Calgary Herald (Alberta) - A 12-step program for planet junkies
Filed under: Earth 911 - March 24, 2007
12-Step Program to Going Green at Home and Saving Some Green
Marni Jameson, For The Calgary Herald
The Calgary Herald (Alberta)
March 24, 2007 Saturday
If friends of the planet are like flowers, then I’m a dirt clod. I have painted with toxic paint, taken long showers, left the lights burning in rooms long abandoned and run the air conditioning when I could have opened a window. I’ve done loads of laundry for only three items, used a 100-watt bulb when a 60 would suffice, driven when I could have walked and dumped chlorine bleach straight down the drain. Now the ice caps are melting, and it’s all my fault because I’m guilty of everything. Al Gore says so.
I recently came out of my blissful state of being a planet pariah and noticed everything around me was green. Not just because spring is here, but also because green is all anyone in the home design and building world is talking about. Magazines are launching green editions; builders are hosting green conferences. I’ve even heard talk of painting the White House green, with low-volatile-organic-compound paint, of course, to form a Green House, for the soon to be installed Green party, which will win for the first time in the next election thanks to a certain Inconvenient Truth posed by Al Gore, who really is a member of the Green party, but won’t admit it.
Anyway, call me late to that party, but this spring, I’m turning over a new leaf, a green leaf, an eco-friendly leaf, possibly from a bamboo tree, bamboo being an incredibly sustainable wood source since one stalk can grow a metre in one day, like an adolescent.
But back to my guilt trip. Realizing I’m helpless in the face of my addiction to water, energy and certain chemical substances (like paint), I knew I couldn’t detox alone. I’d need a support group. First I reached out to a green book, The Earthwise Home Manual — Eco-Friendly Interior Design and Home Improvement (Green Home Publishing, 2006), by Kristina Detjen.
This clarified my crimes and deepened my resolve to get green and sober. Then I called Detjen and said I needed a 12-Step program for planet junkies. She said she would see what she could do. I also asked John Dunnihoo, general manager of West Coast Green, the America’s largest residential green building trade show, for help.
I confessed to both I was skeptical of the whole green movement. I don’t want to slide back to the ’70s when people talked to their plants to help them grow. I’m sorry, that was just bizarre. However, I do want to do my part to preserve the planet, make a better world for my children, leave a softer footprint on the Earth and all that. Detjen and Dunnihoo graciously accepted my skepticism. (Denial is common among planet abusers, they said.) And they took on the challenge of making me greener at home. Recognizing me for the hedonist I am, Detjen let slip that by going green I could also save some green — money, that is. Now she really had my attention.
Together they offered the following green tips, which I fashioned into a 12-Step program:
12-Step Program to Going Green at Home and Saving Some Green
1. Admit you are powerless over your need to consume wastefully.
2. Give over to the higher power of your global community. Acknowledge that only through collective effort will we restore the planet to a balanced state.
3. Agree to replace all light bulbs in your home with compact fluorescent bulbs. Accept that though CFLs cost more, they last 10 times longer and use one-fourth the electricity.
4. Commit to actually use your home’s programmable thermostat the way it was intended. If you don’t have one, buy one. Promise to never again run the air conditioning when there’s a breeze outside.
5. Dedicate yourself to only running full loads of laundry, using the coolest water possible. Don’t over-dry clothes, and hang them to dry more often.
6. Search for the Energy Star label when buying a new appliance. (The label is the Environmental Protection Agency’s stamp of approval for energy efficiency.)
7. Use more cloth napkins and towels, fewer paper ones.
8. Fully acknowledge the limits of our water supply. Scrape plates rather then rinse them when loading the dish-washer. Install a drip system for watering outdoor plants, and put a water-saving device (a capped jug of sand) in the toilet tank.
9. Choose paints with low or no VOCs (volatile organic compounds). Accept they may go on runnier, but they won’t hurt the planet or give you a paint hangover.
10. Recycle everything you possibly can. If you don’t know how, check www.earth911.org.
11. Strive to repair, refinish or restore furniture you have rather than buy more. Or even better, buy more antiques.
12. If you fall off the wagon, get back on.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area.
You may contact her at www.marnijameson.com.
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