Welcome to Gaia! ::

I just wanted to start a debate about how were cutting carbon emissions and recycling, not whether or not we should

A few ideas to kick the topic off
.If you can think of anymore that I’ve missed please throw them in the ring.

What do you do?

Are there (in your opinion) enough energy saving ideas where you live; or in general.

Do you think we are doing enough as a global community?

What kind of eco friendly ideas have you heard of / seen? What do you think about them?

You have any ideas how to save energy/recycle?
Do we put enough emphasis on the importance of recycling/ saving energy or is there too much?

I would love to live in a house that ran solely on solar/wind power. There isn't much of anyone that cares about stuff like that around here because we can't afford to. Everyone around here is too busy trying to get by. Saving the earth is for rich people in lots of peoples eyes. I can't say I don't agree with them. It would be great if we could all live in harmony with nature, but oil is too profitable and that's the main problem in my opinion. We won't go green until there's no more oil.

We have the technology to run everything off of wind, solar, and hydroelectric power except for aircraft, so why don't we? Too much money in oil.

I don't recycle so much as I reuse, but then I'm countryfolk, so reusing things is sort of in my upbringing.

I can't think of any NEW ways to save energy off the top of my head. But I've just been cutting down on the amount of energy I use, whether that be by turning off appliances when I'm not using them, cutting down my hours on the PC, started using the close line again instead of the electrical dryer and little things like that.

I haven't been doing much though, and I'm pretty dissapointed in myself, but I'm a b*****d, so it's all good.

I try to do everything I can to leave a small footprint on the planet. Someday if I ever have any money I would like to live in one of these houses:

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/

For now, I eat a nearly-vegan diet (I eat honey and the occasional free range egg). I don't have a car; I walk, ride with other people, or take the bus. I have joined a co op and I make almost all my food from scratch. I am growing tomatoes and peppers on my patio, and I have a little herb garden too. There is a farmer's market down the road every weekend in the summer so I also buy a lot of local produce (and honey!). I recycle in any way I can, like turning old clothes into new clothes or dust rags, but I'm sad to say I don't take my garbage to any kind of recycling station, ever since I saw the same dumptruck that picks up my trash, picking up the recycling kiosk and mixing all the trash together. I'm not aware of whether or not there is curbside recycling in my city. If there is, I have never seen the truck, nor blue boxes or anything like that.

Oh and I have reusable grocery bags too. biggrin

I try to recycle when I can, but my apartment complex doesn't have recycling bins : Hopefully within the next ten or twenty years there will be more trash to oil refineries, so recycling and trash dumps will both be obsolete. But last I heard the company that runs them was having financing issues (the technology is too new and too far outside the layman's realm of experience). So who knows what will happen with that. I'll try to remember to look up more info on them later and repost.

I use the bus as much as possible, rather than driving, but again, it's kind of hard to use the bus in LA as the city is huge and the county hasn't put nearly enough money into a comprehensive public transport system. Hopefully they'll be adding more train/metro access with the expansion of the 405 (I've heard rumors that the freeway is being expanded to add a monorail, but they could just be adding a longer carpool lane).

The green movement is actually one of my interests. I'm very interested in expanding sunlight use (by getting bigger windows and utilizing shade walls to reduce glare, as well as the new research into using fiber optics and parabolic mirrors to pipe sunlight into homes and office buildings). I'd love to help get more companies to put mini parks on the roofs of their skyscrapers.

Currently I'm trying to focus on getting through college, so I don't really have time to research volunteer or career opportunities within the green movement, but this summer I'll be looking for a job, and hopefully I'll find something to do to help out the environment smile

Thank you to everyone for contributing to this discussion. mrgreen
One issue I occasionally hear raised is that of force vs encouragement for social change in our behaviors, and the policies that are put in place for them.
Currently I recycle cans(mainly pet food cans) paper and glass because there the only options were given in the trash pick up(no plastics, yet).
It's picked up every fortnight alongside the regular trash, this is out of free choice and it is accepted round the local area; but and this is a big but, not every house hold puts out a blue box.

A pay as you throw scheme is eventually going to be implemented where you will be charged for regular trash but not recycling.
[though there's always going to be someone who will put their extra bin bags in other peoples trash rolleyes to avoid paying this charge]

I hold no illusions it will happen , but for the council to gain more money in taxes, rather than eco friendly reasons xd ( yeah, my cynicism knows no bounds recently)

The aim is to force households to change their behavior or be seriously out of pocket.

I put this debate to you generous posters should the governments actually take this pro-active stance and force change, rather than appealing to the moral consciousness of people?


Oh , and here's a power saving idea that a friend suggested to me, remove a small bit of plastic. Ask manufactures to remove the stand by feature on appliances , saves them money on manufacturing and energy because you then have to turn it off.