One side-effect of my effort to become a Greenius is that I have become a Greench; that is a Green Grinch. I try hard to reduce, reuse, and recycle. At work I try to be aware of the resources I use. For example, I think whether a note requires a mini sticky note, a full-size sticky note, a printed page, or will suffice to stay purely in electronic format. Instead of replacing the shredder with a new garbage bag every time it gets full, I dump the shredded paper and reuse the bag. I’m not perfect of course and when the proverbial shit hits the fan and I’m busy multitasking these efforts often fall to the wayside. The point though is that I do make a concerted effort to reduce my environmental impact.
As I’ve ranted about in a previous post, my co-workers are not so thoughtful. Many of them still throw recyclables in the trash, go through paper like hungry goats, drink 3 bottles of water per day, and generally just don’t care about reducing waste. It’s not as if they don’t know better. I try to educate them and make it as easy as possible to do the green thing. It really comes down to not being aware of and trying to change their wasteful habits, something we all are guilty of at times
Despite this realization that nobody is perfect, I can’t help but feel that I am the only one who gives a damn about our home the earth. I feel as if I am surrounded by uncaring houseguests who leave their crap out, eat all my food, and feel they are entitled to do so. I have often been tempted to remove the 20 oz soda bottle from the garbage can and lob it at the head of the offender. Fortunately for my job security I have to this point been able to control my spurts of rage.
I don’t want to become a Greench, whose heart has shrunk and who has given up on his fellow humans. I want to continue believing that mankind will realize that you shouldn’t trash your home, especially when you have 7 billion roommates and trillions of pets. What do you guys and gals think? Besides our efforts here on the blog, what else can we do to get others to buy into green?
6 comments:
I've found that the simple act of blogging about the subject has opened my eyes a lot to the waste around me. But, for those folks not into blogging, they need something that will open their eyes.
It's the same thing in the Lean world. There's all sorts of time-wasting and money-wasting activities that never need to happen, but they keep happening because the folks in charge or the folks doing the work just don't notice the waste.
The folks in our offices aren't trying to upset us treehuggers; they're just oblivious to the waste. How can we help them see? Maybe point them to some green web sites (maybe our own)? Maybe put some dollar signs next to the waste? Maybe we just need to make it really hard for them to be wasteful. In Lean, we call this mistake-proofing. The last resort would be to throw a stapler at our co-worker.
the only way you are going to get selfish people to buy into green is to get them where it hurts...in the pocketbook, of course. why should i take extra time out of my day to reduce, reuse and recycle when it so damn easy and cheap or free not to?
I like the idea of mistake-proofing. I'll have to think of some practical ways I can implement this in my office.
Anonymous, thanks for your comments. There is another side of the coin to as you said getting "them where it hurts...in the pocketbook," which I take to mean regulations/punishment to drive behavior. I think the big things, like carbon emissions and vehicle mpg need regulation, but to micro-regulate things like using a recycle bin would be hard to enforce and would turn a lot of people away from green.
Innovators in business and management need to find ways to make doing the right thing easier and/or more affordable than doing the wrong thing. Then it will be a no brainer for people.
I think if we have money boxes on top of the organic garbage cans in every office, with a sign that reads "One dollar fine for not taking care of your world", and make sure it shows the money will be donated to Greenpeace International "becuase there are people who care about it" or something like that, people will start being more conscious about it.
Just a Thought!
Not a bad idea, but a lot of conservative folk will be turned off by Greenpeace or any organization they see as liberal. Perhaps the National Wildlife Fund would work?
i did not mean regulations/punishment to drive behavior, i literally meant that the only way to get selfish people to care is to fine them, or take money out of their paycheck. i would take a guess that the people in your office who won't recycle are also the ones who have a bunch of kids. they probably feel like they don't have time to recycle because it takes an extra second to think "now does this go in the trash or the recycle?"
so i literally meant that i don't think most people will start doing the right thing unless they have to take money out of their own pocketbooks.
as a partial aside, i live in a city where almost everyone runs red lights. i am not talking about where the light just turned red and you went under it cause you were going too fast. i am talking about people who are so selfish that they are willing to risk their own lives and the lives of others to make it thru the RED light. they don't even slow down. they barrel ahead at high speeds in order to "make it" through. i am sure those are the same people that don't recycle.
moral of the story: if you are too selfish to drive responsibly and not put other people's lives at risk, then there is no way you are going to care about the planet when you know you will be dead before the plants stop giving off the oxygen you need to breathe.
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