Journey To Green

The title of this post was inspired by the Neil Sadaka song “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.”  Some how I had a general idea to write about reducing the amount of time I spend in the shower each morning.  I do not know how or why that came to mind other than I like hot showers and on more than one occasion, they are extremely long.   So, I must have been feeling a smidgen of guilt.  The operative work is “smidgen” because those long hot showers seem to come at the right time.

One often hear how there is a shortage of water or there will be at some point in the future. A shortage so dire that rationing can occur and all kinds of terrible things will happen just to have water.  Initially, it appears to be a dubious claim.  You may think, how can that be?  The reality is the issue is with potable water.  The earth’s surface is mostly covered in water but  but it’s salty.  In order for it to be usable, this water would have to be desalinated, which is an extremely expensive process.  What would be done with the by-product?

Is conservation the best way?  Is rain water another options?  Is there freshwater available?  Is transport an issue?  I will continue to think about these questions and more as I try to find ways to cut back on on my water consumption.

When I started this blog it was to try and make sense of all the do’s and don’t of the moving to a more “green” life.  Since then, I’ve gotten a job that requires me to commute almost two hours a day.  Needless to say this sucks.  Not only from an environmentalystandpoint but a physical one as well.  It was suggested that I take the train or in my case trains.  It would take me three or more hours to do so.  

In many respects the job I went to mirrors my gasoline consumption in terms of being more wasteful  because I’ve started wasting more paper, food, and time.  The company is a very heavy paper consumer, that is, they use a whole hell of a lot of paper.  In fact, they have a green committee that prints, the “green” newsletter and posts it on a bulletin board on each floor.  I found that hilarious.  What I find depressing is that less than six months ago, I was using much less paper and gas, now I feel like I walked backed to the nineties and can’t stop.

Is the green movement helpless when companies waste so much under the guise of prodouctivity?