Watch your carbon footprint

GO GREEN

There’s a lot that changed my view on the earth and ‘saving it for our children,’ a certain Mr DiCaprio’s good looks notwithstanding.  Much like how charity begins at home, so does saving the environment.

I remember getting on the right track a couple of years ago watching An Inconvenient Truth.  What struck me the most back then was Al Gore bringing home the assumption we all tend to have that “the earth is so big, we can’t possibly have any lasting, harmful impact on its environment.”  I mean seriously, how many of us here in India really care about what we’re doing when we throw that plastic bag on the roadside?  Graphic descriptions of how global warming and climate change could potentially melt ice sheets and raise sea levels thereby flooding coastal areas, leaving millions of human refugees in its wake, certainly threw that thought right out the window.  It was sometime after that, when Leonardo DiCaprio’s Eleventh Hour was released, that awareness about climate change managed to target a broader spectrum of people the world over.

Ray Anderson, chairman of Interface Inc., who was one of the people featured on the Eleventh Hour, passed away recently at the age of 77.  However, when I read about his life today, I find that although his company is now known for its advanced ‘environmental vision’ using renewable material and energy sources, it wasn’t until he was 60 years old that he figured out that he was going about modular carpeting the wrong way (by which time, I’m assuming, Interface had done a fair amount of environmental damage itself as far as resource utilisation and emissions go).  Not that this means I plan to someday start my own carpeting and textile business, but I am most certainly not going to wait until I’m 60 before I get to living an eco-healthy lifestyle!

While it’s okay to think about staying healthy personally, keeping the earth healthy is actually not as daunting a task as it originally seems, provided each individual does his/her bit.  It’s really not that difficult if you think of it logically, assuming larger industrial organisations worry about their impact on the environment themselves, all we have to do is worry about how large a carbon footprint we as human beings are leaving ourselves.

While it takes just six steps to start going green, it certainly takes a lot more to stay green.  Carrying your own shopping bag on just one shopping trip is not going to mean anything, carrying your own bag every time and refusing plastic bags at any store would make a change.  Humanity may never actually be able to ‘heal the world’ or correct all the damage we have already done to our ecosystem, but we can at least attempt to stop wrecking the situation further.  If we as individuals can get our act together, it shouldn’t be long before larger corporations feel the heat, literally, and start taking steps to conserve energy, save our resources, and control how much we pollute the environment.  It’s simple really – watch your footprint ….your carbon footprint!

1 Give us some sunshine!  Solar panelling goes a long way in making use of our bright Indian summers.  While it might cost a bit to get this done, it is worth it in the long run — solar water heating not just checks your electricity consumption, but leaves those energy-consuming geysers for just rainy monsoon days.  Solar power has made deep inroads into most households from average solar cookers and fans to even off-grid solar power panels.

2 Let raindrops keep falling on our heads.  Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth.  Use a bucket of water for your bath, or if you shower, have a flow regulator installed so you don’t waste water.  Have a rainwater harvesting system installed around your house or apartment building to make use of those lovely monsoon rains.  Check for leaking taps and pipes (or even your garden hose for that matter) and check that every tap is turned off after each use.  Save water!

3 ‘Paper roses’ no more.  Go online!  Practically everything can be done online these days.  From paying bills to getting your monthly bank statement, all you need to do is switch on the closest computer.  Always use both sides of a piece of paper, whether you’re writing something down or using a printer.  Although much has been said about using paper bags when shopping, I’d go a step further and say carry your own bag for purchases instead.  Avoid plastic at all costs for the simple reason that biodegradable plastic has not become a reality yet, especially with concerns about its effect on soil and water.

4 Walk on.  Taking your four-wheel drive to work every day in spite of traffic jams in large Indian cities is something that should seriously leave you questioning your sanity.
Walk it — especially if your destination is close enough or try cycling there instead.
If the commute doesn’t get you to opt for working from home, the price of fuel in our subcontinent sure will.

If you absolutely can’t avoid traveling, the metro promises much and will sure deliver.  Public transport is, if nothing else, much cheaper and often faster!  Save that much needed ‘heavy heavy fuel.’

5 Electric youth.  While we certainly owe Edison big time for our incandescent light-filled youth, moving on to compact fluorescent lighting would ensure the earth stays lit up for much longer.  We’ve just switched to CFL lighting in our home, and although I can’t say exactly how much this has saved us on our electricity bill each month, I do know it takes ages before I have to change a light bulb anymore, and the lighting does seem a lot better.  Keep electric appliances, even computers and laptops, that are not being used unplugged.  Switch off lights, air conditioners and fans as you leave a room.  Hanging clothes out to dry in our good Indian sunshine is sure worth more than running the dryer on your washing machine. Save energy!

6 Reduce, reuse and recycle.  Reduce how much you buy.  Shopaholics would agree that although it does seem like a lot of fun to shop, coming home to things you might never use and just shove away to the end of the cupboard is really not worth the amount of money you spend on shopping or your commute.  Buy books second-hand or start using your local library; on the other hand, with all those e-book readers in the market today, it would make sense to get yourself one too.

Minimise your shopping list to exactly what you want and what you will use and find your shopping carts lighter and wallet heavier!  Reuse envelopes and bags — you could always get the children to start making their own paper bags with old newspaper or magazines.  Practically everything can be recycled these days, from paper and glass to even diapers (Knowaste, a Canadian company, now plans to recycle diapers in Britain, turning all those disposable diapers into roof tiles)!  Make the local kabadiwala your best friend!  Recycle!