Spilling My Eco-Secrets

Hi. My name is Andrea, and I'm an eco-hypocrite.

I don't live off the grid. My carbon footprint is larger than it ought to be. And (PLEASE don't tell anyone!) I eat meat. From farting cows. It's mortifying.

At the same time, if we ever want to make a positive difference to our environment, we have to start with a fearless and unflinching assessment of where we are now. Fortunately, Jenn Savedge at The Green Parent is currently holding an eco-confessions carnival, which is providing me with the perfect opportunity to come clean.

Ew. Yuck. Here goes!

• KFC. My worst confession. About once a month. A guilty treat with my 7-year old when Dad goes away. We do recycle the box. We feel sorry for the chickens afterwards. We say we’ll never do it again.
• Lengthy showers. I have long hair and shave just about everything -- that’s my excuse.  My 85-year old grandmother tells me I should wash my hair in the sink. Don’t think I’ll give her details about the shaving.
• Walking to work. I have no excuse. I’m only half an hour from work. Our city is flat. Its pedestrian-friendly and my very good friend walks the same way. No defense. Shame.
• Our wonderfully cozy log-burner. In our city everyone is phasing out their old log burner fires and moving to clean heat. We not only haven’t done this but we have a little dance around the fire and clap our hands every time it's on. Apologies to those in our valley.
• Plastic bags. I’m honestly trying to do better with these; however, my cupboard is now groaning with cloth bags because I keep forgetting to bring them with me and I have to keep buying more.  This is seriously defeating the purpose. Then when I think I can’t possibly buy another cloth bag, I (just this once) use plastic bags.  BUT I can’t throw them out, so I now have to warn my son not to go near the kitchen cupboard for fear of  him being attacked by a cloth-and-plastic-bag avalanche.

The more I learn about the ways I could be looking after our environment, the more I cringe when I see what I’m NOT doing, which is the whole point, I guess. So I’ll keep cringing and making those changes… you know, I did use to have KFC every week…

Comments

[Danny]

sorry, I'm from the other side of the Atlantic - what on earth is "clean heat"?

where I live now the fuel is logs, but very replaceable, big woods.

coal would not be clean, nuclear stuff even worse (but I believe we might have to do that because of the climate thing), oil is frankly embarrassing...nope, still not found clean heat

[Andrea]

Yeah you're right - is there any truly 'clean heat'?!

In our city (Christchurch, NZ) we've had big problems with pollution, particularly on still days during winter. Therefore our city council has created a 'clean heat' initiative, incentivising people to get rid of their older smokey log burning fires and replacing them with electric heat pumps or log or wood pellet burners which are 'cleaner' -- they work more efficiently and pollute a lot less. Its a great idea.

Since this post I've been feeling a LOT guiltier about mine. Next year we're ditching it. This year I'm using it only infrequently...on windy days!