Awash in eco-dilemmas - The Gazette
Awash in eco-dilemmas MARIAN SCOTTThe supper dishes are piled up in the sink and Jason Hughes and Jen Auchinleck are debating how to wash them without harming the planet.
Him: “I refuse to use the dishwasher. The dishwasher soaps all have phosphates in them.”
Her: “I don’t feel any guilt. Are you going to spend an hour doing the dishes or spend an hour with the kids?”
Who’s right?
The answer might surprise you.
Using a dishwasher is a better environmental choice, according to a 2004 study by researchers at the University of Bonn.
Washing dishes by hand uses twice as much energy and five times as much water, it found.
As Hughes and Auchinleck - both Montreal community organizers with a longstanding commitment to green living - have discovered, the path to environmental sustainability is littered with vexing dilemmas and sometimes startling conclusions.
Yet never has the urgency of reducing our ecological footprint been more apparent.
The footprint is a way of representing a given population’s impact on the environment. Humans are using the Earth’s resources and dumping waste 23 per cent faster than nature is able to regenerate, according to the Global Footprint Network, a non-profit group in Oakland, Calif.
The fastest-growing component of our footprint is carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by burning fossil fuels. Greenhouse-gas emissions are already causing climate change that, if unchecked, threatens human survival, scientists warn.
But when it comes to reducing our footprint, it’s sometimes difficult to wade through all the contradictory information.
Take ethanol. Hailed by the federal government as a green fuel, it’s now being blamed for world hunger and deforestation.
Carbon offsets, anyone? Compensating for one’s carbon emissions by sponsoring a project to reduce CO2 elsewhere - like paying for trees to be planted to offset a plane ride - seems like a good idea. But critics slam offsets as a licence to pollute, saying they do nothing to discourage big-footprint activities.
The critics also call for closer monitoring of industry to ensure projects really do offset emissions.
Issues like these keep sustainability experts like Guy Dauncey up at night.
“Every step has its opponents,” said Dauncey, author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. “You enter a sticky, toffee-like morass of contradictions with these issues.”
Paper or plastic? Aluminum or glass? Organic or local? Cloth diapers or disposables? And does it really help the Earth to use all that hot water washing out a sticky peanut butter jar?
Sometimes it’s hard to know - especially with corporate green-washing in full throttle and all those urban myths out there in cyberspace.
Like a report last year by CNW Marketing Research claiming a Toyota Prius hybrid is more damaging to the environment than a gas-guzzling Hummer.
Can that really be true? Um, no. The report based its dubious conclusions on the high nickel content in Prius batteries. Environmentalists debunked it as junk science - but it’s still making the rounds of right-wing blogs and contrarian financial newsletters.
Another study claims a ceramic mug is worse for the environment than disposable cups unless you use the mug at least 1,000 times. The report dates back to 1994, but it keeps popping up in the media anyway.
“Many of these studies, when you open them up and read them, are laughable,” said Scot Case, vice-president of TerraChoice, which administers Environment Canada’s EcoLogo program.
“There are a lot of rumours that float around on being green,” said Brendan I. Koerner, a journalist who writes a blog on Slate.com about environmental quandaries. “I think people just need to be informed consumers.”
One problem is that no product is perfectly green, as Urvashi Rangan, senior scientist at the U.S. Consumers Union in Yonkers, N.Y., points out. “The thing is, green is not simple,” she said.
Every human activity has an impact, and most choices have a downside.
Chad Park, a senior sustainability adviser at The Natural Step in Ottawa, an international non-profit group that helps businesses and municipalities develop environment sustainability plans, uses a technique called “backcasting” to help clients sort through eco-dilemmas.
“It’s really easy to get lost in a discussion where you feel you’re choosing between plague and cholera,” Park said.
To find a sustainable solution, he advises clients to imagine a desired outcome. Then he asks: “What’s the best decision to make right now?”
The Natural Step used the approach in the 1990s to help Swedish furniture giant IKEA resolve a quandary over compact fluorescent light bulbs.
IKEA executives wanted to launch a line of the energy-efficient bulbs but were stumped when they learned they contain mercury, a neurotoxin.
By picturing a desired solution - energy-efficient bulbs with no mercury - IKEA devised a strategy to deal with the bulbs’ downside: a recycling program to dispose of the mercury safely.
The same principle works for individuals, Park said.
Rather than getting hung up on all the things you can’t solve right now, focus on your long-term vision for living in harmony with nature, he advised. “Then think: What’s the pathway to my ultimate sustainable goal?”
Make choices that are practical, given your lifestyle, advised Susan Burns, managing director of the Global Footprint Network.
“Another way to think about it is a ‘cap and trade’ system for your own life,” Burns said.
For example, maybe riding your bike to work is easier for you than using cloth diapers.
Filling out a footprint calculator might give you ideas for easy changes you could make to help sustain the environment. The network plans to launch a version tailored to Canadians.
Prioritize changes that will have the largest impact and don’t stress about every detail, Rangan advised. For example, she said, many people don’t realize that energy consumption represents the lion’s share of their footprint.
“Anything you do to conserve energy will go a long way,” said Rangan, the editor of www.Greenerchoices.org, an online guide to green living.
Home heating and cooling represent 45 per cent of home energy bills, followed by hot water (11 per cent).
Weatherproof your windows, turn down the heat in winter and the air conditioning in summer, Rangan advised. Switch to Energy Star-rated appliances. For information, go to www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca
Cars and trucks account for one-quarter of carbon emissions, so leave it at home or carpool.
In the end, Hughes does the dishes by hand while Auchinleck plays with daughters Ella, 5, and Charlotte, 22 months.
“I think there are lots of examples of how people are changing their habits,” she muses. “More and more people are using cloth bags” at the grocery store.
Rather than focusing on the environmental sins we all commit, it’s best to think of things we can change, Auchinleck says.
“Some people can manage not to have a car. Others can’t because of work. I don’t think you can impose everything on everybody. You have to look at the whole picture.”
mascott@thegazette.canwest.com
Read the entire article at Awash in eco-dilemmas.
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