Ink & Penstemon

1. It’s Earth Day and my throat hurts.

It was a very warm day, and as it’s been a dry spring, everyone seemed to rev-up every landscaping tool with a two-cycle engine that they owned. Compounded with the local orchards burning their spring prunings, it made for miserable air-quality. People with seasonal-allergies appeared to be in some circle of hell.

2. Recently I watched a few local programs about wilderness preservation attempts in the American West. The consensus seems to be Wallace Stegner is rolling over in his grave. If he was still alive he’d be writing about the “geography of hopelessness.”

So with two such depressing thoughts, here are two humble suggestions which almost everyone can do which would actually help check their resource consumption:

1. Take military-style showers. When you take a military-style shower, you turn on the shower and get yourself soaked, then turn off the water. You then lather yourself up with soap and shampoo thoroughly, and then turn the shower back-on to rinse off. Easy-peasy. Standing in the shower lathering up can be cold in the winter, but in the spring, summer, and fall, it’s not bad at all, especially if you are in an enclosed stall; the closed door traps the heat and steam. A recent study in Britain found that most people there are actually taking 8 minute showers instead of 5. Showering military-style could cut water consumption by a third or more, which is a lot when you start to add it up.

2. Think about how you will throw something away before you buy it. If you are in a store, thinking of buying a product, look at it and its packaging and ask yourself “could I recycle this?” Compound plastics and items that cannot be taken apart into component parts can’t be recycled. If you have a choice, consider the item that has the simpler packaging and that could be taken apart easily for recycling.