil for both food and power uses. So, one step forward, two steps back :(.

I had no idea it was being used for bio-diesel in Europe. Thanks for the info again. I have some learning to do!

I didn't talk about that aspect in the palm oil thread, focusing instead on the food uses. That's something we can all do something about. Europe has realized its folly and I don't think any EU countries are currently using it (could be wrong on that one, though).

China, though, is plowing ahead with their plans, despite all that is known about this....and the local gov't is all too willing to make deals. So, they take money from Europe for the damage done to the forest, and then take money from China to do more damage. It's crazy. It's corruption on the Indonesian gov't part and the Chinese just don't seem to care what happens as long as they get what they want. It's this kind of behavior that makes me wonder why we choose to buy anything at all from them, yet we fatten their pockets everyday, giving them even more power.

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children".
~ Ancient American Indian Proverb

I'm not sure to say thanks for that video, or to sit still, while my fingers cry over that video. At one point when it said what you are seeing is the oil spilling right now into the ocean, I just gagged.

I'm not sure where we want to take this thread. If it is through links to videos as you have posted; a gentle nudge for those here who will read and click on the links/videos. Whether it is some simple down home ideas to reduce consumption on many levels.

But while the problems are huge, and the scale and vastness of them seem to be so beyond our personal ability to make a difference. I believe that awareness creates that first mini step back from a road that is full speed ahead to the point of no return for our planet.

I'd like to focus for a moment on water. Ever think where that "fresh" tap water you drink from comes from? Where does your sewage go? What exactly do the sewage plants treat, and pump back out to the consumers as "good potable water"?

Reducing consumption of water some simple and I hope relatively painless ways to do.

Brushing your teeth; don't run the tap water while you are brushing your teeth for two minutes, wet your brush, turn off tap, brush, turn on tap and rinse.

Immediately correct leaky faucets from that drip drip drip.

Showers; get wet, turn off, soap, and rinse off. And okay there will be days you need that longer shower with the massage jets, but everyday? really? Is there another solution for your aching muscles?

Washing machines; need a new one? Get a high energy efficient model.

Think about getting a good water filter, and stop buying the plastic water bottles. That water is coming in main from our aquafers, and once they are depleted it will take eons to replenish.

There are many more ideas I know, just thought I'd get the "ball" rolling

I posted that video as a visual aid. We can type our fingers off, but sometimes need a visceral nudge. That is what we watched every day for weeks on end as I live in the area affected by the BP spill.

I'm not really sure where to take this, either. There are so many issues that I've been wondering if maybe a forum would be appropriate. Then we could focus better on single issues. Maybe this thread can better serve as an overview and we can go more in depth later.

You bring up the water issue. All your suggestions are good and I've been doing those things already. I really like our HE washing machine. But it's more than that. Water issues are very dependent on where we live, though conservation is always a good idea. I've never bought bottled water....couldn't see the sense in it. The only exception was right after Hurricane Katrina and then we had no choice.

So maybe we should just ask Ann if a forum for these type issues is possible. No matter what we say here, this thread will go away. A forum would be a place to keep these subjects available for everyone to read or contribute to.

Thought I'd show another example of small choices making big differences.

There are over 200 million licensed drivers in the U.S. alone. Let's round that down to an even 200 million. If every one of those drivers was able to drive 500 miles less per year (a little less than 10 miles less per week), that would be a savings of 25 gallons of gas per driver (based on 20mpg). Doesn't sound like much, but that works out to be 5 BILLION gallons per year saved!

What's really astounding is that works out to 100 Billion pounds less of co2 being put into the atmosphere. How could that be? The link below explains how that is calculated.

How can 6 pounds of gasoline create 19 pounds of Carbon dioxide?

Small choices....big differences.

Here's some photos that I think are interesting. They illustrate, in a stark way, just how big our impact is on Earth.

These are night time satellite views. This is our Earth, with all 7 billion of us on board. You can see where we gather. Every light is a city, complete with people, houses, roads, cars, power plants and other factories and stores. They are beautiful, almost like looking into the night sky. That's an illusion, though. Each little dot is not a star, but a city belching out its dirt.

For better or worse, you can see the sheer weight of mankind. This is why we all have to start making smarter choices in the things we do.

Very graphic.

Not sure if you saw the movie Burn Up, here it was on on Sunday on IFC> Fictional account of an oil crisis, and the politics involved in getting our leaders to move on meaningful legislation for CO2 emission control

The Alberta Tar Sands is a huge SCAR on we Canadians, that overflight picture was distressing. I think once a week every major newspaper should publish a picture in their newspaper of this atrocity.

Now I'm going to look up methane trapped in the ice flows/bergs, try to understand that one better.

One of the bad effects of oil going up in price is that methods, such as tar sands and fracking, become economically viable. I used to wish that it would go up in price so more people would conserve, but all it's done is to open up these other types of extraction. Demand simply has to go down, regardless of price.

Here's a couple of links you may find interesting. The first shows global co2 output, country by country. Be sure to click on the graph to enlarge it.

The second one is about the Kyoto Accords, but really gives some good info on pollution in general and there's some specifically Canadian info you may like to see.

World carbon dioxide emissions data by country: China speeds ahead of the rest | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Kyoto Accord

I AGREE with you 100%! What happened to OUR country???? The last launching of the space shuttle actually made me cry. Literally! We are supposed to be leaders.... and we are falling behind and self-destructing. The US is not taking care of it's people. :( I didn't have children. I'm glad for that. I fear for the future of other people's children. They will NEVER know the things I once knew and I never knew the things my parents knew. Each generation has more of 'the good stuff' stripped away from them and they don't even know it.

I would be so interested in a thread to discuss this stuff even further. I fear for human kind, I fear for our planet and the beautiful species on the verge of extinction. I fear for our water supply, I fear for our oil supply. Mostly though.... I fear that people do not know how STRONG they are, until they are put to the test, but there are no tests. Take away the supply of oil, see how people rebound. Sometimes it just takes an extreme measure to make people realize what they can and cannot do without.
I've started watching myself and being for conscience of my and my familys energy usage. Over the last 3 years here are some small things we've done in my household to help.
1. Got a new job with a way smaller commute, from 72 miles round trip a day to 4 miles round trip.
2. Started riding a motorcycle to do smaller errands around town for go for a 'sunday' drive. That gets 70mpg, instead of my car that gets 26mpg.
3. Recycling, recycling, recycling. We recycle just about everything that comes out of our household now.
4. Being aware of packaging and avoiding over packaged items. I do not need a box of something that is wrapped, boxed, bagged and bagged smaller, all for 1 item. Unnecessary.
5. Growing a vegetable garden.
6. Skipping a day of showering a week, sometimes 2. I seriously do not smell or get filthy dirty overnight that I need to take a hot shower every single day. (gross to some, maybe, but efficient when 4 people do it and skip 2 showers a week, that is 8 showers of 10 mins (minimum) of running water, plus the shampoo, soaps that go into the water supply)
7. Replacing appliances one at a time with energy efficient ones, new microwave, disherwasher and oven/stovetop. Next will be washer, dryer and refrigerator.
8. Had the electric company and oil company out to check the efficiency of everything energy wise in our house. We turn off the oil burner during the day when noone is home so that the water heater won't kick on when there is no need for hot water.
9. Program the heat/AC (if we even use it) to keep the house bearable tempature wise, but not hot or not cold. I could put my AC at 70 and sleep so good, instead I put it on 78 to take the humidity out of the house and sleep with short and tank and no blankets on. Same with the heat. I could keep it at 75 to feel warm and comfortable in my house, instead I keep it at 68 and wear a sweatshirt and use a blanket.
10. Got a water cooler at the house instead of drinking individual bottles of water, I know this is not ideal yet, but we are saving up for a softener/filtration system for the house so until then at least we buy water in 5 gallon jugs instead of small bottles.
11. Stopped printing at home from the computer, this took some getting used to, but now we realized we don't really need to print at home.
12. I do not shop at Walmart... I know they are affordable, but I don't respect their business practices. They hurt our AMERICAN economy by they amount of imports they stock.

here are things we are budgeting for to go even further
1. We are replacing windows this fall from the old single panes to a newer double pane.
2. We are looking into Solar panels to help with the electricity for the pool and other seasonal items that require a lot of electricity.
3. Installing on demand hot water so we don't burn oil heating a tank of water when noone is even using the water (we hear the furnace kick on to heat that water on a 90 degree day when noone is using it and it makes us both sad)
4. Installing a water softening/filtration system so the water is drinkable
5. Buying the rest of the energy efficient appliances.



It always comes down to money.... everyone wants a piece of the pie.... there is just not enough pie for everyone. Some deserve it and some don't.

ooopppss... dupe post

I just lost a long post aggrrr celstu question why no printing at home. I rarely print out anything anymore, but is it that much cheaper?

Also I found a site about how to save electricity. One of the ideas I'm going to implement. Tape up plastic over your windows, and yes even if you have energy efficient windows.
Try not to use the central a/c or heat, instead apparently just heat the space you use in your home by using energy efficient space heaters. Install ceiling fans the kind you can reverse the air flow on. We do have a programmable thermastat, and I set the heat for 68 when we aren't home, prior to our Yorkie coming to live here it was 65, that is the same setting for nightsleeping too. I turn off the air at night if overnight temp is 20 celsius or less.

We recycle a lot here,actually our city has a recycling program and we are pretty good with it.

We also compost and use this for fertilizer for our garden. I spot water plants when there has been no rain. We don't have a vege garden yet, just some tomatoes and herbs, maybe next year.

I don't shower daily, I bathe every other day, and use sponge baths.

Instead of buying memo paper, I use the envelopes from bills.

I support our local farmers buying from our organic farmers market.

We are confused about transportation, we don't want to buy a second say electric vehicle because that means two cars on the road, and currently we only have our Dodge caravan. We use this all the time, and with three dogs, and showing, and camping, and hiking, we need a vehicle with space enough. If we ditch the van and buy just the small car and rent van it was like about $90 a day, holy cow. Every weekend we use this van to do one of the aforementioned activities.


Lights are always out in our house when we are not in that room. I know there is more we can do, just looking at what we are going to do next.

I too would like a forum to discuss ways we can help our world. I think good links would be awesome too

E-Waste
 

Though often small in volume, electronic devices account for up to 70% of all toxic waste currently found in landfills. These wastes are often heavy metals which even small amounts can poison our water. Even recycling these products is often not a good answer as much of this is shipped overseas where children dismantle these devices using no safeguards.

E-waste: Harmful Materials - Earth911.com

Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste - CBS News

Greener Electronics | Greenpeace International

I totally agree with you. That is why I am an (human) adoption advocate

This video is a pretty good graphic depiction of world population growth. It's not just the number of people, but the effects on the environment that is the problem.

I want to thank everyone who added suggestions of what you can do personally to help conserve and help the environment. I never really considered my personal impact and the little things my family could do to make a difference. We will be doing some of the things suggested here and try to find our ways also to conserve and recycle. I have really enjoyed this thread

I read today that if everyone in the country had a meatless/dairyless day once a week it would be like taking 7.6 million cars off the road! I knew it had an impact, but didn't know it was THAT great!
I'm actually thinking of becoming a vegetarian for both health and "kindness" reasons.
Are any of you vegetarian?

I'm not, and don't think I could ever be. We do eat a lot less meat, though, for many reasons.

What you read only addresses air pollution. The biggest problem, especially from factory farms, is water pollution. Do you remember the hurricanes that flooded the hog farms in N. Carolina some years back? It was an ecological disaster.

If we all only, like you said, went meatless one day a week, or the equivalent in reduced consumption, it would make a huge difference. There would be less need for the horribly cruel factory farms and all the problems that go with them.

Here's a couple links about the hog farms if you're interested.

DOVE IMAGING

http://www.vivavegie.org/101book/tex...dehogwaste.htm

Pigs AND THE FACTORY FARM | Animals | Find Articles at BNET

I was at one point a vegetarian, but a poor one, in that I didn't balance my diet, and then after about eight years, I needed to introduce protein back into my diet.

Our family only eats meat about 3-4 x per wk. And we usually only eat about 4ounces or so at dinner. I buy from local organic farmers, who don't use all the chemical stuff in the feed and so on. So free range eggs, pasture grazed beef and from local suppliers.

It is relatively painfree to do this, especially if you create a menu plan once wkly for you and your family. I started doing this years and years ago, as a way to save money and I did, save the downpayment on a home in about 4 yrs with much reduced grocery bills. Of course that was when you could place 10$15K down on a $100K home.

Now at that time I was not buying organic, so the price of food today for organic is more costly.

I've enrolled into a couple of food groups that send you daily some recipes and ideas, which can help inspire you when you run out of ideas.

The other benefit of a menu plan, is that you don't have to think about what is for dinner tonight, and the other family members can see the menu plan on the fridge and say for eg: not eat the left over chicken, because it is on the menu for chicken salad tonight:D

I often have soups, salads, pasta with meatless different kinds of sauces, the very much loved macaroni and cheese; I do have a portobello mushroom stronganoff which is quite tasty.

Nothing wrong with a pot of beans, either. They're high in protein and with just a little meat and some herbs and spices for seasoning, you've got enough for 6 or 8 from 1 pound of dry beans. Some other good things are gumbo, creole or jambalaya....all very tasty and don't need too much meat or seafood to be a good meal. Stews can be made with less meat and are very good, too.

Just made myself hungry...

Yum...would love that portobellow mushroom recipe if you're willilng. :)

That is just AWFUL. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...if only more people saw the pictures available of the damage we are doing, I wonder what the outcome would be?

I am not a vegetarian, and I do eat dairy. I eat a yogurt everyday and I drink milk in my coffee. I could easily switch to a rice milk or soy milk for that.... but what about yogurt? I know they have soy yogurt but does it have all the good bacteria in it? I really need that... my stomach is a mess and a yogurt a day over the last year has made a huge difference for me. Ive tried supplements, but they didn't do anything for me.

About meat though.... I could easily go without it 5 days a week and not even 'think' about it. Then I start to feel weird and realize I haven't had enough protein all week and have to make a meal with meat. However, a year ago I moved in with my boyfriend. He has 2 kids, boys and himself. I swear I introduced them to vegetables. They would eat meat and only meat for all meals. I was shocked. Hot Dogs and Hamburgers on buns, no salad, no nothing just 3-4 hamburgers or hot dogs. Steak with french fries (I guess maybe a stretch veg would be that fries are potatoes). It was really weird. Oh and pasta... 5 nights a week. No vegs, all meat sauce with cheese.

Now I can get them to eat meatless a day a week for sure. I make a potato salad with veggies and stuff in it and they dog it down until they are full. Or I'll make a cold pasta dish with chopped herbs, garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers and they eat until they are full without even thinking about meat. I will be more conscience about making a true effort to skip meat once a week though!

What is it w men? When my husband and I started living in the same house, that was his diet - MEAT, nothing but meat and cheese w an occasional potato. He does eat meatless meals now. I am not much of a meat eater and actually used to be a vegetarian for many years.

Im not vegetarian but I do incorporate some meatless dishes in our menu. It is easy to take alot of pasta recipes and just make them without meat. I could never go without dairy though and I think it is unhealthy to go without it long term especially if you arent eating meat