Sustainability begins at home

What can I do from my home?

Yes, I want to be sustainable, but how? How do I make my actions count, change my impact on the environment, from my daily routine?

THINK……

Think before you act, start thinking about everything you do, every minute of the day. I have some recommendations from what I have been following in my daily routine. I live in an apartment, so most of the things are pretty easy to do contrary to popular opinion that sustainability requires more infrastructure.

You wake up, it’s cold so we naturally go towards our thermostats to increase the temperature on the heating. STOP. Wear a jacket or socks. We turn the cooling really high and sleep in a comforter/ duvet all year long. NO. Get cotton sheets and keep your temperature reasonable. Learn to dress for the season, adjust by changing your habits not by constantly making drastic changes to the central conditioning temperature. Since these systems are central, every room in your home is constantly being supplied conditioned air which guzzles energy and higher bills for YOU.

Now we head for our bath. Do you buy a new hand wash or body wash bottle every time? Think REFILLS! Instead of buying a new bottle every time which gets thrown out, make it a one-time purchase and buy huge refill packs so that you are not cluttering the landfills with endless small plastic bottles. I have recently come across shampoo and bath gel pouches, which come in water soluble packaging and generate ZERO plastic waste. I haven’t been able to get an order in (COVID rush) but I will try them out and see how effective they turn out to be.

Now you are dressed and ready for coffee. You want to drive to the café on your way to work and pick-up coffee, which will be served in a disposable to-go cup. 

STOP! Did you know if you purchase a disposable cup every day, this creates about 23 pounds of waste per year.

According to a study by Starbucks, each paper cup manufactured is responsible for 0.24 pounds of CO₂ emissions. It is estimated that 50 MILLION disposable coffee cups are used in a typical metro area per year.  This equates to 3 MILLION pounds of solid waste being generated and 6,000 metric tons of CO₂ being generated. [i] This is equivalent to almost 600,000 gallons of gas consumed, or CO₂ sequestered 7,836 acres of forests in the US [ii]. If these disposed cups were stacked for a year, this would be the result

[iii]

What can you do to counter this towering mountain of disposed cups?

BYOC – Bring Your Own Cup

Did you know STARBUCKS offers a $0.10 discount if you bring your own cup?[iv] Try that, next time you hanker for a coffee on your way to work.

But why spend all the money and gas driving for coffee? If you like the basic versions like we do, there are easy solutions to bring that morning coffee to your home without spending an ounce of gas.

If you like the KEURIG machines, they do the job very effectively. But the KEURIG cups are a nuisance. The K-cups as they are called, are single use and for coffee enthusiasts mean a lot of trash. Did you know that estimates say the Keurig pods buried in 2014 would actually circle the Earth 10.5 times.[v]

My husband and I really like the KEURIG machines but found the K-cups to be nuisance. Why go for a new pod every time when we mostly end up drinking the same type of coffee every day. We finally found an awesome way to optimize the process. We found these reusable KEURIG cups….

My own reusable Keurig cups

Just fill these with your regular coffee, and you are good to go!

You come back in the evening, too tired to cook. So, we whip out phones and browse food delivery apps. I started to notice that most of these apps or restaurants send plastic cutlery and napkins even when you order from home. Now they do it since most of the consumers eat on the go, at work or just outdoors. Maybe not a lot of people order from home. But for the ones that do, and who have enough silverware at home, why get this additional plastic cutlery? Irrespective of whether we use it or not, it gets thrown out.

Did you know UBER EATS now gives you an option to opt out of getting cutlery? Try it, today.

But what about the cutlery you have accumulated? I use a food delivery app called ClusterTruck, who send me cutlery, salt pepper and napkin sealed in a plastic packet for each order. We order regularly from there, and I was so upset about the amount of disposable waste accumulating in my house. So, I decided to start saving them and used an Amazon box to store them. One day, I realized I had over 50 packets, unopened and sealed, perfect for reuse. So, what I did do? I reached out to the helpline and to talk to them that this was ridiculous! Give me some way to refuse cutlery. Here is the conversation I had.

WOW! That went even better than I expected. Next time we got a delivery, I went to get it and asked the delivery guy if he was okay to take them back. I was anticipating some pushback and but he was so happy to take it back and reuse it because he said he too was an environmentalist (he came on a bike for the delivery). I was able to save so much plastic being thrown out by reusing, it made my day!😊

You will feel it too – the joy of the saving the Earth, one thought and one action at a time.

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[i] http://www.recyclingadvocates.org/single-use-coffee-cup-reduction/

[ii] https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator

[iii] https://www.completemerchandise.co.uk/blog/disposable-paper-cups-sizes/, https://customerservice.starbucks.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3113

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/02/business/uk-recylable-cup/

[iv] https://customerservice.starbucks.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2463/~/how-do-i-qualify-for-a-cup-discount%3F

[v] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-pod-environment-problem/386501/

The LAST straw

A straw enables you to drink without using your wrist. A straw is your friend - until you lose eye contact with the straw. Then it will betray you and make you look like an idiot. - Demetri Martin

I believe the quote is referring to losing eye contact with the straw, and having it poke you in the eye, making you look like an idiot. But I am drawing some other inference more relevant to the nuisance value of straws.

A straw is your friend until you lose eye contact with it, meaning after you are done using the straw. Did we ever think about what happens to these straws, once we have used them and they are whisked away from us? It gets disposed and because it’s too lightweight to be recycled, ultimately ends up in the ocean.

How does it make me feel like an idiot? The oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, right? They can surely absorb some waste from straws. Some groups have determined that Plastic straws account only for a tiny portion (0.022%) of plastic waste emitted in the oceans each year.^([i]) Seriously? So, what is the ruckus on banning straws? They cool man!

No, they are not cool for our ecosystem in the oceans. One million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in our oceans^([ii]) We have all heard about straws choking sea turtles (https://youtu.be/4MPHbpmP6_I) and ending up in the stomachs of marine wildlife, who ingest small pieces of plastic mistaking them for food, an accident which kills them eventually.

Humans, this is the fish we eat as we sip our drinks in a restaurant with our “cool” straws. Your straw has basically completed its circle of life and come back to you, like karma.

There is some debate as to the value of replacing the material of the straw with recyclable paper straws. I personally don’t condone paper straws either. While they counter some of the issues with the pollution and hazard to marine life, producing paper takes a toll on trees and the entire life-cycle of the paper from cradle to recycling has considerable carbon footprint too. Don’t even get me started on the wrapping that comes with the straw for wrapping! WASTE, WASTE and more WASTE…

A statewide California law restricting the provision of single-use plastic straws went into effect on 1 January 2019. Under the law, restaurants are only allowed to provide single-use plastic straws upon request.^([iii]) Several other US states and countries all over the world are imposing similar restrictions too. The clause “upon request” was added to allow some flexibility to the consumption, especially for accessibility of disabled population. ^([iv])

Well, great! I’ll just wait till my state or city imposes the ban too. My straw comes automatically with my drink, it’s the restaurant’s fault in their “default”, right? It’s being imposed on me.

Did you know why we tend to stick with the “default”? It is human tendency to stick to the “default” which is termed as the “default bias”. It says that for most decisions, one option is to do nothing – to keep the status quo. When considering these options, people will find the default more appealing in most situations. ^([v])

So, the question is, what can I DO until the restaurants change their default?

Say “NO” when you order your next beverage. We order that too; is it so hard to add to that “NO STRAW PLEASE”?

We read so much about the power of “YES”; to save the Earth, know the power of “NO”.

It is estimated that the US alone consumes 390 million straws every day. ^([vi])

The US population is estimated to be 330 million.

That’s more than 1 straw per person per day. Say NO to your straw and do your part.

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[i] https://phys.org/news/2018-04-science-amount-straws-plastic-pollution.html

[ii] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/plastic-straw-single-use-plastics-in-hotels-cruises/#close

[iii] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/california-gov-jerry-brown-signs-bill-to-reduce-plastic-straw-use.html

[iv] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/11/627773979/why-people-with-disabilities-want-bans-on-plastic-straws-to-be-more-flexible

[v] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/default-bias/

[vi] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-ban-fact-check-nyt.html

Earth Day special - Let's make it "days"

It's been sometime since I have written this blog. Well, folks I have a super great job that lets me help others build sustainable buildings, every frickin' day! I feel like all my sustainability preaching <wink> passion was channeled there; however, I have been itching to write again, and what better day to be back than Earth Day 2020. Whoop whoop!

I now live and work in the US, where LEED was born and it is so great to finally work with corporations that actually "implement" our recommendations, no shortcuts. I have also been working with wellness-oriented certifications, such as Fitwel (more on that later).

My goal ever since I moved here was to take charge of my lifestyle and make it even "greener". My family back in India took some awesome initiatives - we completely rid our home garden of grass (the water guzzler), my mom actively segregates our daily trash into dry and wet, composting the latter for manure which we used for our plants. Many more practices were adopted by my family for water reuse, waste recycling etc etc. I have to hand it to the Indian culture, it imbibes so many practices which we have doing and are being taught by parents to kids. These practices such as never wasting food on your plate, being cognizant of water wastage, selling recyclables to the Indian version of the hauler, air drying dishes and clothes etc. We did all this without realizing how sustainable they are, and how much impact we have been making all these years with our daily routines.

Things are different here. I am not saying which country is better or worse, each has its own way of dealing with climate change. I feel that things in India are done way more effectively at the grassroot level, by the people. Here, in contrast the local authorities having jurisdiction (AHJ), bodies like EPA and corporations lobby for policy changes and make all buildings, products, materials, practices comply with codes and standards, which is great and makes improvements at a larger scale.
But the question on this Earth Day is that do they really make the layman understand what is sustainability? I have heard people say, I am sustainable, because I try to walk more and I recycle. Let's take this Earth Day for example, we generally celebrate by turning off the lights and appliances for an hour. That's great and I am not knocking anything that we do to reduce our environmental impact. Keep walking and keep recycling, yay! The point is, how much more can WE DO, if we just THINK.

Think? Seriously, like we don't? I mean let's think about the impact on the environment before we do anything, and by anything I mean A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. The age we live in, everything we do, from changing our central conditioning temperature by 1 deg, to simply ordering a drink at a bar or ordering food at home. Just take a moment and think...hmm...what is going to be the result of my action on the earth, whether it is more plastic, more waste in general, less water and more carbon emissions.

You'll be surprised how much impact can one small action make when done repeatedly or daily. Sustainability is not a choice anymore and with every passing day it is becoming a necessity. We cannot overturn climate change in one day or in one massive action or by one person. It has to be done by everyone, every day and for every single possible action.

Believe me, it's easy to give up and say "Hey, how much difference is my action going to make? Billions of people have to do it to make a difference blah blah". I always remember this quote from Mother Teresa.

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."

Be the drop to save the Earth!

Don't just celebrate Earth Day 2020, make it "Days" and make it a habit. Care for the Earth every minute of every single day, not one day in a year.