Insomnia

In the Ottawa Citizen this morning, you can find an opinion piece about Earth Hour (Ottawa Citizen - Hour of reckoning). Essentially, the point is that many hardcore environmentalists say that this is just a PR move that makes people feel good about doing nothing concrete for the environment.

Reading this, I sort of agree. Only lasting, everyday changes can make a difference. One thing that it did though is make me thing about what I am doing personally to reduce my environmental footprint. The first thing that I can admit is that I like cars so I am not about to change my ride for a Toyota Yaris. However... during this introspection, I came up with a short list of things that I did in the past year to help.

Change #1: I got rid of bottled water at home.

I used to have one of those water coolers with the 18L bottles of spring water. I originally got that because the water from the municipal distribution smelled too much of chlorine. I took the water cooler away and I had a water conditioner installed on the main water entrance of my house. This system removes some heavy metals, calcium and all chlorine taste. It has a permanent filter that gets cleaned automatically with a backwash system. It is virtually maintenance free.

It was a little pricey but it has many advantages:

• Every faucet in my house delivers great tasting water. Just as tasty and refreshing as the bottled water.
  
• I need about 30% less detergent when doing my laundry because the water is softer.
• The same applies to the dishwasher and it doesn't smell like chlorine all over the house when it runs.
• I have softer skin and more manageable hair because the water in the shower is softer.

Change #2: Pack a lunch every day to eat at work

That was hard. I used to go out pretty much every day for lunch. It was convenient and I did not have to think about it. But my office is in an industrial park and there are no restaurants within walking distance.

Results:

• I save so much money on restaurants, it's not even funny.
• I save 10-15 litres of gas per week because I don't take my car out at lunch.
• My pants are starting to fit better. :)

Change #3: Reusable bags at the grocery store

That one sounds obvious but it is one of those things that you have to keep top of mind. It is really convenient to just grab new bags at the checkout counter. This one is interesting because I already reused all my plastic bags. I used to think that if I reuse them I was good. But cycle is "reduce-reuse-recycle". So reduce wins over reuse.

After doing the reusable shopping bags for a while, I realize that I like it better. Those reusable bags don't randomly break, they fit a lot more groceries and I can bring in the groceries in a couple of trips to the car instead of 3-4 trips with the smaller bags.

To help me think about them, I split the stash of bags in 2 and me and my wife we keep half the stash permanently our cars. So we don't have an excuse for not having them when we go shopping.

I am sure that there was more and there will be more. But that is what came to my mind. I don't know if I will turn-off my lights tonight at 8:00pm. But at least I spent a minute to think about it.

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