Grist Magazine has opened a confessional today: “So tell us … what’s your dirty little environmental secret?” Below, confess your sins. I’ll go first:
From Grist‘s Soapbox column — I’ll make them go first, and my confessions follow:
This is bad form, and bad politics. So let’s try something new: Let’s share our humanity. Perhaps we can endear ourselves to the congregation by admitting our eco-sins — moral slip-ups like, oh, failing to recycle a crusty ketchup bottle, double-flushing the potty, or ripping up the backcountry in a Chevy Tahoe. To be sporting, I’ll go first.
Ahem. I admit to taking long, hot showers when it’s cold outside. These showers can be so long that my fingers prune, and my husband knocks at the door to see if I’m OK. (Of course, he doesn’t really want to know if I’m OK. He wants to know why I’m wasting the contents of our hot-water tank, not to mention the gas to heat it!) And I also admit that I’m frustrated that there are apparently two types of recycled toilet paper: gossamer and 100-grit. This is why I sometimes sneak the good stuff — the squeezable, quilted, temperate-rainforest-on-a-roll kind — into the house. …
Me first:
- I like to put a spot of bleach in my dish water even though it ends up in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, inside salmon and orcas! (God I’m awful.)
- I have a couple Procter & Gamble products under my kitchen sink (Spic and Span and Febreze) because, sometimes, there’s nothing like the toxic stuff to clean up a mess
- I occasionally get tired of paying more for “green” toilet paper, and buy the cheaper, fluffier stuff
- Even though I’m admonishing all of YOU to write Congress about the new energy bill, I haven’t written my letters yet!
Okay, I really hate myself now. In my defense: I’m a fanatical recycler. But there are times: Those rotten-fish stinky, food-caked cat food cans often end up in the trash, not the recycling bin.
How many “Hail Mary’s” is that worth? Or what penance should be required?
Grist has a sweepstakes contest for new subscribers … a trip for two to Iceland! How cool is that?!
I got to the sweepstakes/ subscriber page by clicking the ad at Daily Kos, but the above link should work too.
is that I like to let the shower run before I get in. I like the steam. I’m worse in the winter.
Riverbend has succeeded in shaming me into limiting this practice.
I’m guilty of that one too.
I also buy spring water in 16 oz bottles by the case, instead of refilling my water bottle.
And I bleach my Corian sink regularly.
Bleach evaporates. If you can’t wait add a few drops of chlorine remover – for aquariums. The other things are a lot worse. Soaps in the long run do more damage to fish, since they don’t break up as fast. I use way too much electricity – but am hoping to offset this with solar panels this summer.
I think I should win the trip! I confessed first and should get extra points for seeing into the future:
http://unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=56
Hey! Keep your grubby hands off my trip. I entered weeks ago! I plan to ride Icelandic pony around the island, and have a completely wonderful time.
<slinks away, sheepishly realizing that she should have posted a link for the Boosters>
I throw my cigarette butts out the window
<standing sheepishly in the corner>
Yeah, what geniuses decided to make ashtrays an add-on?
TRULY! We had to buy one of those bean-bag type ashtrays and set it in the cup holder between the front seats. Not exactly easy to aim at while driving.
And the little cup set fits into a drink holder waayyyy down there. Like, yeah, right, I’m going to lean over while I’m driving to stub out that evil ciggie.
My confession is that I still smoke. Couple of decades ago I was hooked on cocaine and it was easier to quit that than cigs. I once quit for a year and a half and still wanted a cig every morning and after every meal. I just couldn’t see spending the rest of my life wanting something that badly. Better to have a shortened life than a long miserable life is the way I justify it.
My poor departed Mom: 10 years after she quit she still got lung cancer that spread everywhere and killed her in 8 weeks flat. Right there on her death bed, she said, “Dammit, get me a cigarette!” I did.
cigarettes are almost as addictive as heroin. I smoked Marlboro’s for 18 years and quitting was the hardest thing I have ever done. I think it’s been about 7 or 8 years now and every once in a while the urge to light up still happens. Amazing things those little white, amazingly soothing, something to do with my hands when I’m nervous, coffin nails.
What state are you in, in California that is a ticket, and we have big fire danger so hardly anyone does that here.
Last fall, I was flicking ashes otu my car window and while at a stoplight, a policeman rolled down his window and very sternly told me that’s a $1,000 fine! Just for flicking ashes out. I don’t know if it’s true but he scared the bejesus out of me.
I’m in DC, where there is no risk of forest fire, mainly because there are barely any trees, let alone a forest. not that having no trees justifies throwing them out the window.
is not very friendly to smokers period and we can barely find a place that still allows smoking at all.
We (smokers) are very looked down on here in Socal. where it is all about health, beauty and fitness; oh and I forgot….money; and very much tuned to environmental responsibility.
So I will confess to no ‘enviro’ sins but smoking.
My Jeep didn’t come with one, either, so I bought one that works great. You guys may have seen them – they’re little can-looking things with lids, with a clip on the side that lets you hang the cup from your car window. Or, you can stick it in a cup holder, like I do. It has a little hole in the middle that you stick your cigarette butt into and it extinguishes the cigarette and keeps smoke from hanging around in your car. I love mine.
You need to be old enough to remember that roads were trashcans up until the early ’60’s. Not just smokes, but every kind of garbage people carried in their cars. $1000 fine now, but we still have “sponsors” to clean X miles of highways.
Do you throw live butts out the window that could go onto the side of the road to create a forest fire?
In BC during the drought, several forest fires were ignited that way until the law posted road signs begging people not to do that. Some trees in a highway meridian caught fire due to the drought and the butt throwing.
Oh, we were supposed to report our own sins, and here I go admonishing already.
I buy frozen dinners (the gourmet kind) with packaging that is not recyclable.
I use turpentine and mineral spirits when oil painting. But I don’t pour any down the sink, I put it outside to evaporate.
I hope the penance isn’t too high because I LOVE to use paper towels for cleaning up small messes. Forget getting a rag or a sponge with a bucket of water.
Also, I use little plastic sandwich bags for just about everything that goes in the refrigerator. I hate having to put stuff in a bowl with a lid because 1) I usually forget about it because I can’t see it, and 2) I don’t want to have to clean it later.
However, I do drive a fuel-efficient car, I recycle just about everything, and I’m a vegetarian. I hope those help to make up for my sins.
Most of my liberal friends admonish me all the time.. (Cigarette Nazi’s – no I mean REALLY. If that word can be used for anything, it’s them – almost all ex-smokers, too.)
Count me in here. Booman should put up a poll to see how many smokers there are. I think of it as a accessory to blogging.
This rawks. If we ever get together in “real” life, we can all sit in the smoker’s section (if there are any left, sigh).
Add me to the smoker list…although not while blogging. I don’t smoke in my house or at work (CA so we can’t). I do have a covered and heated patio…for those cold winter days and evenings.
Add me to the smoker’s list. I don’t smoke in my home, either, and I can’t at work, so I’m used to doing it outside.
Air quality is so poor these days, it is safer to filter it through a cigarette.
the funniest thing you have ever said on these pages Ductape, and I am getting the biggest kick out of this site today what with “the Morrison” story and all.
Thanks all for making me laugh when I needed it.
Susan your comment also had me laughing, picturing all of us smokers together in one room, cigarettes in one hand while blogging with the other hand.
If I have ever heard a stretch to justify a bad habit – this was it!
Congratulations DuctapeFatwa for teaching us all. We are not worthy! This is about as good as “I drink a fifth of whiskey a day to kill bacteria in the water.”
I must confess that I started smoking again this year as well. I have an Ex, and my daughter was coming for a visit. Usually there is a nightmare scenario and I was so nervous I had a cig in my mouth lit before I even realized what I was doing. Somehow I walked into a store, bought the horrid things and a lighter, walked out and lit up. I stared at it and thought “holy shit, now that is an addiction.” It had been 3 years since my last and now I can’t quit . . . again.
As for the other confessions – I don’t have many. I live on a boat so have to be very frugal with water and careful about what goes down the sink. I have to pay for timed showers so long ones get expensive. I don’t have a car so I either walk, bike or do public transportation. Recycling is mandatory (there will be fines later this year for non-compliance).
I think my worst now is getting “Go cups” for my other addiction –
Alas, had to give that one up because of my stomach, but I still love the smell.
You deserve the most 4’s ever recorded on this site, so far, for that comment. I can barely wait for the opportunity to use that line. I’m still laughing while I type…
stay away from the veal, try the lamb, 🙂
LMAO!!
{rimshot}
And, I refer to all the ex’s as “militant ex-smokers”. I don’t know any that can stand being around smokers…none of that pansy reminiscing for them.
My greatest eco-sin is also smoking related, but has nothing to do with flicking out of car windows. It does, however, have everything to do with butt-tossing down the toilet.
For about 3 months, I lived with the future in-laws in the mossy-oaks of rural Louisiana. They had a septic pond. Some two years after I had evacuated, the pond had to be dredged and low and behold, cigarette filters.
Trust me when I tell you, I’ve spent the last 22 years doing penance for that one. Somethings you just never live down.
So unattractive.
My comeback to the cigarette Nazis:
“I do not encourage you to smoke. Please extend me the same sort of courtesy.” A lot of them shut up while they try to cypher out what courtesy means.
Why are our Democrats voting no on this particular vote? (Watching CSPAN2.)
Oh poop … Biden wants to have a closed session because the allegations are serious but unsubstantiated and hee feels they must protect the reputation of Bolton.
Kerry is PISSED.
Probably because he’s one of only 2.7 people in all of D.C. who remembers just how much Bolton was involved in the corruption, lies, law-breaking, and deaths of Iran-Contra.
Join the bolton diary (Booman’s)and put what you know about Bolton/ contra on there, as I wasn’t aware.
No time tonight to do anything substantive. Go to Google, plug in “John Bolton Iran-Contra.” Read the first five entries. Loads of info there. The guy is as crooked as my dog’s hind leg.
the optimism of those who believe the planet will remain unexploded long enough for environmental damage to matter.
Probably too many sins to count…
Okay…what’s the penance…she cowers under her desk
So far, nobody here’s come up with a penance! We’re off scot-free! Maybe our leader Booman will think of something.
working a bit for, or donating to any one of a number of environmental protection organizations?
Or my favorite, Healing Harvest Forest Foundation.
If you donate 35, you get the DVD. It’s awesome!
Susan-
At first when reading your sins I smugly thought “wow, I never throw that stuff away.”
Then I realized how glad I am that this isn’t a “confess the gross stuff you recycle without properly washing it out” thread.
I’m guilty of that too! OH geez …
But, I have wondered sometimes. .. Let’s say I finish a glass jar of jam. And there’s bits of thick, goopy jam stuck to the sides, and it takes cups and cups of water to scrub it all off. Where’s the environmental trade-off there — using so much water?
And (more or less) beside the point.
You see, the implicit premise here is wrong and insidious, and that’s that environmentalism is or should be a matter of personal responsibility. It’s up to us, as millions of isolated individuals, to buy the right kind of toilet paper.
I can’t buy that. If government is for anything, it’s for orchestrating our individual efforts by means of expansive and consistent public policy. Such policy would simply ban those products which, en masse, despoil our environment. The indictment, in the end, shouldn’t be of ourselves, but should be of our governments that fail to compell us to do the right thing.
And believe me, I’m not arguing against personal responsibility and I understand that it’s critical in light of the fact that the government is entirely unresponsive, but let’s just not forget that we shouldn’t be forced into this position of guilt in the first place.
And the right knows we’re defensive about it and thus is likely to cry ‘hypocrisy’ in an effort to discredit the entire agenda. Let’s not take the bait.
You have a good point. Our governments on three levels have been putting the onus on the individual for years.
Example
“It’s up to the individual not to put poison on his/her lawn.” The meaning of the word environment is lost. We need government policy against harming children and animals with poison lawns chemicals period.
Sins, I have many,
Fun, I have more ; )
Pennance, well….. it’s com’n, I’m sure.
glad to know I’m not the only “sinner” around ; )
just in a silly mood,
The good things first: I put kitty litter in the ashtrays so all cigarettes are extinguished, and there’s no nasty, sour smell. By the way, I feel an affinity for smart people who still smoke.
I often wash the paper plates used in the microwave and reuse them.
Sins: long showers, soft toilet paper, and I’d be lost without paper towels; they’re the most wonderful invention.
We had a composte heap until the rats started coming for dinner.
I believe in the environment and believe everybody should have one.
lime my pastures often enough. And don’t test before I don’t lime.
I am ashamed.