The Year Ahead With Laurie David
by Meaghan O'Neill, Newport, R.I. on 01.11.08
This post is part of an ongoing series. To access all the profiles in this series, visit The Year Ahead.
Who: Laurie David, founder of StopGlobalWarming.org
Eco-resolution: My resolution for 2008 is to say no to plastic bags and plastic water bottles to the best of my ability. But “Perfection is the enemy of Good,” some wise person once said, so if I’m in the grocery store and if I’ve forgotten my bag, I load everything up in my arms and carry it out. Okay, I do admit, I have to stop twice because I keep dropping stuff, but I didn’t take a bag! American’s throw away about 100 billion plastic bags per year; less than 1 percent of those are recycled! As for the plastic water bottle, 2.5 million are tossed in the trash every hour! I have traded them in for my lovely, aluminum SIGG bottle, which I refill every day. Just say no to plastic, whenever you can!
Outlook for '08: Because Americans are extremely concerned about global warming, we will elect a new president who will make freezing and reducing carbon emissions his or her first priority. Just as we saw Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister of Australia, immediately address global warming his first day in office, our new leader will immediately start working to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2020 in his or her first hours in office. The American people are awake and demanding action. The magnitude of the political response will finally equal the magnitude of the problem.
Laurie David is the co-author of The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming and author of The Solution is You! Oh yeah, and she also helped produce a little documentary called An Inconvenient Truth.
I wish my premature senility wasn't kicking in. I remember a good article here a few months ago with practical and insightful ideas and input from Ms. David.
I would like to get the New Year going with some better physical, fiscal, and environmental responsibility...
-I would like to be able to flush using rainwater (pretty easy in NYC due to good rainfall and helps with the bills because water is metered here).
-I want to help my tennants (much more earth-savvy than me) with the small composter they want to implement.
-I want to buy less.
-I want to ride my bike more (I already commute 110 miles per full work week).
-I want to just plain eat less... it will help me with the previous.
All the goodies to help me with the first 2 items are pretty easy to find in the 'big city' here.
Good Luck,
vsk
My new years resolution for 2008 (One that I am hopeful will be the first I am able to sustain throughout the year) is similar. I call it the "Drive for 25". Basically, go the entire year only using 25 plastic bags (an allowance of 1 per 2 weeks). So far the only one that I have used has been somewhat forced upon me by the delivery guy who delivered a lousy dinner when I was stuck wasting energy working late at the office. Friends have said that those situations should be an exception, but i'm not sure.. Such bags are no exceptions to burning oil, using chemicals, filling landfills.. perhaps even killing animals, ect... Since there's no exception to that I'm trying to come up with an offsetting scheme to deal with such dilemmas. Instead of loitering around in supermarkets looking like a fool trying to pass on my bag for re-use, I have noted that used clothes donation bins require items to be sealed in plastic bags.. I saved the bag from the lousy midtown Manhattan restaurant and plan on doing such with some pretty nice, what I somehow consider old clothes. Hopefully this will save the landfills in more way's than one..
Please offer any other offsetting ideas you may have..
Go Green
There are better solutions than carrying bags in car. You don't need bags at all. See http://www.autocarts.net for a clever alternative to bags. This is the best solution to the problem.