Shades of Green

I came across two contrasting views of what it means to be environmentally conscious. Ashley Menger is trying a personal experiment. She is attempting to not create any trash for two weeks. You can check on her progress on her blog, Trash Talk. In contrast, Seth Godin posted on his blog today that asking people to deprive themselves is not a workable solution. Seth’s advice, "let's figure out how to turn this into a battle to do more, not less." It's hard to pick sides.

I like Ashley's approach. I think we are way too wasteful. I can recall the guilt I felt recently when I went with my wife and my son to Chick-fil-a. When we were finished with a couple of chicken sandwiches, fries, and drinks I had a whole mountain of trash on my tray. All I could do was say, "More for the landfill," as I dumped it down the whole. What if there was a way to recycle it? Sometimes I think recycling is energy intensive. You make a package, transport the package, fill a package, ship the finished product, take it home, possibly rinse it out with hot water, transport it to a processing facility, then energy has to be used to break it down so it can be used again. This seems like an awful lot for a thin plastic container. It seems like it would be much better to just produce less waste.

Then there is Seth's view. Whether his way is the right thing or not for the planet he’s probably right. The majority of people aren't going to give anything up. I found some soundbites and commentary on a recent speech made by Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Radical Congruency blog. I like Arnold's approach. Perhaps what he is doing right now (using fuel cells and biofuels) isn’t the best long-term solution. But, it's the best that technology currently has to offer. I like that he pushing people to come up with new ideas to solve our environmental issues. We can’t go back, we can only go forward.

Technorati Tags: environment, Ashley Menger, Seth Godin, Chick-fil-a, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Radical Congruency, Fuel Cells, biofuel