Since this blog is entitled "Doug's Unsustainable Sustainability Tour", it behooves me to prattle on about sustainability on occasion. I visited many homes and hostels while I was on tour in the States, and had a chance to see what actions were or were not being taken in the name of sustainable practices. The gold star goes to Robert Ray in Phoenix, who is growing veggies in his back and front yard, and is in the process of installing large, ugly cisterns for water runoff reduction and for watering his plants. Water capture systems generally have a one to two-year payback, depending on how cheaply one can purchase the cisterns and associated equipment.
The one thing glaring at me was a simple step that saves money, paper, and limits garbage production, but only rarely did I see them in use: Cloth napkins! We could put the paper towel and paper napkin (and plastic spoon) industry out of business tomorrow, but only if we cared. At every household except for one, at every hostel except for Cambria, paper napkins were being used and discarded on a daily basis.
I don't mean to lecture, but I hope you can bear in mind that one pack of napkins not purchased is a big hunk of energy not wasted: Paper napkins tend to be 80% recycled, but that is not so big a deal: the recyclables are gathered in your municipality first, then shipped to the recycling processing plant, and the prepared processed paper is shipped to the Kimberly-Clark plant in Kentucky, and the packages are wrapped in plastic that is manufactured using ingredients shipped from a half-dozen other places, and of course the 20% pulp comes from trees in another state or country, after the tree is felled in one place, taken to another place to process it then shipped to Kentucky. When the package is ready for retail, it is shipped to your supermarket. How much gasoline and processing energy is used to produce one pack of paper napkins? I am told that it's a three-to-one ratio for most “recycled” products. (Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins) In other words, not buying one pack of napkins for $1.39 is equal to saving $5.00 in energy costs.
So at least consider hauling out those old cloth napkins, using them a few times before throwing them into the washing machine – if you worry about cooties, you maybe can color-code them – Junior gets the blue ones, Daisy gets the green ones, you try not to get too much stuff on the yellow ones...
And the same for paper towels – I challenge you to be conscious of your paper towel usage – can you find a way to limit your paper towel usage to one roll per year per household member? I think every house I visited had cloth kitchen towels. Don't you?
And, lastly, disposable plastic spoons and forks – I don't see a great burden in carrying real, metal or wood spoons and forks and washing them when you return home. I don't think there is a great energy loss in washing a handful of spoons and forks instead of throwing them away.
One of my friends actually defended the throw-away culture we are so used to, saying that he believed technology was going to save us from climate change, so there is no need to act in an environmentally conscious way. But you know, so far, technology has not come close to replicating what trees and plants and water and soil and air does for sustaining human and other living beings. It is important to understand that trees cut in the Amazon forest affects the amount of rainfall in the American Midwest. And each time an individual acts to limit waste at the retail level, that expands as it trickles up the resource chain. One less pack of disposable whatever is one less product, one less packing material, one less carton, one less shipping to the store, one less processing, multiple less shipping of packing and manufacturing materials to the manufacturing plant, multiple less raw material losses. All from one conscious purchase decision. That I hope you make when you can where you can.
And don't get me started on the incredible wastefulness of clothes dryers...
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