Mind the Gap

Oh, how I love public transit.  I take public transit to and from work nearly every day.  Most people that have spent more than one day in Chicago have probably used the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority)—the bus or the “El”—at least once.    

Of course, not everyone is a public transit fan.  And there are plenty of reasons not to love public transit. Like….

1)      The El usually stinks.  And it usually stinks like pee.

2)      It, more often than not, takes longer to get to work than it would if I drove.  My morning commute is about 45 minutes to 1 hour.  If I drove, it would take me about 20 minutes—without traffic, that is.  Most mornings, I wouldn’t hit traffic.  But most evenings I probably would (especially during baseball season)---in which case it could take much longer.

3)      Cub fans.  Especially drunk Cub fans.  Enough said.

4)      There’s a schedule.  And they kinda follow it.  So, you can’t just go whenever, unless it happens to be a route that is very frequent. 

But, I find there’s also a whole lot of reasons to take public transit. And for me, these reasons outweigh the reasons not to take public transit (even if it’s stinky). 

1)      I’m saving dinero.  I pay $86 (pre-tax $!) a month for unlimited rides.  To park at my place of work, is $80+, plus gas, plus wear and tear on the car.

2)      I don’t have to drive.  I don’t like driving.  There’s a lot of road rage in Chicago.  And 9 months of winter.  It’s scary.

3)      I can read…A LOT.  I’ve always been a reader…taking public transit gives me gobs of time (1.5 hours/5 days a week) to read.

4)      I can get from my house to the magnificent mile in 7 minute or less.  And not pay $40 to park somewhere. 

5)      I can nap.  If I’m really tired, I can fit in a couple 10 minute cat naps on my way to work. 

6)      The El might be crammed with people, but there’s never traffic on the El track. 

7)      It’s surprisingly entertaining.  There’s all kinds of people on the CTA.  Doing all kinds of weird things.   

And finally, the most important reason of all (and where you knew this post was headed)…..public transit is better for the environment!!!!!!!  See?  So saving the world….

Moo-Cluck-Oink-What?!?!

I heard something super shocking today.  If everyone in the US was a vegetarian, the state of Iowa (Go Hawkeyes!) could single-handedly produce enough food for the entire US population.  What?!?!  Now, I don’t know if this is a fact (I can’t find a source to back it up), but I suspect it’s not that far off.  The amount of land and energy it takes to “grow” meat is substantially larger than the amount of land and energy it takes to grow the equivalent number of calories in grains.  I need to do some research to understand just how much difference there is in terms of the land/energy needs (sorry, I’m under a time crunch…and I need incentives to keep you coming back), but I think it’s safe to say that eating less meat helps save the world. 

Now, I’m not a vegetarian.  And I’m not going to pretend that I’m going to become a vegetarian (because I’m not), but I will say that I’ve never been much of a meat eater.  I may or may not have been grounded for not eating my meat at dinner as a child.   I do occasionally crave a good burger or steak, and I will typically order meat if at a restaurant, but I don’t recall a time when I whipped up a pork chop just for myself.  I prefer to OD on carbohydrates and salads.  I think I still get a pretty good amount of protein—I eat a lot of cliff bars, smoothies, and nuts—so I’m pretty sure I’m ok in that department.  I would estimate that I eat 2-3 portions of meat a week, probably a bit more during BBQ season.    

The point is, by default, I’m doing a little bit of world saving by forgoing meat daily.  Forget you, Atkins! 

PS.  I really am on vacation.  But I scheduled this post before I left.  It’s that exciting? 

May I please speak to the manager?

Why are we far more likely to complain about poor service than praise good, or even great, service?  I guess we might think that “good service” is simply people getting paid to do their job.  But, I have to disagree.

Last week, my husband and I swung into a Home Depot to ask some questions about our wood flooring, which hasn't turned out as well as we hoped.  We approached a gentleman in the flooring department and started firing questions.  He patiently answered our questions, but unfortunately didn’t have all the answers (it’s a complicated problem).  He did take the time to print out information about how to properly install our type of wood floor, the supplies needed, etc. 

We decided to wander around and check out a few other things.  Somewhere between the medicine cabinets and kitchen sinks, the gentleman trotted (literally) up to us, out of breath.  He said he had called a friend who has installed a lot of flooring to try to get us some answers.  So, let’s get this straight:  1) he bothered to call someone he knew with experience installing floors like ours and 2) he raced around the (large!) store to track us down.  He even said “I was so worried you had already left!”  I would say that’s going above and beyond his job description and he deserves a pat on the back.

As we were leaving, we approached a young woman at the customer service center--she eyed us a bit suspiciously.  I asked where I might share a compliment.  She said “Um…a compliment?  Would you like to speak to a manager?”  Why, yes, yes, I would.  So, we let the manager know that the man had gone above and beyond and we were very pleased with his service. 

It felt good to compliment a stranger for a job well done and I don’t think it’s done enough in this world. And I can find a single reason why not.  I for one am going to attempt to ask for the manager more often and I hope that next time you get great service, you too will ask to speak to the manager!

Thanks again, Danny. 

Snail Mail

Yesterday, I got a dream catcher in the mail.  I’m serious.  It’s from the St. Joseph’s Indian School. They are so sure I’m going to send them a donation for the Lakota children they’ve already sent me numerous gifts…including a dream catcher. 

We get a lot of crap mail (crap is more serious than junk).  A lot of crap we don’t need to get.  Of course, I’m recycling the paper, but still it takes a lot energy to make and mail all that paper.  So, I’m cutting out the junk.  The majority of my bills have been “paperless” for some time, but I still have a few stragglers I’ll need to take care of.  In addition, I’m going to start cancelling the gobs of catalogs and other crap, much of which I’m not even sure why I receive (e.g., Kids Pottery Barn?!?!). 

You know who is going to go first?  Who is the most annoying crap mailer?  Newport News.  They send soooooo many catalogs.  I bought one swimsuit from them YEARS ago (I wasn’t even living in Chicago --someone at Newport News is stalking me) and I still get their catalogs constantly.  I can always look online so I don’t need your catalog, Newport News. 

Admittedly, there are some mailers I won’t cancel—the ones that send good coupons that I will use.   UNLESS, I can receive an email equivalent that I could print only when “needed.”  I’ll check into it (I know, I know…you are on the edge of your seats). 

Home, Sweet, "Cozy" Home

As my best friend pointed out, I had an unfair advantage in calculating my carbon foot print (see this post).  Yet, I still need more than 4 earths to support my life?!?!  Un-freaking-believable.  This unfair advantage is a product of living in a big city where square footage is very, very expensive.  My husband and I save gobs of energy living in a small condo, in a building with 100+ units.  Our condo, when it’s empty and I’m feeling positive, is about 600 square feet.  I can hear the collective gasp from all the non-City folks.  Yeah, it’s small.  And, yeah, that’s an understatement.  But it’s actually not that unusually small for a city home. 

Of course, we hope to move into a bigger place someday.  I’ve been carefully overtaking small bits of my husband’s space since the day I moved in so, at a minimum, he’ll have to move out some day.  Or sell all his stuff.  Anyway, the moral of the story here is….it turns out--despite that 3000 square foot “mansion” I may or may not have imagined prior to moving to Chicago--I don’t need a huge home and I don’t even think I want a huge home.  Smaller space living isn’t for everyone, but it might just be for me. 

Do I want a place for guests to stay?  Yes.  Would I like a bigger closet?  Certainly.  But do I need six bedrooms, an office, a family room, and a den?  No, I don’t.  Let’s be real--it’s just more to clean and I don’t love to clean.  And I won’t end up with more space, I’ll end up with more stuff—and we all know world savers don’t need more stuff (remember “Goods and Services” is one of the 4 main carbon footprint categories).  So, I’ll think I will be happy somewhere in the middle.   To be clear, I’m not knocking those who do have larger homes and I am definitely not saying I don’t envy often my friend’s bedroom suite, which just so happens to be about the size of my entire apartment, but maybe a large home simply isn’t a priority in my life right now.  And, lucky for me, that happens to jive really well with my world saving plan.   

I Have a Heavy Foot

With any problem I face, such as, how to save the world, I like to start by systematically assessing the extent of the problem.  I suppose that’s the scientist in me.   Since we’ve already established that saving the environment is a big chunk of my world saving plan, I thought I better figure out just how much damage I’m doing.  So, I decided to start by calculating my carbon footprint. 

Carbon footprint calculators are designed to measure your impact on the environment based on how much green house emissions you generate from the  “stuff” (e.g., transportation, food, clothes, electricity, ect.) you use to live.  At least that’s my understanding.  The science isn’t perfect, and it’s evolving, but it’s a starting point. 

There are many carbon footprint calculators out there.   I choose to use http://www.myfootprint.org/.   What I like about this calculator is that it tells you how many earths would be needed to support the world if everyone lived like you (based on how much land and water is required to absorb the amount of emissions you create).  I like this more than the calculators that report tons or kilograms of carbon emissions generated by an individual because, quite frankly, those numbers don’t mean all that much to me.   Admittedly, I’m not certain how accurate this calculator is compared to others—I love to learn more if anyone has some knowledge to share on this topic—maybe I’ll test some other ones for comparison. 

A few other sites where you can calculate your footprint include:

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/uscalc

http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/

There were some questions that I struggled to answer, but I erred on the “bad” side.

According to my results, it would take 4.7 earths to support the population if everyone lived like me!  You know what’s really scary?  The average American lives a life that would require SEVEN earths.  Just to re-iterate how crappy we are doing, the average for the world is 1.5 earths.    

Wow, do I have heavy feet.  I sorely disappointed in myself (and my fellow Americans) and simultaneously motivated to do better. 

What’s your carbon footprint?

What it really means...

There’s certainly been a theme to my posts thus far—that is, if you are willing count 2 posts  in the same genre a theme (two because I’m not counting the introduction…I can count, I promise).  This has been all about being green, saving the earth.  But, I thought it was important to share what “world saving” really means to me.  My definition of world saving actually encompasses far more than the environmental piece.  For me, this is about making the world a better place.  Certainly, this includes saving the earth.  But it also includes helping others, being nice, supporting others, curing cancer….you know, all that stuff.  I expect many more posts about the environmental piece, it’s a large, key piece of any world savers plan, but I want to put it out there that in my mind, there’s so much more to saving the world.   I hope I haven’t disappointed anyone.