June Challenge - Minimize Your Impact

OK people. This is the big one. For the last five months we've been doing good things for ourselves, and it's been great! Now we're going to make a concentrated effort on doing good things for our environment. Whether you get your environmental news from Al Gore or Rush Limbaugh, the things I'm going to discuss over the next month are indisputably beneficial things to do for our environment...and for our wallets. Obviously, I don't expect everybody to try everything, and I don't anticipate it all sticking. But, if by the end of the month you've made one or two of these things a new habit, then I feel we've succeeded.

I need to thank Charles Lockwood and Jen Miller for doing a lot of the research you'll see over the next month. General categories we'll cover will include:

• Reducing Garbage
• Around the House
• Appliances
• Utility and Water Consumption
• Transportation
• Advanced Topics

For the first week or so, let's talk about garbage. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Let's start with reduce. This is actually a pretty simple concept. Don't use as much stuff. However, putting it into practice takes a little bit of effort.

• Reusable shopping bags - This is a fairly simple thing to do, and most major grocery stores now sell them for about $1. I have, however, found it somewhat difficult to actually remember to bring it into the store. There are a few tricks, though. Once you've emptied your groceries into the refrigerator, hang the bag on the door knob so you remember to bring it into the car. Put it on the front seat on the way to the store so that the odds of remembering to bring it in the store go up. If you're only getting one or two items, skip the bag altogether. Also, you usually get a 5 cent refund for not taking a bag!
• Consider buying things in bulk with minimal packaging. Think of this as the evolution of taking your own reusable grocery bag. If you often buy the same things in bulk, you can reuse the packaging. In stores like New Seasons, you can buy cereal, spices, grains, nuts, dried fruit, coffee, and you can even buy soap and shampoo in bulk. Also drives to buying fresh fruits and vegetables which I hear are good for your health. :)
• Buying local reduces fuel required to supply the products and keeps money in your local economy.
• Reduce consumption of plastic bags and saran wrap by using washable storage containers.
• Be aware of purchasing individual serving size items.
• Some stats from a Mother Jones article on American waste created. I can't vouch for these statistics, but the point is that we "waste" a lot.
  o 106,000 Aluminum cans every 30 seconds
  o 1 Million plastic cups on airline flights every 6 hours
  o 2 million plastic beverage bottles ever 5 minutes
  o 426,000 cell phones every day
  o 1.14 million brown paper bags each hour
  o 60,000 plastic grocery bags every 5 minutes
  o 15 million sheets of office paper every 5 minutes
  o 170,000 energizer batteries every 15 minutes
• Yes, all these can be recycled, but please think about reduction first. The materials may be reused through recycling, but quite a bit of energy is used in the recycling process. Even the best city San Francisco only recycles 50% of waste…and national average is closer to 10%. Oklahoma City wins the worst crown at 3%. Boulder, Colorado is shooting for 100%...Good luck to them!

OK. Let's get started!

Jason