I think that this week’s suggestion for saving the environment with minimal effort is pretty obvious, and many of you are probably already doing it, but hey, it bears discussion anyway. And, of course, one might argue that “minimal effort” is a bit of a misnomer, in this case, but it’s enjoyable effort, so I think it still belongs in my Wednesday series.

Today I’m talking about transportation.

Why drive when you can take a bus? Why take a bus when you can take a bicycle? Why bike when you can walk?

Americans, as we all know, are very into their cars. And really, that’s a habit we need to break, for all kinds of reasons. And I get to be especially self-righteous about it, because I don’t own a car, and in fact I rarely ride in cars. So rarely, indeed, that I almost got carsick the other day with my father, because I was unaccustomed to riding in a car.

I walk pretty much everywhere, and I think that most people should do the same. In a small town like Fort Bragg, there’s no reason not to walk or bike everywhere, other than needing to get to a distant locale, or transporting something heavy. And when this is the case, I take what passes for public transit in this town, sighing all the while, but I’m willing to bet that most of my readers live somewhere with a better public transit system, so they have no excuses.

Walking is awesome because you aren’t in any sort of mechanized contraption at all, which is great, and you’re getting exercise, which is also pretty awesome. Also, you get to stay in contact with your community. I often run into people while walking, and stop to talk with them, and I read notices and take note of what’s going on around me. These are all things that people miss, in cars, so walking is like this magical world where you actually meet people, instead of being isolated in a box.

Bicycling is faster, for sure, which makes it a good alternative for people in a hurry, as well as people who need to go a fair distance; it’s much easier to bike 10 miles than walk 10 miles. And you also get exercise biking, and kind of get to see what’s going on around you, which makes it pretty excellent. I’m all about the biking, especially for commutes.

I would argue that bussing is a step down from biking and walking; while it gets you where you need to go, you are pretty isolated from the outside world. But you do get to interact with people on the bus. On our bus, of course, that means you get to interact with the crazed fringes of society, since most people in Fort Bragg with money and sanity have cars, but I like the bus drivers, and I’m friendly with them. And taking a bus is better than driving, because you’re on a motor vehicle, but it’s a vehicle that would have been moving anyway, and you’re sharing the environmental cost with others, so, you know. Yay.

Driving, in my opinion, should only be reserved for the most dire of circumstances. If I owned a car, I would virtually never use it, especially because at this point I would feel guilty for driving to Harvest when I could take the bus, or carpool with a friend. Trips to the City are about all I would use a car for, and that’s only because our public transit system sucks too much to take it to the City; I would have to pay a small fortune to bus to Santa Rosa, and then take a commuter bus into San Francisco, and I just can’t cope with taking the MTA to Santa Rosa. But I would totally take a train, if we had one.

People use all sorts of excuses to justify car use. “But it’s so quick, and easy,” they say. I would argue that we shouldn’t be hurrying through life. Making time to get outside and interact with the community is important, and yes, walking, biking, and bussing take longer than driving, but shave an hour off your tv time if it’s really that big an issue, or ride a bike to do errands instead of going to the gym. I think that most people find that once they start walking away from their cars, they can make time to enjoy their lives a little more. The curse of convenience can be overcome, and you might even find yourself enjoying it; walking to do errands helps me to unwind, and keeps the world a bit more interesting, for me.

We Americans are also addicted to a sense of panicked, frenzied time crunch, and I don’t think that’s a good thing either. By slowing down yourself, you may find that the world around you slows down too, because it has no other choice. And sure, people might grumble at first, but they will get used to it, and they might even see the advantages of your slower lifestyle, and start joining you.

So, my car driving readers, the next time you leave the house and you’re about to grab the car keys, set them back down, and look up a bus schedule, or haul out your bicycle, or put on a pair of sensible shoes, and take a walk.

This is yesterday’s sunrise. See how the light is all creepy, red, and polarized? It would have been even more amazing with a really monstrous digital SLR, but this picture is still pretty damn awesome. The sun literally looked like a ruby in the smoke, and the light was bright red. For several hours. And again almost all day today. I really cannot describe the light; if you’re been near epic fires, you’ll know the kind of light I am talking about, it’s so orangey-red that you almost feel like everything is on fire.

And now, this from the National Weather Service:

“A RED FLAG WARNING MEANS THAT CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EITHER OCCURRING NOW…OR WILL SHORTLY. A COMBINATION OF STRONG WINDS…LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY…AND WARM TEMPERATURES WILL CREATE EXPLOSIVE FIRE GROWTH POTENTIAL.”

I think this means that more epic sunrises can be expected. The red flag warning is not projected to be lifted until Sunday.

The exciting thing, in my point of view, about saving the environment with minimal effort is that it also tends to save money. Which I think adds further ammunition to my argument that anyone can make a difference in the condition of the environment, and that we should be promoting the fact that you can save money and help the Earth, rather than telling people that they need to buy stuff to make a difference.

So, this week, we’re going to talk about cleaning.

Cleaning with harsh chemicals is not so awesome from a number of perspectives. If you have, say, pets or infants, you should be avoiding harsh chemicals because they can be harmful. Inhaling fumes from cleaners is not good for fragile minds and lungs. Also, animals and children have both been known to be in places where they shouldn’t, and that raises a risk of ingestion of icky chemicals, which is not good.

Harsh chemicals are also not very good for you, either, and they hurt the environment. The whole process of making cleaning chemicals, packaging them in shiny plastic things, advertising them in glossy print magazines…you get the idea.

The green industry has obligingly come up with a whole slew of “environmentally friendly” cleaners which they want to sell you for exorbitant prices, complete with special “fresh green apple” and “luscious lavender” scents, but I’m here to tell you that those really aren’t a good option. Sure, they are better than harsh chemicals, but they are still not ideal.

What you really need, my friends, is a big old jug of vinegar, and a box of baking soda. And some lemons. That’s really about it. Oh, and some rags would be a good idea. Vinegar, lemon, and baking soda will stand in for pretty much any cleaner you can imagine, naturally, and they will do a terrific job. If you look under my sink, all you can see is a big old jug of distilled white vinegar and a box of baking soda. No clutter of toilet bowl scrubber, all purpose cleaner, glass cleaner, countertop cleaner, floor cleaning solution, etc etc.

So, how do you use these three magical cleaning ingredients? It’s pretty simple.

Vinegar makes a great all purpose cleaner. You can use it straight, or mix it up in a 50/50 solution. It’s absolutely terrific for cleaning windows, either with a soft cloth or some of that old newspaper you have sitting around. Spritz vinegar on your counters, toilet, tub, shower, sinks, whatever, and wipe it off or allow it to sit briefly and then scrub. For stubborn stains, make a paste with baking soda and vinegar; baking soda is a very mild and very effective abrasive which can be used anywhere to lift stains.

Vinegar also helps to break down soap scum and water stains, and you can apparently throw it in with your laundry as a fabric softener, although I have not tried this. Lemon juice works in much the same way, only it smells vastly better. You can also use a little trick I’m rather fond of for polishing brass: smear some baking soda into a lemon rind, and rub the rind on the brass. Voila, shiny!

Pretty much the only thing you can’t use vinegar and lemon juice on is silver, but don’t worry, that’s why you have baking soda. Pour boiling water and baking soda over a tray full of silver, allow to rest 20 minutes, and then go to town on the polishing action. And for regular old dishes, consider keeping a big jug of castile soap around; it cleans both dishes and people!

Ditch the sponges; use rags, which can be washed and reused until they fall apart. In addition to being softer, more all-purpose, and more environmentally friendly than sponges, rags also have the advantage of not harboring bacteria, so they are better for your health. Yay! Depending on the size of your house and your level of commitment, you can also use rags to mop the floor for a cleaner finish, and take a tip from my food service days; use your feet to scuff rags across the floor, rather than kneeling to mop with rags. You  may look slightly silly scooting around on the floor on a pair of rags, but it will spare your knees and back.

Basically, what it boils down to is that I am not willing to clean my house with something I won’t put in my mouth. Not that I go around licking counters or anything, but it just seems like a generally good practice.

In the numerous conversations I had with friends last weekend, almost every one included the line “the end of days is coming” or “did someone order an apocalypse?” We were, of course, referencing the crazy weather this weekend, but we were also more generally talking about weather around the country and the world. And seriously, people, it is starting to feel rather apocalyptic out here on the third rock from the Sun.

The thunder/lightning/hailstorm we had on Friday? It was weird. Really, really weird. We don’t get thunderstorms, and it reminded me of Vermont summers; Baxt commented that it reminded her of the Midwest. This is not the sort of weather we have on the California coast. And rain in June? Highly suspicious. When I stepped outside on Friday afternoon, it filled me with excitement, but also puzzlement, because that sort of weather is very out of place here. The air smelled like ozone, and it was heavy and warm and still, and it reminded me of the time there was a tornado in Vermont, and we all ran out to see.

We also apparently had a lot of dry lightning strikes which sparked fires, lots and lots of little fires, and planes kept seeing more. Our fires didn’t make the news, because they weren’t very large, and they were primarily in wooded regions, rather than residential areas, but I definitely took note. This is a very dry summer, and those fires could have been a lot worse if people hadn’t been on top of things.

So just in Mendocino County, we had fires, strange weather, and the occasional earthquake. To be fair, occasional earthquakes aren’t that unusual, so no one really notices, and perhaps it is not fair to count them in my apocalyptic assessment of planetary health. In the Midwest, we’ve got epic flooding, which appears to be getting worse by the day, and I just read in the Times that people are thinking about abandoning entire towns rather than trying to rebuild them.

And here we are, talking about offshore oil drilling while New Orleans is still floundering in the filth we haven’t bothered to clean up. Is it just me, or is there a profound and perhaps even willful disconnect?

I know that unusual weather does happen now and then, and that it’s hard to draw any conclusions from a limited data set. The fact of the matter is that freak thunderstorms do happen, and if I had, say, two thousand years of data from this area, I might find that the statistical anomaly of Friday’s weather wasn’t all that unusual, in the grand scheme of things. And obviously flooding in the Midwest happens, because it’s happened several times in my memory, and so do earthquakes and fires and all sorts of other things. So it’s not really fair to say that there’s more peculiar weather now than there was before, because I don’t really have enough data.

But, I tell you what, it feels pretty darn apocalyptic to me. And it seems like a sign that we should perhaps be paying attention to. There’s a message in the weather, and I don’t know about you, but I am reading it loud and clear. I can’t help but wonder if this is the Earth’s form of intifada (which means “shaking off” in Arabic, as I hope we all know). It’s almost as though the Earth is twitching, like the muscles of an impatient horse, to see if it can shake some of the flies away.

Maybe the Earth is thinking it’s time for a hard reset, in electronics parlance. It has tried error messages, and those don’t seem to be working out. So watch out for the Four Horsemen, homechickens.

So there I was, minding my own business, chatting with Baxt, when she said that she got epic hail at her house. And I was all like “Dude!” and she was all like “it was weird.” And suddenly, there was a huge-ass mother of all thunderclaps basically right over my house which caused Mr Bell to rocket into the air, followed by a wicked lightning strike, and I looked outside, and saw this:

And I was all like “damn, dude, those are some bad-ass clouds,” and then I popped into the alley, and saw this:

And I was like “HOLY CRAP.”

So I ran inside to say “holy crap” to Baxt, and I grabbed my camera, and I went outside to take pictures, and then it started raining, so I had to hide in my doorway and take pictures:

Look, kids, I am not from the Midwest. It does not thunder, rain, or lightning in June.

Ever.

Period.

The end days?

They are here.

Did somebody order an apocalypse?

For this week’s installment in the saving the environment with minimal personal effort or expense series, it’s time to talk about one of my favourite issues: packaging and containers! Packaging, as we all know, eats up tremendous amounts of natural resources. A surprising amount of packaging is not recyclable, and even when it is, it’s still pretty darn wasteful.

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to make packaging go further. In addition to, you know, helping the planet and stuff, some of the things discussed in this entry will also reduce clutter around the house and save money, which makes them even more awesome. Yay! Awesome!

Reusing bags is perhaps one of the easiest and best things you can do. I have a couple of sturdy grocery bags made from recycled Pete-knows-what, and they are insanely strong; I routinely use them to haul 40 pounds of cat litter home from the feed store. Most grocery stores offer a bag credit to people who bring their own bags, and reusing your own bags also means that you won’t end up with a crazy buildup of grocery bags rattling around the corners of the house. Hooray!

You can also reuse the bags you use for produce and other goods. I generally avoid bags when possible, and I try to wash out and re-use produce bags as much as I can. Just because you carried snow peas in a bag last week doesn’t mean you can’t rinse it, hang it to dry, and use it to transport cherries this week. When the bags finally start to shred, then you can bring them to a plastic bag collection site; most stores have them.

Furthermore, why stop with bags? Consider purchasing stuff in bulk and re-using containers, too. All of my soaps and bath supplies, for example, are purchased in bulk and pumped directly into containers I bring from home. You can also get things like rice, beans, nuts, dried fruit, candy, and so forth in bulk. Bulk foods are typically cheaper and way more fresh than packaged goods, and the selection is comparable (if not better than) the array on the shelf. In the case of bulk foods, make sure to get a tare weight for the container you use, so that you aren’t charged for the weight of the container along with the food; if your grocer doesn’t have an honor-system for tare weights, bring along an empty version of the container for the checker to weigh to determine the tare.

You can also expand your personal war on packaging a bit, if you feel like it. For example, you can stop purchasing packaged foods which are easy enough to make from scratch, like cookies, breads, sauces, and so forth. Home-made foods are cheaper, and I think they taste better. In addition, you can control the ingredients much more easily to create the flavor you like, or to avoid things you are allergic to. When you get in the habit of making things like pasta sauce in huge bulk batches, it’s not that big a deal, and I suspect that within a few months, you’ll be turning up your nose at the packaged stuff anyway.

For tea drinkers, consider giving up teabags. In addition to just being lame, teabags waste a lot of packaging. Once you get hooked on looseleaf, you won’t want to go back.

In short, avoid commercial packaging as much as possible, and reuse the bags and containers you have until they fall apart. This isn’t that hard to do, and it makes a pretty major difference. Like some of the other environmentally-friendly things I’ve recommended, bringing your own bags/containers/etc also saves you money, which is, you know, always a good thing. In most of the world, the practice of conserving containers and bags is routine, so why not join the club?

Here’s the next entry in my little series on how to save the world with minimal effort. I’ve already talked about some ways to address water usage, and this week I’m going to start talking about how to reduce the amount of stuff you bring into your house in the first place, because that’s a bit part of reducing your footprint in the world.

In order for something to be included in this series, I have to ask myself if it’s something that pretty much anyone could do without an unreasonable amount of effort. In some cases, the things I recommend actually involve negative effort (as in, don’t buy shit), and in other cases, a little bit of effort is involved, but I still don’t think it involves undue sacrifice or difficulties. Others might disagree. This week’s entry in particular is more open to debate, I think, but I’m writing it anyway.

This week, I’m talking about how to reduce the amount of useless mail in your life. The volume of paper in the form of junk mail, unopened bank statements, and so forth which gets tossed in this country is pretty incredible, and it’s easy to reduce.

Start with junk mail: sign up for a junk mail service. These services send you addressed and pre-paid envelopes which you stuff with your junk mail. They study your junk mail, and in return, they get your name pulled from mailing lists so that you don’t get as much junk mail. I don’t actually get that much junk mail, so I don’t know the name of a service off the top of my head, which means y’all are going to have to do a little Googling for this one.

Cancel your newspaper subscription: if you subscribe to a newspaper, stop. Most newspapers have online editions which are fully accessible, often for free, so you will save money and paper. If your paper doesn’t reprint everything online, respectfully write and suggest that they start. You can even indicate that you would be willing to pay a fee to access premium content, if you want. I know that some people really like the dead tree editions of newspapers, but, uh, get over it.

Cancel paper statements: almost all banks, lenders, and credit card companies offer an electronic statement option, so use it. By stopping paper statements, you can save a bunch of paper, and reduce the risk of identity theft (assuming you toss statements after reading them, although I guess a lot of people save them). You will still get some physical mail, but the amount will be greatly reduced. Plus, you’ll free up a ton of space in your filing cabinets by having your bills archived on someone else’s dime.

Online ordering: bundle orders together as much as possible to reduce packaging, and, as always, ask yourself if you really need whatever it is that you’re ordering, or see if you can get it locally to reduce the use of packaging/shipping while supporting a local business. (Unless, of course, you live in Fort Bragg, where you can’t buy anything useful locally.)

While some people might argue that paper is recyclable, and therefore not that big a deal, paper waste is a big issue. By reducing overall demand for paper, we can reduce the stress on the world’s forests, and reduce pollution from paper mills and printshops. Also, paper recycling is expensive, time consuming, and often polluting, so even if you do recycle your paper, it doesn’t totally absolve you. Furthermore, a lot of paper which people innocently recycle ends up in landfills, for a variety of reasons, so even when you think you’re doing the right thing, you might be foiled by the recycling industry. Besides, who wants a bunch of stupid mail anyway?

For this week’s installment on how to help the environment without exerting that much effort, we’re going to talk about a subject dear to the hearts of pretty much anyone under the age of eight: pee pee! Urine, as some might prefer. Pee, for those of you who have been flushing it down your toilet at every opportunity, is a substance with myriad possibilities which go far beyond mere flushing. Plus, it’s fun to talk about.

For amateur players, there’s one simple thing to do with pee which can actually have a pretty big impact on the environment, and that’s “letting it mellow” as they used to say here in California during the drought days. Contrary to popular belief, your toilet will not actually explode, leak, or spontaneously burst into song if urine is left in the bowl.

If you allow urine to accumulate and flush it, you’re going to accomplish several things. First off, you’re going to save on your water bill, because flushing the toilet requires, duh, water. Saving on your water bill is generally a good thing, especially if you live in an area where water rates are going up due to increased population density or drought conditions.

You’re also going to use less water, which is generally agreed to be good for the environment. Also, when you flush pee down the toilet, you’re using perfectly useful potable water, and you’re introducing it to all kinds of nasty things in the sewer/septic system, thereby rendering it useless until it has been subjected to a variety of treatment processes. Which is just kind of dumb. Limiting flushing can have a big impact, especially when everyone in a community does it.

For those with septic systems, reduced flushing also lowers the load on the septic system, which is a good thing as well. Furthermore, for ladies who are concerned about stoppages as a result of toilet paper boluses, used toilet paper can be discreetly disposed of in the garbage, which will also reduce the load on the septic system. The practice of trashing, rather than flushing, toilet paper is actually pretty common in many parts of the world, for all you urbanites who are quivering at the very thought. (Naturally, when trashing toilet paper, one does run the risk of contaminating the soil and groundwater through landfills, unless you incinerate your paper waste. However, one could say the same thing about diapers, and no one’s suggesting we get rid of those.)

For the more advanced, here’s a short list of exciting things you can do with pee.

• Use it as fertilizer. Diluted in water in around a 10:1 solution, pee makes great fertilizer. You can actually make it less dilute, depending on the plant, although you do run a risk of creating a bit of a smell.
• Also for gardening: repel unwanted animal visitors, such as deer, with a healthy sprinkling of urine around their favourite spots.
• Make gunpowder with it! You’ll need a lot of urine, and it will need to be stale before being strained slowly through woodchips, straw or other organic material for the saltpeter. Not for the faint of heart.
• Use it in textile production; urine has historically been used to bleach whites, full wool, and set dyes. You’ll get bonus authenticity points at ren fairs if you can boast a genuine urine finish, I promise. Again, the urine has to be allowed to stand, to allow ammonia to develop.

In an interesting historical sidenote, when penicillin was still extremely expensive during the Second World War, physicians distilled the urine of their patients in the Pacific Theatre to reclaim, uh, penicillin. But you don’t need to do that. Unless you want to. But consult your doctor first, ok?

So, kids, that’s the urine special. Sometime we’ll talk about number two, as well, but for now, here are some exciting toilet tips for further water conserving greatness:

• Put a brick in it. Most toilets, even low-flow toilets, use more water than strictly needed per flush. Stick a brick or another large object in the toilet bowl to displace water, thereby reducing the amount used per flush. You can also adjust your little toilet bobbly thingie (and don’t try and tell me that’s not a technical term) to lower the overall water level in your toilet.
• Consider installing a handwashing sink over your toilet; a number of companies make neat little modules which allow you to wash your hands in the water flowing into the toilet tank, thereby killing two birds with one stone, as it were.
• Get rid of your toilet (not for all those reading along at home, I know). Composting toilets, incinerating toilets, and plain old outhouses use little to no water, and they produce a sterile byproduct when handled properly. Yay!

I figure that since I am always talking trash about the green movement, I should put my money where my mouth is and start a weekly series on things one can do to help the environment. And stuff. Since the Farmers’ Market is on Wednesdays, it gives me a giddy sense of connection to talk about environmental stuff on Wednesdays, so here’s the first post. If y’all like it, I’ll keep doing it. If y’all don’t…I don’t know what will happen. Something exciting, in all probability.

At any rate, today I decided to talk about the combat shower because, well, because it’s a pretty useful water-saving skill to have. You may also know the combat shower as the “navy shower,” or by some other creative slang term, in which case, please add that slang term to the comments, because I collect slang terms like cat hair.

Long before I cared about the environment, I was familiar with the combat shower, for the simple reason that I grew up in a house with a very limited water supply. Showers had to be made as efficient as possible, or we would run out of water, and that would suck. For years, I was known for my eerily rapid showers (in part because I don’t wash my hair every damn time I shower like some kind of OCD freak).

The goal of a combat shower is to get as clean as possible while using as little water as possible. In my experience, I think that I actually get cleaner when I take combat showers than I do when I take regular showers, perhaps because taking a combat shower ironically gives one more time to shower.

How is this, you might ask?

Because, my homechickens, when you take a combat shower, you don’t leave the shower running continuously. Instead, you hop in, turn on the water, get wet, turn the water off, and then soap yourself. If you’re washing your hair, you get it good and soaking in this first pass, and then lather up your hair while the shower is off. Since the water isn’t pushing the soap off, willy nilly, and you’re not worried about running out of hot water because, duh, the shower’s not running, you can scrub all the little piggies, and it’s a grand old time. Incidentally, for those of you who shave various body parts, this is a dandy time to do that. The heat opens up all your pores, making it easier and more comfortable to shave, and the soap makes a great shaving lubricant.

Then you turn the water back on, rinse off, and hop out. Unless you washed your hair, in which case you turn the water off, apply conditioner if you’re into that sort of thing, and then turn it back on again to rinse the conditioner out before turning turning the water off and toweling dry. (Or air drying, whatever works for you.)

For those of you who have long hair, like I do, you can appreciate the amount of water this saves, and people who have less hair can still save a lot of water by showering this way. I’d argue that it’s a pretty small step which saves a significant amount of water, and it doesn’t require:

A. A major lifestyle adjustment

B. A purchase

or

C. A sacrifice of any kind

For extra credit, set up a greywater reclamation system, and use it to flush the toilet or water the garden. Or both. Or, heck, you can fill water balloons with it and fire them at your neighbors. It’s your choice.

The New York Times has a great feature article about an experimental “sustainability house” at Oberlin College which was basically engineered entirely by students, and I think it’s worth reading, because the concept is just so awesome. Having attended a small liberal arts college or two myself, I am well aware of the power that student groups can have, and it’s wonderful to see that profiled in a major news outlet. And, I think that the article is very well reported, offering subtle suggestions while also putting a strong emphasis on the idea that if you want to live green, you’ve got to make some sacrifices; but those sacrifices don’t have to be all that bad, if you do it right and have a positive attitude.

One of my alma maters recently sent out a big brochure about how they are greening the campus, and attempting to make it more sustainable (the irony of telling me this in a giant glossy brochure was not lost on me). It seems to be a growing trend in American colleges from small and liberal to large and conservative, and it’s got me pretty excited, personally.

I think that college campuses can sometimes turn into really interesting microcosms of society, and since so many Americans are going to college these days, students are definitely taking their college experiences with them into the outside world, which means that people who go to college on sustainable campuses will bring some of that with them when they graduate. Such programs also encourage ecological innovation, which means that it may be easier and easier to enact small changes to make a big difference.

Some of the measures taken in the house the Times profiled were pretty cool, like having a shower timer, unplugging one of the two fridges in the house, and using reclaimed greywater for flushing. All of these things are pretty easy to do, and they can make a big difference; so can having signs to remind people to turn lights out, which the people in Oberlin House do as well.

One thing I thought was really interesting was that in addition to encouraging ecological sustainability, the project also supports the growth of community. The students are encouraged to study together in the living room to use less energy than they would working individually in their rooms, and they talk through various issues as a collective, from how to improve efficiency to how to resolve conflict. They don’t have a television, to save on energy, and I imagine that also really helps to build a collective. I think that’s an important part of the college experience, the whole working as a collective idea, because otherwise you’ll end up a bitter misanthrope who can’t get along with anyone, like me. And I like the idea of working to benefit the community while building your own community, because I am a dirty hippie at heart.

I also like that the project doesn’t penalize students. If you take a long shower, it’s not like you’re getting fined, although other people might give you a friendly ribbing. It’s not about who is the greenest one of all, it’s about finding constructive, cool, and innovative ways to make a positive change.

As well as creepy ones: there’s a picture of John Edwards posted over the shower to motivate people into making their showers brief.

The article really illustrated the friendly, community-based aspect of the green movement, showing how people can make changes without spending a lot of money, and encouraging the green movement I want to see, which is less focused on consumer culture and more focused on restructuring your life and community. It was an object lesson in all of the things the green movement could be, if it tried.