Personal Environmentalism

[Dreadnaught]

In light of another discussion, I wanted to understand to what extent people try to be more environmentally friendly in their personal lives. Instead of people listing the ways they try to be more environmental (too easy), are there areas where you believe your activities are particularly harmful of the environment that you wish to correct? What stands in your way?

I try and reduce consumption as much as possible and have a number of quirks regarding dutiful recycling that my peers find hardcore. But I struggle with air travel. My job requires me to undergo occasional air travel. I try and do trains and even busses whenever possible, but some destinations are simply not accessible without air travel (EG spreading capitalism among the filthy socialist masses in Berlin). More generally, I struggle to get co-workers to do things like take a 1.5-hour train ride when they'd prefer to rent a car for the day.

How do you bring up these issues without making people uncomfortable?

[RandBlade]

I try and recycle as much as I can, try to drive as fuel-efficiently as I can (maintain steady speed rather than revving up and brakeing) and try to turn lights off etc where possible. At work I've replaced all light bulbs with energy efficient LEDs and try to maximise energy efficiency as much as possible but that's openly to save money not the Earth.

I don't bring up issues. I believe technology not starvation is the key to progress - eg the march towards electric cars etc

[Dreadnaught]

I actually think electric cars are bad for the environment, at least at this stage of development. Battery production is dirty, and so is power generation in many areas (EG New York's governor has waged a successful jihad against a nuclear plant that supplies 25% of NYC's power).

But let's assume I agree with you that we don't have to starve a bit. If the technology is proximate or available, why not evangelize its use?

[RandBlade]

Batteries shift particulates and waste from consumption to generation. Since power generation rarely occurs inside the most polluted/congested cities etc this will improve air quality in the congested zones at the very least.

As for the technology, it has its evangelicals. Thanks to people like Elon Musk etc batteries and related technologies are undergoing their most dramatic transformation and an equivalent improvement to Moore's Law and the development of transistors. What can I do to make any meaningful difference to that? Let Musk, Google and others do their research and development and when the technology is ready and cheap I will buy it. That will be my role.

[Aimless]

I live in Sweden so I have to help Ed Harris kill baby seals just to be environmentally neutral.

In all seriousness we recycle the vast majority of our household waste, have reduced our meat consumption and don't currently drive at all. When we travel long distances we fly because our location makes other forms of transportation impractical. In most respects the typical swede is more environmentally conscious--effortlessly--than I am, so the real challenge for me is to find a way to hide my shameful lapses so that I can live with myself.

[Ominous Gamer]

Computers and gaming consoles are extremely nasty. Hard to recycle properly (so many organizations simply dump them in 3rd world shit holes) and they are notorious for how wasteful they are energy wise. I took this into consideration when I replaced my dead PSU. Got one that was 80 Plus platinum, but I couldn't justify the expense to go to the next tier, 80 Plus Titanium.

[LittleFuzzy]

In light of another discussion, I wanted to understand to what extent people try to be more environmentally friendly in their personal lives. Instead of people listing the ways they try to be more environmental (too easy), are there areas where you believe your activities are particularly harmful of the environment that you wish to correct? What stands in your way?

Well, I should probably stop starting forest fires, it's just not good for carbon numbers. It's hard though, because the flames are just so pretty, even before they start endangering towns.

[Dreadnaught]

Batteries shift particulates and waste from consumption to generation. Since power generation rarely occurs inside the most polluted/congested cities etc this will improve air quality in the congested zones at the very least.

As for the technology, it has its evangelicals. Thanks to people like Elon Musk etc batteries and related technologies are undergoing their most dramatic transformation and an equivalent improvement to Moore's Law and the development of transistors. What can I do to make any meaningful difference to that? Let Musk, Google and others do their research and development and when the technology is ready and cheap I will buy it. That will be my role.

I'm really more focused on the net impact these days, and my feeling is the transmission and battery production are still very inefficient. I'm not really aware of any major battery tech developments from Musk's enterprises, though certainly people are trying: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...ter-batteries/

I live in Sweden so I have to help Ed Harris kill baby seals just to be environmentally neutral.

In all seriousness we recycle the vast majority of our household waste, have reduced our meat consumption and don't currently drive at all. When we travel long distances we fly because our location makes other forms of transportation impractical. In most respects the typical swede is more environmentally conscious--effortlessly--than I am, so the real challenge for me is to find a way to hide my shameful lapses so that I can live with myself.

Did you make a conscious effort with meat? How did you socialize that? I do bow at the foot of European frugality. It's borne of the deprivation of your socialist sin, but there are some upsides.

Well, I should probably stop starting forest fires, it's just not good for carbon numbers. It's hard though, because the flames are just so pretty, even before they start endangering towns.

But then how will folks like us get off?

[RandBlade]

LOL @ Fuzzy

I'm really more focused on the net impact these days, and my feeling is the transmission and battery production are still very inefficient. I'm not really aware of any major battery tech developments from Musk's enterprises, though certainly people are trying: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...ter-batteries/

We're talking cross-purposes. Musk and others spending big money are looking to make considerable incremental improvements on established Li-Ion technology - which as your linked to article is improving year on year. When at full operations Gigafactory 1 could produce Li-Ion batteries at below the critical $100/kWh point mentioned in your article that is the inflection point where electrical vehicles can become cheaper to build (let alone operate) than petrol ones. Your article is talking about great leaps forwards by replacing Li-Ion with some other tech. Many small steps can do the same or better as single giant leaps.

[Aimless]

Did you make a conscious effort with meat? How did you socialize that?

It began as a means of reducing our caloric intake but we realized very soon that we could make very good food with very little--or no--meat. The meat-panic I used to feel was quickly cured by a few good vegetarian meals that didn't leave me hungry after a couple of hours.

Most of the things I like about meat have to do with flavour, texture and its effects on satiety. Most widely available supermarket meat isn't really produced with flavour in mind and much of the "meat" flavour we crave consists of aromatics, herbs and spices that can be used to great effect in vegetarian dishes, with much less muddling of flavours. There are many textures and consistencies in vegetarian dishes that are at least as satisfying as those found in most meat dishes. Techniques, spices and ingredients like fat and oil can be leveraged to increase satiety. South-East Asian and Indian/Bengali cuisine prominently features vegetarian dishes or dishes with fairly little meat that nevertheless taste amazing so I replicated 80% of my mum's spice collection here and that took everything to a whole 'nother level. During our vacations we got the opportunity to try a lot of good and very inspiring vegetarian dishes, which made it easier and more fun to experiment at home.

If you want to give it a go, start by reducing the size of your meat portions and eat it with many different deliciously spiced fresh vegetables.

I used to crave meat for every meal, but, these days, the thought of lightly spiced sauteed pointed cabbage with some carrots and mushrooms makes me drool more than the thought of a full steak dinner.

We do still eat meat though, but more often game meat than beef and the size of our meat portions are much smaller than they used to be.

But I'm never giving up eggs and cheese

I do bow at the foot of European frugality. It's borne of the deprivation of your socialist sin, but there are some upsides.

I don't really see it as an expression of frugality. It's just been the norm for decades, helped in part by public policy that helped create a well-functioning infrastructure for waste management and recycling.

[wiggin]

In light of another discussion, I wanted to understand to what extent people try to be more environmentally friendly in their personal lives. Instead of people listing the ways they try to be more environmental (too easy), are there areas where you believe your activities are particularly harmful of the environment that you wish to correct? What stands in your way?

I try and reduce consumption as much as possible and have a number of quirks regarding dutiful recycling that my peers find hardcore. But I struggle with air travel. My job requires me to undergo occasional air travel. I try and do trains and even busses whenever possible, but some destinations are simply not accessible without air travel (EG spreading capitalism among the filthy socialist masses in Berlin). More generally, I struggle to get co-workers to do things like take a 1.5-hour train ride when they'd prefer to rent a car for the day.

How do you bring up these issues without making people uncomfortable?

I think this is an interesting question. I haven't tried to run the numbers, by my biggest negative impacts on the environment, in no particular order are:

1. Waste stream. We recycle most easily recycled items, but we don't compost (living in an apartment makes it kinda useless and hard to implement) and our child makes a pretty decent waste stream of her own in the form of diapers.

2. Transportation. We're decent on car usage (a few thousand miles a year, mostly for errands and the occasional day trip) - most of our commutes are on public transit. The bigger problem is intercity travel, which mostly happens by air. Most of the distances are stupid long so there's not a competitive alternative, but we do a lot of travel due to a combination of work and visits with family, so that's probably our biggest 'luxury' contribution to our carbon footprint.

3. Energy efficiency. Again, a problem from living in an apartment. The place is very poorly insulated and we have fairly minimal control over things like heating. Even if we could do a few small things like getting a programmable thermostat (which we'd have to swap out when we left), the insulation issue is huge and we have no way to fix it. I'm sure the building's boiler and hot water heaters are similarly inefficient but I don't know that for certain... and our appliances are decent quality but hardly the best energy efficiency out there. Obviously it's still less energy consumption overall than would be the case with a larger house, but for the size of our place, it's probably not very efficient.

4. Food. We are pretty decent on a carbon footprint/land use question wrt our choice of food - we have pretty low meat/poultry consumption, modest fish consumption, etc. The only issue is that we're located in a place that doesn't have a whole lot of, say, citrus or avocado, but we eat plenty of both. And even fruits/etc. that might be grown more locally - e.g. some berries are grown in greenhouses during the winter - it's still a higher energy footprint than eating only seasonal and local foods. I'm not always convinced about the whole 'local' thing, but it's undeniable that avocados from Mexico and oranges from Florida cost more water/energy/etc. than would sweet potatoes from Massachusetts. Apples-to-apples comparisons are not as clear-cut, but if we substituted for different food rather than merely a local version of the same item elsewhere, it would probably be better.

5. Waste from my job. I make a lot of hazardous waste that's hard to dispose of properly. Obviously we follow the rules on appropriate treatment and disposal, but the fact of the matter is that it's really not great for the environment. For that matter, our hood exhausts aren't too great for air quality either.


I'd say our overall impact will drop a bit when we get a house of our own, but by far the biggest thing that affects our environmental impact is out of my control - namely, our source of electricity. Oh, there are ways you can pay a higher tariff and source your electricity from 'clean' power (essentially it's just subsidizing some wind farms or whatever) but the reality is that most of our grid is powered by dirty-ish sources (mostly natural gas, especially now that some local nuke plants are shutting down). That's something that needs to taken on by the government.

[Flixy]

I'm not really good at this to be honest. I also live in an apartment that is not very well insulated, plus my rent includes a fixed amount for energy so I am not so interested in investing in energy efficiency and my landlord pockets all the savings. That said I have hardly any appliances that use a lot of power (no drier, no ac, etc) and I also don't own a car (do everything by bike or public transport). I do eat more locally grown stuff recently but to be honest that's more because stuff from the market tastes better than what's sold in the supermarket. I do eat vegetarian at least once a week (again, not for environmental reasons but there's simply so many nice dishes). I've also hardly gone on vacation (one plane trip to Spain since 2009), though I'm planning to go to the Boston area this June (which is rather impractical without a plane).

Work is for me also a big thing, aside from the fairly big quantities of nasty chemicals we use the power consumption of a cleanroom is also fairly big and we obviously go through a lot of disposables as well. And because our headquarters are in Switzerland the executives fly quite a lot.

Easiest way to improve would be to pay more attention to food, and when I have my own place energy efficiency there.

I agree with wiggin about electricity generation being the government's job, but I'm sure the resident free marketeers disagree there. That maybe warrants its own thread though.

Dread, while I understand your point about battery production, what are you talking about regarding transmission? I was under the impression electromotors were very energy efficient. And keep in mind that gasoline cars are practically never running at peak efficiency while power plants are usually as efficient as possible (1% efficiency = huge amounts of fuel savings = €£$€£$). Of course you do have two steps of energy conversion. Our were you talking about transmission from plant to charging place? Don't forget gasoline also doesn't magically appear at the gas station.

[wiggin]

I've also hardly gone on vacation (one plane trip to Spain since 2009), though I'm planning to go to the Boston area this June (which is rather impractical without a plane).

Drop me a line if you do, I can provide some suggestions (or, if you're unlucky, a meetup)!

Work is for me also a big thing, aside from the fairly big quantities of nasty chemicals we use the power consumption of a cleanroom is also fairly big and we obviously go through a lot of disposables as well. And because our headquarters are in Switzerland the executives fly quite a lot.

Oh, yeah, the disposables. The amount of plastic and PPE I chuck on a daily basis - a good chunk of it as either chemwaste or biowaste - is somewhat embarrassing.

I agree with wiggin about electricity generation being the government's job, but I'm sure the resident free marketeers disagree there. That maybe warrants its own thread though.

Not precisely my position - I think that the private sector can do a lot of the heavy lifting here, but you need appropriate price signals to deal with externalities, and that can only be imposed by a government.

[Flixy]

Yeah PPE goes fast, but we also throw away a lot of glass bottles etc (Also usually as chemical waste). And almost everything is double packed in plastic to begin with. And considering all the air in the lab is entirely refreshed every few minutes,I'm sure the ventilation isn't very eco friendly either.

Then again at my previous job we had a cyclotron that used 80kW when it was turned off...

I didn't put it well in words, I also don't want the government to actually run the energy sources, but I do think the government can provide the right incentives.

And will do

[GGT]

I have a problem with batteries and old/broken tech stuff -- it's not easy to recycle these things. We're not supposed to put them in the trash, and our county waste authority only accepts TVs and computers once or twice a year (when they hold a public 'drive' for people to drop off those things, but I think they refuse plasma TVs). Our fire dept. has a battery drop-off program, but it's also scheduled and not very convenient. I still don't know what to do with burnt out fluorescent light bulbs....

The main thing I focus on is conserving water, and I can be fanatical that way. That means not watering the grass, or hosing down the driveway (like my neighbors do). I keep a bowl of soapy water in the kitchen sink (to rinse dishes, instead of running the tap), cram the dishwasher to capacity, and use the short-wash cycle. I don't flush food waste down the sink, but use most of it as compost (tho I don't have a full-blown 3 phase composting process). I only use the washing machine for truly dirty or stinky clothes, which means I can wear something for 3 days, or use a bath towel for a week, before it goes into the laundry pile. I don't flush the toilet every time I pee, even in my one low-flow water saving toilet. I don't even wet my toothbrush, but only rinse the spit. I don't bathe/shower every day. If my hair is clean but messed up, I'll use a water bottle spritz. I'm a big believer in the PTA (pits, tits, ass) bathing method, and sometimes that means using baby wipes instead of gallons of water. This was a matter of contention when my kids were in their teen years and wanted to take 30 minute showers.

I use grey water for potted plants. I planted native perennials and don't water them at all, not even during droughts. I have a mulching blade on my mower, and use any grass clippings or leaf debris as mulch, and I mulch everything. I've reduced the amount of lawn on my property, let the grass grow high, use manure or humus instead of chemicals, and tolerate a certain amount of weeds. And my place looks just as good (maybe even better) than my neighbors....whose irrigation systems turn on even when it's raining, or use 'lawn services' that mow every week, even when it's not needed, and spray all sorts of chemicals, even during drought.

What irks me about this....is that I pay the same public sewer rate as those who abuse/misuse water. My water bill is very low, because it's based on actual consumption. But the sewer rate is based on number of toilets and sinks per household. As far as I know, they don't charge extra for households with garbage disposals, which puts tons of food waste into the sewer system...and uses water to clean and process their food junk. It's good that we finally have different bills for water and sewer (it used to be one big bill), but I'm not sure it's convincing people they should conserve water, or rethink their use of water, since their water bill is still relatively cheap.