Little Things

The average UK citizen has an environmental footprint half that of the average American. That's roughly half as much pollution emitted, half as many resources consumed, half as much environmental degradation wrought, etc. Why is this? Here are some of my ideas, just from my own observations. (Note: this is not scientific in the least)

1. The culture, and the government. There are signs everywhere about recycling. People actually know what environmental sustainability means ("enviro-what?"). Its rare to find a house/apartment with a washer and a dryer. More likely it has an energy-efficient washer and people hang their clothes up to dry (that's what I am doing here, and its no more or less difficult than the dryer that I was used to). The wall outlets all have switches next to them so its easy to turn off power to an appliance (no more energy drain when appliances aren't in use -- this accounts for around 5% of residential energy use in the US! You pay 5% of your electricity bill for appliances you weren't using. Annoying, right?)

2. Things are smaller! Refrigerators are smaller, ovens are smaller, houses are smaller, cars are smaller. Those small reductions in size can save big on energy!

3. Transportation. At least in Edinburgh, the city is compact enough that its easy to walk anywhere you need to go for the most part. For somewhere really on the other side of the city (or outside the city) people rely on the bus system (because it works! (ahem-Bostonsdoesnt)). I love that within a 5 minute walk of my flat there is a huge park/mountain thing that puts Central Park to shame, a grocery store, a bank, a post office, several dozen bars and restaurants, ethnic and specialty food shops, several movie rental places, cafes, a library, bookstores, a gym, several museums and a theater, pharmacies, clothes stores, another park, a candy store (very important), and more things that I'm sure I'm missing. I never think to myself, "it would be really nice if I had a car."

All this is not to say that the UK has it all figured out. Quite to the contrary; if everyone on Earth lived the way people in the UK do, it would still take roughly 3.1 planet Earths to sustain that level of consumption.

Anyway, those are my Deep Thoughts of the day. Yeah, maybe I should go put my Deep Thoughts to use in something like my sustainability paper that's due on Friday. Until then, keep smiling, and unplug your DVD player when you're not using it.