Week 3 of the green challenge, which I missed last week, was about food consumption. Raynor is right, this is the most dumb and pointless challenge yet. You get the impression from reading the challenge that, unless you become a vegetarian, there's little you can do. They talk about buying locally grown food but don't spend much time on it, perhaps realizing this is difficult to accomplish for many/most people. They give very good advice to buy unprocessed foods and cook them yourself, but I think that has more to do with health and saving money.
And they don't say anything about energy efficient kitchen appliances. I've never researched the issue, but I'm assuming that there are more and less wasteful ways to cook and store your food. And some appliances (like the fridge) probably have a big impact on the monthly electricity bill.
The quiz was what really put me off. I was already doing everything except giving up meat, which I'm sorry, no way. And also, I had to say no on bringing my own bags to the supermarket. I've tried it before and it never works. I can't even remember to keep the insulated cooler in my car in the summer, much less a bunch of grocery bags.
I did feel a little guilty about the bags, until I got to the end of the quiz and learned that "Bringing your own bags to the grocery store saves about 17 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions a year." Jigga-what? 17 pounds a year? (By way of comparison, the average car releases almost 20 pounds of carbon dioxide burning just one gallon of gas). Why the fuck is such an empty gesture on this quiz? Is the point of the challenge to reduce emissions, or to create busywork that makes us feel good about ourselves? It would take 100 similar tasks to make any kind of impact on one's carbon emissions. I'd rather put my efforts into saving up for an efficient refrigerator, or just giving my car a tune-up for god's sake. And does that 17 pound figure even include the environmental cost of creating the cloth grocery bags? They seem to do a lot of oversimplifying in this challenge.
As the challenge goes on, I find their bald, unreferenced statements of fact more and more dubious. Considering how they failed to address the complex issue of hybrid cars vs. biofuels, I wonder if we should take any of their claims at face value. I'll probably keep doing the challenge just to see what they come up with next. After all, I'm halfway done. But I'm not going to rely on Slate for facts about the environment.
Busywork, indeed.
If you (or anyone) can find a better index of "high-ROI means of environmental stewardship," I'd sure as hell love to see it.
It's one thing to have a feel-good gesture as a means of reminder. But not if people think it's seriously substantive. Argh. Me unhappy.
i saw some gadget show on TV the other night that was hailing the invention of a power cord that actually let you "see" the electricity that was flowing through it. (in other words, the more of a power draw the cord was used for, the more of a vibrating glow the cord gave off. less demand = less of a vibrating glow.) i would love to use that kind of thing in my kitchen... to see if just keeping the toaster plugged in was drawing electricity, for instance. or to see just how much power the microwave uses.
Xta: I've heard of people doing that kind of test by turning off all appliances but one, and then going outside and watching the electrical meter. Sometimes that can help you see if the fridge is broken. But it probably wouldn't work with a low-powered appliance like a toaster.