White Tiger’s Lair

In the spirit of Floho last post I thought today I would post some random thoughts.

Having become a bit of a clean tech geek and working in the renewable energy field (with a roommate who works for the Environmental Ministry) I am surrounded by “things you can do to save the earth” all day.  This is something I am starting to take to heart in my own small way, nothing like a very interesting blogger who is making a change every day http://greenasathistle.com/ but still some changes.

There are plenty of good ideas to steal. For example, I could not live in a paperless office, I know I know, save the trees, but still I want the feel of paper and I to be able to read it horizontally or on the train and be able to write notes and highlight etc. So to help lessen the impact I make the font and margins small to fit as much on one side as possible and whenever possible I use both sides (though of course sometimes in business this is simply unacceptable.  I reuse glass jars instead of buying plastic containers, and I recycle other packaging (yeah ok living in Germany this is normal practice and nothing special, but it was new to me).  I go to the library every week instead of the book store, I have also starting buying things in 2^nd hand stores, previously I had occasionally gone to 2nd hand stores if I wanted a quirky or unusual item, now I find they are my first stop.  I need a sweater because it is getting really cold, off I go to the second hand store, need silverware, pants, belt or a necklaces (note: necklace chains do not hold up well in the washing machine) I can usually find what I need for 1-4 Euro.  I am reusing items, using less raw materials and preventing things from ending up in the landfills , at least not yet anyway.

Ja Ja, ok, so my initial reasons were not so noble it was more an issue of I needed things and could not afford to keep paying regular prices for them.  But we can put aside the ulterior motives for now and just say I am being very efficient, money and energy wise.

I had thought of creating some metric to track how much money, space in landfill, CO2 I am saving, but that is very difficult.  It is like the record industry saying that every time an album is downloaded off the internet they are losing the profit from a CD sale.  My buying habits are very elastic (price dependant) and getting two sweaters for a total of 8 Euro does not mean I would have spent 20 Euro each on new ones.  And since (as far as economics is concerned) I am not a rational decision maker, I base decisions on things other than economic value for example the style of clothes, color and fit, not just the warmth value, it is impossible to determine the amount of money saved.