Macifesto Sustainabilis

I am making this environmental sustainability blog to give you a few tips that I’ve researched myself. I don’t expect anybody to spend the amount of time I do reading articles or reports on these topics but hope that those who want to make a difference in their habits can take a lesson from these examples and feel more in control of their effect on the planet.

Topics in this arm of the blog will be relatable and relatively easy to accomplish. I won’t ask you to grow a subsistence farm in your backyard and sell your car. I also won’t preach anything I haven’t accomplished myself, and that in itself should be proof that it’s easy.

The reason I am doing this is half for you, and half for me:

1. I have found that many environmental tips and tricks include lots of numbers and statistics that are confusing and ultimately don’t make an impact to an everyday reader. To an environmentalist it would be significant to cite the annual 4.6 metric tons of CO2 of a car, but to most, it’s just another number that won’t get remembered after this sentence is done. My goal is to contextualize these topics in a story-based format so the concepts have life after you keep scrolling.

2. It’s been a dream of mine to work in environmental sustainability, but the field is enormous. The plan is to narrow down topics I find particularly interesting to work on by researching each topic and writing about it here. Eventually I might find one sticks more than others and will pursue that area professionally. If you learn something along the way and reduce your impact on the planet, all the better.

As this unfolds I hope you can keep me honest - some of the subject matter has a tendency to go against people’s current way of life but I can’t emphasize enough, it is not a critique of anybody’s current lifestyle.

Lastly, this is not me telling you what to do, it is an opportunity to share what I’ve learned. So please don’t take any of this as a preachy holier-than-thou blog. I could care less what you do with your recyclables but if you want to make a difference, that’s really great news. We can preserve some nature together.

Easiest Tip - Vote Green

TL;DR Consult the Protect Our Winters Voter Guidebook to learn quickly and efficiently about your local and national candidates and their stance on all environmental issues.

This is easier than changing your paper towel strategy or even choosing a bike ride over a car ride. All you have to do is quickly research your candidates to understand where they will put their energy when in office. The best tool I’ve seen for this with regard to the environmental issues that effect climate change is the Protect Our Winters Voter Guidebook.

In it you can enter your address and it will show you all the candidates on your ballot and where they sit on these key topics. This is the most crucial way to create a change for good because our representatives have far more reach than we do. they’re actions while in office will be able to push our economy toward the energy transition and create a viable path toward carbon neutrality.’

If you ever felt helpless during the wildfires, or amazed by the air clarity we experienced during the early days of the lockdown, voting to incite change and progress toward lowering our global emissions is the perfect outlet. The industrial scale of carbon emissions is the single biggest reason why we faced these monumental changes this year and it can be addressed on a state and global scale with the right advocates in office.

Climate change became a political and partisan issue but it really shouldn’t be one.

It’s really that simple, I don’t think there’s much more I can say on this. Go vote.

Keep the Blue Mountains green by casting your vote, NSW Australia

Bacon and T-Shirts - The Paper Towel Solution

TL;DR Cut up your old t-shirts and use them instead of buying and throwing away paper towels each week.

Let’s look at another everyday way to reduce your environmental impact. Paper Towels. These things are convenient, they’re a crutch for young parents and a must for most pet owners, but beyond that, I’m here to tell you that they are a thing of the past.

Stats are usually a good way to communicate the impacts of paper towel use, but I don’t find them very effective. Tell me a big number and I’ll raise my eyebrows, maybe give you a half-hearted “wow”, but it won’t keep me up at night, regardless of the magnitude. Instead of quoting great factual articles filled with statistics, I’ll tell you the way to avoid paper towels without sacrificing convenience.

Cut up your unused T-shirts.

I am a big fan of t-shirts. I love them until they develop holes and fray at the neckline. In my blunder years I had a World Industries Flame Boy Tee that was more holes than fabric by freshman year. My Mom led a successful campaign to ultimately throw the holey rag away. Nowadays my better half gives me healthy direction not to wear these shirts in public. After a while, there’s a pile-up. You can only really wear so many shirts until your drawers overflow and you have to make the heartbreaking decision of parting with your beloved tee or your spouse will donate/toss it when you’re not home.

The Flame Boy Tee before it’s chronic use wore holes. Circa 6th grade birthday dance party.

Surreptitious disposal and Goodwill are great programs for growing up but there’s another option that can give your favorite shirt a second life. Cut up the old shirt into squares with a sharp pair of scissors. After a thorough washing, you have rags that will get daily use.

Our system is to have two small boxes under our sink, one has clean rags, one has dirty rags. About once per month we wash the rags on warm and voila: a box of freshies awaits the next cleaning session.

The only exception I can think of is bacon. To dry the grease off bacon you need a paper towel, a good alternative is using a metal drying rack which incidentally lets you bake your bacon in the oven. A superior way to cook the magical meat, as endorsed by Antony Bourdain himself.

So give it a try, you could save money and save the trips to take out the trash that paper towels are so guilty of filling. Worst case scenario is you free up your drawer for a little breathing room and go back to paper towels.

Beer - In a Bottle or a Can?

TL;DR Always choose aluminum over glass when you have the option, it saves energy and has a higher recycle rate than glass.

Green Tip: Save the plastic straw by using a red vine to drink your canned beer!

To beer or not to beer has been a question for some, but not me. It’s always beer here. However, the choices can be daunting with the variety of micro brews that are clearly recession-proof.

Before you go down the usual checklist of IPA vs easy drinking, narrow it down by the vessel. Some folks think that beer is classier in a bottle. They may also think, since glass is a truly renewable material that they are doing the environment a favor by choosing to drink beer from a glass bottle.

Aluminum cans are actually the better choice for the environment. The main reason is the things that happen outside of your interaction with the beer. Let’s look at the process:

-          Beer gets bottled in a factory

-          Heavy bottles get transported through their supply chains. An empty glass receptacle weighs in at 6 ounces vs aluminum at less than 1 ounce. The further the brewery, the higher the fuel emissions, so drink local

-          You pick it off the shelf and likely transport it back home – or maybe you just need that sweet sweet nectar in the alleyway and crush it before even getting home, thanks 2020

-          I’ll assume since you’re reading this blog you then recycle the bottle, though depending on where you live that can be easy or a royal pain

-          The heavy bottle is then transported to the recycling facility and sorted*

-          Depending on said facility it may have another trip to make before it is then processed for reuse*

-          This process is likely a melting frenzy that requires higher temperatures to melt glass than that of aluminum

-          Once that recycled glass makes back into bottle form*, you repeat the process again

Take that process and reduce the fuel needed to transport it each time, reduce the heat needed to reuse it and on average you’ve achieved 96% energy savings vs the 26.5% with glass.

The coolest part about aluminum is that nearly 75% of all aluminum produced in the US is still in use today. Not only that, but the profit recyclers gain from the infinitely recyclable material more than pays for the process itself. It is one of the only truly closed loop materials we have. Unlike glass.

I am not saying that wine drinkers are polluters, but I am saying if you have the choice, choose aluminum. At times a nice glass of vino is just the ticket. One big caveat here is if you’re really serious, you’ll go the growler route and own all the materials yourself, there’s almost always a greener route to go.

It goes beyond booze, building and car parts contribute to this circularity at a much larger scale, think of the wiring and aluminum housing that goes into your electronics, the one in your hand or pocket now. That could have been an IPA can in a former life, or perhaps, if you’re responsible about your electronics disposal, your phone will be a Kolsch can in it’s next life.

The last thing that should be obvious but bears repeating: recycle. Not all facilities have the capabilities to process glass and too many recyclables get lost in the trash bin and wind up in landfills which is easy to avoid by taking personal responsibility for your refuse.

…if only

So cheers to you, cans may not make the satisfying clink but they will live to see another cycle.

* All these parts in the process assume the system is working perfectly, that’s not always the case and the facilities don’t always exist in your municipality. Furthermore, not all breweries are using recycled materials, they may be using virgin glass or plastic.

More Technical Info:

• Eco Guide to Responsible Drinking via Slate

• The State of Curbside Recycling Report

• When I recycle a beer bottle does it secretly end up In the landfill? by Grist