"Plastic OK sir?"
"No paper bags please!"
Its not very common to hear these words in Houston. So when I was done with my request, I looked around with a smug feeling of being a progressive induvidual. Alas! there were no young ladies to impress but only septugenerians rummaging through their coupon book and rifling through their bags for the cheque book. However, this false sense of complaceny was quickly deflated with my dad's first jaunt to the grocery store. Seeing the paper bags stack up in kitchen, he grabbed some of them and said he planned to reuse them instead of getting more paper bags. Later in the same week, he found a big cloth bag and decided he can do away with the paper bags completely and use this big comfortable cloth bag for his daily pickings.
As I reflected on my dad's action, I realised that his action was more a reflection of an upbringing without an excess than a concern for the environment. Growing up in India, we are always reminded of wastage of energy resources. Our parents reprimand us for simple things like keeping the faucet open while brushing the teeth, or keeping the light on in the bedroom when not using it. Why then do we forget these roots when we are transported to this land of abundance? You don't have to be educated or progressive to care for environment. You just have to learn to take what you want and not indulge in excesses.
Here is one simple thing which I came across recently, which doesn't take any effort to implement but can a huge impact on your energy consumption:
Unplug Chargers when not in use
Only 5% of the power drawn by a cell phone charger is used to charge the phone. The other 95% is wasted when it is left plugged into the wall. Read the following link to see the energy savings from an "unplugged" not in use charger. And if you are really interested and rich, you might wanna try this green plug.
Finally, here is a fine article in Slate, exposing the hypocrisy of the "Green" Beijing Olympics.
This reiterates my point that energy conservation is a much more convoluted issue than a simple take on your car's gas mileage.
5 comments:
Very rightly pointed.
Engery conservation is a life-style in totality - not just drivig a hybrid or going for a paper bag at the grocery store.
and ba***rd u came to SCE and shiva has to tell me tht you were coming... bery bad...
btw.. I don't completely agree with the article bashing the green olympics claim - while the emissions form the private jet might be real and might have been avoided/off-set in some manner - the comparisions between that and what an average american does has a scale bias.. it doesn't put things in perspective - it just exaggerates the differences.
e.g. - comparing an average american's carbon foot-print to that of say Timbuktu's foot-print in absolute terms is outright ridiculous.
@Subbu..Sorry dude! SCE was a very short trip..I was there for only 38 hours and mostly involved with Food Fest..
I agree there are some flawed analogies in the article..but the main point is to highlight the amount of energy wasted in ferrying the torch across the globe
jubbu..i asked pointy why he didnt call you before sce..that dog put thadaal fart..
pointy two points : 1, this does not reiterate your point since this is not your point..goddamn you
two, i had a dream that you have stopped blogging :)
@Totti..Pls dont mislead Subbu..I never said anything random
If I stop blogging..that would be a nightmare...besides I have gathered some more data points to revalidate my Hypocrisy theory..will call and let u know latr..
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