Greener Life

Reducing Your CO2 Footprint


There is a site called Greenopolis, a place for people to chat about such things, where one blog asks one to measure one's carbon footprint and measures levels. Ours came out pretty good, but I am sue it could be better if we did without a few luxuries. Still, the blog then asks us to tell them how we manage to do so well.

Well, two things help us reduce our co2 footprint - one, we live in India, and I am pretty sure people living in other countries in Asia or Africa do about as well too, by necessity and by bringing up, so we claim little credit for that factor; though we would do better than other residents of a western nation if we did live there by using those habits and again, that is something we would do because of being inculcated with these, not those, values.

The other factor that helps is that we are vegetarian.
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Most nations that are called undeveloped or whatever the correct current terminology is, do better by the very virtue of living more naturally than the ones that are called developed. There isn't such a lot of industries in such nations as ours for the purpose of taking all fresh produce off the farms into refrigerated warehouses to then sort it into supply chain for the supermarkets.

Most produce is processed more naturally - from the farms to the wholesale markets and thence to retail vendors, often brought calling to your own doorsteps where you can buy it after examining and bargaining -without spending fuel to shop - every day, as fresh as it gets unless you take it out of the ground personally.

The vendor brings it on foot, with a basket or a pushcart, so his footprint is zero for that part, and the only bit is the truck (usually overloaded) that brings it from farm to wholesale market. That is collective for all of the chain. Of course it can be seen how small that footprint is from the price of vegetables one buys - fuel is far more expensive here.

The way it helps living in India or other countries that are supposed to be less developed is therefore obvious - we eat fresh local produce, mostly, and our limit of non-local food is for example apples from another part of the country, when they are in season. So a great deal of energy that goes in U.S. into bringing foods from different parts of the world and especially from within U.S. is here simply not spent in the first place. The vegetables we get are local and fresh - when they are not so fresh they are reduced in price and poorer people get to buy them and finally cows are fed, or they become part of organic feed for the earth by being thrown to become part of it. Little gets that far though, most gets as far as garbage where animals do eat it.
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There is another part that helps us and that has to do with more modern facilities and better use we make of it, but again I am only going to say we do this and not prescribe it for everyone - or anyone for that matter. This is a matter of your own risk and your own responsibility.

In short we believe in using modern equipment as and when convenient and not just keep it while doing things the old ways, as many people do. This is a different way and other people might be doing better for health in fact, but for what it is worth we do not cook everything fresh three times a day for every meal, and instead use our large refrigerator and microwave, for cooking on large scale when we cook and storing it, and then heating a complete served plate for individual meals - this can be done partly because there aren't any young growing children involved, and has to be done when it is a family of adults otherwise busy, so we cannot afford a person wasted for cooking and housekeeping full-time basis, as most households do - in fact most households have more than one person involved in kitchen activities of cooking and so on, what with more than one generation (three minimum) and average six to ten people per household.

So in short unlike most we do not use our fridge for conserving milk and the very little leftovers, and while they probably see us as very improper and lazy for doing this we do save on energy - especially gas for cooking, since some things - like rice or daal (beans) or sprouts or vegetables (but now that is the whole list of what we cook!) - cost the same amount of gas each time no matter how much quantity you cook, so cooking on large scale and storing it works to conserve more energy - as for microwave, it is a matter of short minutes, less than five minutes tops, for heating it to a degree one can eat without burning. Ultimate proof is how little gas we do use, how infrequently we have to get a new cylinder. Most people need one cylinder per month average and won't believe it if we told we need less than one fourth of that, in fact our first one went for almost two years.

One does need to arrange for uninterrupted supply of power for the refrigeration - but that does not increase the co2 and costs less than people might fear.
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We are not as good as most people in many respects - we do not buy wholesale when it comes to grains or daal (beans) or most dry grocery as people do and prefer to get it from a good little old supermarket - one century old in fact - that gives it cleaned and in smaller packs, so there is more plastic involved than in other people's homes. If there was another way of buying things without having to sort them and clean them before use we would, but it has to involve another - younger - person in all likelihood to do it the way everyone does. So we do this for now and regrettably there is more plastic in wrappings - and storage containers, too, since we dare not risk so much glass and having moved so much do not wish to invest in expensive steel containers for everything as most households have.

On the other hand the ready clean things we buy do involve people employed to do the cleaning and packing, since little is mechanised, so that is not a total negative either.
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A good car obviously helps in reducing mileage for fuel but we found to our surprise that a good mileage need not be equal to a small car, and the second one we bought since being fed up with the first brand new one always out to repairs is in fact better in every way, though larger. This is not to say it is true about every bigger vehicle - only that it is necessary to check out if your smaller car is in fact better at mileage. I used to have a Saab that was my first car and loved it - and if we could we would but it is not in India, and the good one we found is a Honda, we have the smallest model of it that is available in India. It gives better mileage on highways of which we have not many and the city traffic is jammed most days, but once in a while we go out on a weekend outside town to have very ethnic food and a pleasant drive. Most days we drive little, fortunately - people cannot keep shifting homes closer to workplaces and industries do keep shifting their offices, so it is sheer luck for now.
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Again it is sheer luck we live where heating is not needed, but in north India in winter temperatures do drop considerably and most people do not have heating in homes, central or any other way. Keeping warm is with warm clothes, and keeping windows closed and a little from colling fire of the kitchen - most people eat in kitchen, indigenous style, unless they have acquired a taste for eating at the dining tables which is limited to urban middle-class and more well to do. When very cold they can use a heater but people are very conscious of not wasting money, and this use of heaters is limited to very little time.

Few use air-conditioners, fortunately, since it is very expensive and besides we have a lot of indigenous ways of keeping cool, through food and drinks, and oil massage for heads, and henna used judiciously for hands or head, and cool drinks made from lime or yogurt or other things with special spices for the purpose - and also special curtains and so on. So the nation's footprint as regards cooling is quite low. Most we use ac is either in offices or in cars - most people don't, to save money - and even malls are sort of barely cooled, with most managers glibly telling the sweating clients "others don't like it cold" just to shut up the complaints, while the mall saves money on air-conditioning. Since the doors are open breathing is not a problem and most people are used to heat and not to complaining even when uncomfortable.

Malls are in fact new and serve more as a place for people to walk sheltered from sun, rather than much shopping, and to see a film in the usual multiplex and eat a bit. Most serious shopping is done in the normal style in usual shops that cannot afford the high rent of malls for space, and malls have brand name stores that people go look at more than buy but this is a first stage and I suppose it will change to adjust for better economical use.
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How does being vegetarian help? It was a recent article, within the last two days or so, probably on Times, but I remember it was about various gases in the atmosphere due to production of meat for the consumers even apart from the refrigeration and so forth. The more people change to vegetarian food on the planet the more people can be supplied with food that is now given to pigs for meat production and the more farms there are the more it will help co2 - and a few other such chains that are now going in one direction will go in the opposite, was my understanding.

I am sure there are a few other ways it helps ecology and global climate, being vegetarian, and when I can gather it I can then write again. Meanwhile a few other things are - we don't need dryers. But Germans manage not only in summer with clotheslines in the backyards but even in winter with clothes lines in the basement, and when we were there we managed partly with the electric one in the basement for heavy stuff - jeans, sheets - and the rest with some clothes dryers, plastic coated metal ones, in the sunny attic. It might be a little uncool to have such dryers in living spaces but it is not impossible even in U.S., I am sure, to manage on most days for most adults.
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When one lives in western society how does any of it help?

For one thing an attitude of not wasting - not liking, not approving of waste of any kind minimizes a lot of it. I used coffee bottles for storage of various grocery and cleaned yogurt containers for storing leftover food and for giving it away after a party. Never liked throwing away cans and avoided using them for that reason for one (and for another, never did like taste of any of the foods or drinks that came out of cans) and mostly used the same fresh vegetables for cooking and so on. And never went by currents of fashion to throw away perfectly good and wearable clothes, as many people do.

It sounds a bit beneath snob value until you realise that very old rich - preppy is what you call them - have the same values, of using permanent looking and very durable clothes and other things.
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How do we reduce it further than at the level we have for now? I don't know - but perhaps if we had a garden and grew trees, I wish we could - then that would help that much, and too it might be possible planting a vegetable garden and composting kitchen organic garbage - and a few other measures.

We hope we can.

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