I Choose to Live It

I am playing Captain Planet today because I'm wearing this shirt that says "Save the Planet, Ride a bike."

This also serves as a thank you note to my cycling friends who do Mama Earth a favor when they choose to cycle (notice the LiveStrong baller on my wrist?).

I am not a fan of radical environmentalism even if I devoted 5 years of my existence studying the biogeochemical cycle and almost 5 years making a living out of it. Instead, I value making small, informed choices that, when replicated by people I know and the people they know, would somehow make a difference.

Here is a mini list of our everyday choices that secretly make the Earth smile. :)

1. By the bulk
Every year in the International Coastal Cleanup Day, we realize the downside of a retail economy as we haul sacks of waste packaging materials. I began purchasing common household items in bigger containers. I get a bottle of shampoo instead of a dozen sachets. We buy 250 mL bottles of dishwashing liquid and just grab the refills for succeeding purchases.  Not only are they cheaper in the long run, we throw less into the waste stream. Bigger containers are also usually recyclable/reusable so chances of material recovery are high.

2. House water, please
Remember Katherine Heigl in The Ugly Truth, lecturing about how water from the tap is essentially the same as bottled water? I read a blog by Jason Mraz that argued along the same lines and added insights on the extra waste created by patronizing bottled water. By choosing to drink house water in a restaurant (filtered naman eh) one conserves materials used in packaging, avoids non-recyclable solid waste, and saves energy from product transport.

3. I think before I print
Imagine how many ATMs there are in the whole country. Imagine also, that several transactions happen in each of those machines. How many rolls of paper or liters of ink are then consumed in a day, month, year? When the machine asks if you want a printed receipt, you can politely decline and press "No" and it will totally, totally understand. If you're still the type who would inquire balance, print receipt, withdraw, and print receipt AGAIN, that would be an overkill insult to your ability to do elementary subtraction. Print your receipt only when you need it. :)

It seems impossible for one person to hug the Earth given its 40075.16 km circumference, much less save it. But if its ~7 billion inhabitants would join hands, our awesome planet would surely find the huddle 174 times cozier and warmer (oh no, I hope not too much to cause global warming).

xoxo