Make your french fries go the extra mile
Here are the things I’m no good at as far the environment goes:
I leave the faucet running for too long when I’m brushing my teeth.
Likewise, I rarely turn the shower off when I’m shaving my legs.
Although I cut down significantly on gasoline consumption by moving my office into my home, I still drive an hour each way to get to interviews and photo ops, which means I pump a lot of gas into my car.
However, when it comes to BEING GREEN, I’m good at other things.
Joe and I recycle even though our city doesn’t have curbside recycling. We drive our aluminum cans, glass bottles, pizza boxes and milk cartons to a recycling dump in St. Pete, where we meticulously sort through the trash, flinging each material into its appropriate receptacle.
We grocery shop using tote bags, except for when we’re short on plastic bags (best used for scooping dog shit off my neighbors’ lawns.)
We use those fancy corkscrew energy-saver light bulbs that were all the rage two years ago and we save all of our used vegetable oil for our friend Shannon’s boyfriend Joel, an Alaskan king crab fisherman who drives a diesel truck converted to run on vegetable oil.
Today Shannon picked up two years worth of our used vegetable oil. Stay tuned to find out how far Joel traveled on our saturated fat.
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At first when you said you use plastic bags to scoop up dog shit off your neighbors’ lawn I thought you meant that you are scooping up your neighbors’ dogs’ poop, then I realized you meant YOUR dogs’ poop.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:23 pmAha moment.
I try to use the cloth bags as much as possible too but I have the same thing going on with the plastic bags. They’re too useful. I use them to pack lunches or to scoop cat poop out of the litter box. When we get low I’ll use those at the grocery store. Nice oil, dude. Where did you keep all of that? I have visions of our dogs/cats/kids getting into it no matter where we hid it. (When I was a kid my dad left a full oil pan out after an oil change–Why? I don’t know–and our dalmatian, Nestle, sat in it. It was like that scene in 101 Dalmatians where they try to make themselves look like black labs, only it was just her butt. Hilarious.) So maybe I have a thing about leftover oil.
January 21st, 2010 at 4:22 pmI initially gasped when reading you run the water when you brush your teeth. But then you really redeemed yourself with the whole oil, and recycling bit. That’s pretty awesome.
My mom is a recycling Nazi. When she and my dad travel to Florida, she actually packs garbage in her suitcase to bring back home to recycle.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:54 pmi am so happy that you’re back!
you know my parents – we have the most complex garbage/recycling/compost system in the world here @ our house!
can june get here soon!? i need kurpielas & sun!!
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:49 pm[...] Throughout the week I went and had lunch with a friend, we talked over tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I picked up some oil for my boyfriend when he returns from Alaska. He drives a diesel van which he converted to run on veggie oil. So my friend saved up some oil for him. [...]
January 26th, 2010 at 11:36 pm