Dear Peter,
It’s hard out here for an environmental advocate, workin’ hard to get the right decisions made. Looking at the environmental effects of just one seemingly minor act I just took—getting a cup of tea—there were a multitude of environmental considerations: How was the tea grown, organically or with pesticides? How far did it travel to get here? How did I transport it to my home? What was the packaging made from? How did I heat the water? What did I do with the tea bag when I was finished? Whew! One small act for some, one giant list of deliberations for the eco-aware.
All these considerations are important, but it is helpful to know which decisions have the most significant impact. Helping individuals make these calculations was the goal of a book by Michael Brower and Warren Leon called the Consumers’ Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). According to the UCS, the biggest places you can make an impact fall into three main categories: transportation, food, and household operations.
How you travel
Making and using gas-powered vehicles cause more environmental damage—especially air pollution and global warming—than any other single consumer practice (no surprise there). The average American drives over 250 miles each week, so the UCS recommends setting concrete goals for reducing travel, like pledging to skip even one car trip each week by biking, telecommuting, or combining errands. Avoiding just one 20 mile car trip can reduce your annual emissions of carbon dioxide by nearly a thousand pounds.
What you eat
Livestock currently consume 70 percent of America’s grain production, making meat a very resource-intensive product. According to the UCS, if the average household cut its consumption of red meat and poultry in half and replaced it with the nutritional equivalent of grains, it would cut food-related land use and water pollution by 30 percent and 24 percent, respectively, as well as conserve water.
According to the Worldwatch Institute, fruits and vegetables travel an average of 1,500 to 2,500 miles from where they're grown to reach the produce section, 25 percent farther than in 1980. Buying from local farmers in the stores or at Farmers’ Markets can significantly cut those transportation impacts.
Choosing certified organic produce preserves soil integrity, promotes biodiversity, avoids water pollution, and saves water. According to a study published in Science in 2001, the continued expansion of industrial farming over the next few decades could lead to a nearly 2.5 fold increase in the nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in waterways, seriously degrading biodiversity and fishery yields.
Where you live
The size of a home, how it’s built and what it takes to run it have significant impacts. According to UCS, the land and wood used to build new homes are responsible for about a quarter of consumers' impact on wildlife and natural ecosystems. Appliances and lighting are responsible for 15 percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions related to consumer expenditures and 14 percent of consumer-related air pollution. The greatest amount of energy used in the home is for heating, cooling and for hot water.
These impacts can be significantly reduced by choosing the smallest home for your needs, purchasing renewable energy, installing efficient lighting and appliances, and using energy wisely.
There’s a lot more to this than a column can cover, of course, so I recommend the book. But in a nutshell, avoid driving a half hour in an SUV to get an imported steak dinner while leaving the heat and lights on back home at a coal-powered house.
