Since I mistakenly sent this to the whole company, I may as well put it on the internet. Here was my response to what I’ve done to be a greener citizen:
- Started composting at home
- Started biking to work
- Swapped out all of our bulbs with fluorescents
- Have been actively trying to manage energy use at home, including:
- Moving all electronics to sleep mode where possible
- Unplugging devices when leaving for more than a day or two
- Actively turning off lights in rooms that are not in use
- We have been using canvas bags to do all of our shopping for the past six months. When we forget them, we use the paper bags at home as recycling bins
- We drive a hybrid car
- Started using to go mugs at the coffee shop
- Actively finding places to recycle used electronics that don’t simply ship them off to asia to be torn down
- I have been giving things away for free on craigslist and freecycle instead of simply throwing them in the garbage
- We stopped shopping at big chain grocery stores and try as hard as we can to source all of our food from the farmer’s market. We are considering subscribing to a CCA at some point in the near future
I’m sure there are other small things I have done but that’s what I can remember right now.
And why have I made all of these changes?
Awareness
Partially from your work, partially from increased media attention, and partially from the explosion of conversation on the web, I have been confronted more and more with what it means to be “green” in our world. It hurts sometimes to have the consequences of your actions put in front of you but it can serve as an enlightening, eye-opening experience to how you can personally make changes with positive impact. Much like voting, it is difficult to surmise exactly how your singular contribution to a massive problem can make a difference. However, also just like voting, the aggregated power of individuals is a very powerful and effective beast.
Walking the Walk
As designers, we are always struggling to understand user behaviors and how we can use them as catalysts for our work. We are unsatisfied unless we have put something into the world that we firmly believe will make our users’ lives “better” in some small way. Yet, I am also painfully aware that most of the problems we are asked to solve are first world problems. The world is probably no better or worse off if we figure out what the future of mobile x is, but we do it anyway because this is our chosen profession. But the designs and ideas that we put forth have consequences. They burn all types of resources, from energy to materials. I suppose in some small way my own personal changes serve as a sort of “green offset” to the necessary energy consumption of the work we do.
A Growing Interest in Slow Food
While travelling through SE Asia I had the chance to read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dillemma and it was literally a life-changing moment for me. Though the core of his work is an examination of the current state of the American food economy, he can’t help but touch on topics such as sustainability, oil consumption, and the manipulation of resources not for the good of the land, but for the good of the ledger. I came home with a passionate interest in eating locally for so many reasons: to support local growers, to lower the amount of gasoline I am “eating,” to return to the enjoyment of seasonality in food, and to try as hard as I can to operate within the natural cycle of the world’s ecology.
Anyway, I’d be happy to follow up on any of these points and offer assistance where possible on the ideal bites program.
