Green Tip #75: Refrigerator Use

Okay, so I lied yesterday about how having an extra day will make my entry today even better. Instead of thinking of good ideas for Green Tips yesterday I found myself watching MTV's "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" Sadly, while that show is quite amusing, I wasn't able to come up with any good ideas from it. So I'm going to phone this one in and talk about refrigerators.

Green Tip #75 is quite simple: don't put hot foods into the fridge. I mean, it's pretty elementary. Wait for the said hot food to cool down first because it would take that much extra energy for the fridge to drop the temperature from 80 degrees than it would to drop it from 65.

So.... yeah... I really don't have a whole lot else to say. I guess I could talk about something important, but if I really had something important to say, I would have put it into the blog at some point. I could talk about unimportant things, but I don't want to waste your precious time with stuff like that.

Anyway. Rambling needs to stop. See you Tuesday.

No post today. But that means I have more time to think of better ideas to make tomorrow's post even better!

Green Tip #74: WRAWWN Parts 2 and 3, Water and Gasoline

Hello all! Today is your lucky day! You get not one, but two bonus Green Tips today. First off, I decided to write another WRAWWN Green Tip. (Read the first one here). WRAWWN stands for What Resource Are We Wasting Now? and I address how we are wasting something that we are using up way too rapidly but the solution to it is just so obvious I wouldn't be able to fill a whole Green Tip with the explanation of it. Without further ado...

What Resource(s) Are We Wasting Now? Parts 2 and 3, Water and Gasoline

At first I was going to just talk about how to reduce the amount of water that you use, but then I realized that both ideas I had also saved gasoline. It's like a bonus or something!

So one of the worst ways we waste water is with watering our lawns and our gardens. But it doesn't seem like there's any way to get around this. You're not just going to let your lawn get taken over by prairie grass and dandelions are you? So you toil away, spending countless hours watering and mowing the lawn, wasting water and gas for our lawnmowers.

But just when all hope seems to be lost, the clouds part to reveal...

A rock garden?

Yup. While many people may ridicule this seemingly ugly landscaping tactic, you have to admit that having one of these would save a lot of water and gasoline. Who knows, maybe this trend will catch on someday?

And the other part of this WRAWWN is a simple one. Stop letting your house catch on fire. Seriously. We know that you like deep frying turkeys and plugging 14 strands of Christmas lights into one socket and smoking in bed and having old faulty space heaters but why don't you think of the environment next time you want to do one or more of those things. Think of all the water that could be wasted trying to put out your house fire and all the gas that is wasted when the fire trucks drive to your house. (Although fire fighters have clearly read the IGR because they follow Green Tip #12).

Well, there you have it. Hopefully that will help you next time you're planning your landscaping or deciding whether or not to engage in actions that are potential fire hazards. Oh, and I'm sorry Wild Ginger Farm. I didn't mean to imply that your rock gardens are ugly. I'm just implying that rock gardens in general are ugly. Best of luck to you and your business!

Green Tip #73: Crayons

So, one of the trends that seems to be catching on in the environmentally friendly world of manufacturing is to make things out of organic materials. Which makes sense. Everyone knows where plants come from. Seeds get put into the ground and a few days, weeks or years later something grows and gives us fruits, vegetables, rubber, more seeds, money, clothing, spaghetti, hardwood floors, coffee, Snuggies, maple syrup, breakfast cereals, trail mix, books about 18th century French poetry, flowers and all other sorts of good things. But everything that's not a plant or an animal people have no idea where it comes from. Like who really knows where concrete comes from? Have you ever seen a concrete tree? Nope. So who's to say that we're not running out of concrete? We know we're running out of polar bears because we know where polar bears come from. Does anyone know where gas comes from? (other than Saudi Arabia) Nope. So we can't really know if we're running out of gas or not. We're just assuming that we are running out because it's more expensive.

So that got me thinking of stuff that we use every day and see if there's anything that we could replace with plant byproducts. And I have just the thing. Green Tip #73 is to replace graphite pencils with wax crayons. Have you ever seen where graphite comes from? Nope. Probably somewhere in the ground. Maybe Saudi Arabia. If I told you that Saudi Arabia was the country that produced the most graphite in the world, you'd probably believe me. So who's to say we're not running out of graphite?

Here's something we can't run out of: wax. Wax can sometimes be made synthetically, but it can also be made from beeswax or various oils made from plants. And you can turn wax into crayons. So from now on, cast out those pencils and their ambiguous origins! Start writing everything in crayons! Which reminds me, I think I'm going to go work on my Master's Thesis. And I'm going to do it in crayon, of course!

Green Tip #72: Drop Out of College

Recently, there was a controversy at the University of Toledo (not really a controversy, but the school newspaper tried to make it one) about how the IT department has decided to set a print limit of 1200 pages per semester for each student in the computer labs. At first, I was happy about this because I realized that this would save a lot of paper in the long run. But then I saw in the paper that people were upset at how low this limit was compared to their unlimited pages they had before. And that got me thinking about how many pages 1200 actually is. I mean really, are these students printing out their own personal copies of War and Peace? (By the way, War and Peace is 1475 pages in the 2006 paperback edition so maybe they're upset they're not going to find out what happens in the last 275 pages.)

I've spent quite a few semesters in college, so I know how much stuff a person can print in the course of a few months. I can tell you that it's less than 1200 pages a semester (9600 over the course of an average college career) but it's still a whole lot of paper. That got me thinking about how maybe college is really bad for the environment. I mean, all that paper (up to 2400 pages per year x 23000 students = 55,200,000 pages per year in the University of Toledo's case) really adds up.

And it's not just paper from the computer labs. There's the notes from class that the instructor prints out and don't even get me started on the textbooks! So much paper all used for a couple of months and then thrown away or (hopefully) recycled.

So let's all drop out of college! And there's a bonus to it all! If none of us have college degrees, then we won't get jobs in offices. Who do you think uses more paper per year? An accountant or a mechanic? Jobs that need college degrees use much more paper than jobs that only need a high school education. And that's a fact. Or at least that's a fact that my brain tells me is probably right.

PS Count Rostov dies near the end of War and Peace, in case you were wondering.

Green Tip #71: Everyone Should Live in Ohio or Nepal

Usually I feel bad that I let things like my personal life and the Olympics get in the way of posting new Green Tips, but this time I'm actually pretty glad that I didn't get around to it yesterday. Because if I had tried to write a new post yesterday, then I wouldn't have been inspired to come up with Green Tip #71. Green Tip #71 is, of course, that everyone should move to either Nepal or Ohio.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Why didn't I think of that, it's so obvious?!" It's okay that you didn't think of it first. After all, it's my job to do this sort of thing. And if you thought of it first, what would be the point of me writing the IGR? So yeah, move to Ohio or Nepal and that should solve some of the environmental problems that we're facing.

What? That isn't what you're thinking? Oh, my bad. What are you thinking? "I have no idea how Green Tip #71 makes any sense?" Jeez, ok, fine. I'll explain it in great detail for all of you out there that are a little slow to catch up.

While I was watching the Olympics last night, I noticed that Nepal's flag was sort of unusually shaped.

Exhibit 1. Nepal's Flag

Jackpot! Think of all the cloth that people could save by having a flag that isn't all there (not in an offensive way). I did always feel unpatriotic waving a fully rectangular American flag at parades and things just because of how much cotton had to be harvested for the flag.

So I was all ready to pack my bags and head out to Nepal (after I figured out where Nepal is). But as I thought about it more, I realized that I didn't feel so sure about spending the rest of my life living in a country that has water buffalo meat as a chief industry. Then it dawned on me! I didn't have to move to Nepal! Ohio's flag is almost as unusually shaped!

Exhibit 2. Ohio's Flag

Yes, that's right. Ohio's goofy shaped flag that was always so awkward to draw in elementary school social studies class is actually good for the environment. So everyone else, pack your bags! We've got plenty of room to take everyone just so long as we fill in all of our farmlands with apartment complexes! Welcome home!

Sorry, the Olympics distracted me today. I'll post tomorrow!

Green Tip #70: Snow Day

You know me, I like to be topical. And by that I mean I usually don't have any idea of what I'm going to write until I wake up and see my calendar says either Tuesday or Friday and I start trying to come up with ideas that I can use for the IGR. Well, today is no different than any other Tuesday. I had almost forgot that I was going to write one of these Green Tips until about an hour or so ago. So what do I do? I look around at what's happening in my life and in the world to get ideas. Well, those of you in Ohio right now know that the weather here can be summed up in one word: typical.

Yup, a February in Ohio would not be typical if it didn't come with a whole mess of snow and poorly plowed roads and Snow Advisories. And since this snow is all over the place here, I can't think of a better motivation for a Green Tip.

This isn't related to Green Tip #70 at all, but let me just say that I really like snow days. Snow days mean that less people will be out on the roads which means that less gas will be consumed by all these cars. Also, people are driving slower, which is better for the gas mileage. And if we don't use as much gas, Global Warming won't happen, so we'll continue to enjoy more snow days!

Okay, on to Green Tip #70. If you do find yourself having to drive anywhere whenever snow is around, don't be lazy with scraping off your car! Every single snowflake or crust of ice is adding completely unnecessary weight to your car. And that means that much more gas that you'll be burning lugging around all that snow. It's like when I had most of the unimportant parts of my car removed to make it lighter. (Doors, who needs doors? They just slow you down from getting in your car!)

So be vigilant! If you want to avoid having to explain to your grandkids what winter was before Global Warming took over, you need to get that snow off your cars! Or just stay in and drink Cold Hot Chocolate (saves electricity if you don't microwave it). Either way, be safe out there and totaling your car in a snow drift means one more hunk of metal in a landfill somewhere.

Green Tip #69: Goats, Seagulls, and Sharks

This one is so obvious that it's probably already been thought of and written about in some other humorous Green blog, and there's a chance that they're actually already doing it in some parts of the world, but you know what? It's so ingenious that I thought I'd share it with you anyway.

Goats are kind of a weird animal. And by weird I actually mean pretty stupid. You see, goats have this tendency to eat just about anything. They'll chow down like the average American in an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet if you put anything in front of them. Even garbage! How dumb can you be?? Don't they know where that garbage came from?? Apparently not, because they keep doing it and somehow it doesn't seem to bother them.

Well this got me thinking. Why not just park some goats in a landfill and let them go to town? That would certainly help out with the issue of landfills taking up too much space and being potentially hazardous to the environment. So Green Tip #69 is that cities need to hire (well, not quite hire, but you know what I mean) a squad of goats to roam the hills of the landfills cutting out vast portions of the landfilled garbage.

You're probably wondering about the title, though. The thing about putting goats in landfills is that the garbage still needs to get into the landfill. All that stuff that's floating around the streets isn't going to get to the landfill by itself. That's why we need seagulls to roam the streets looking for garbage. While not quite as stupid as goats when it comes to eating garbage, seagulls are not picky at all when it comes to their diet.

And finally, we need sharks (the Scavengers of the Seas as nobody but me calls them) to take care of all that stuff that ends up in the oceans forming Pacific Garbage Patches. So let's get our animal friends to help us out and let's have them get a taste for garbage! Because let's face it, if we don't clean up the garbage, we're going to destroy the environment and they won't have anywhere to live anyway. So while it's not their problem, they'll get a steady diet out of it, so it's not like it's all bad for them...

Green Tip #68: Arcade Games

It is ironic that I would choose arcade games to be the final chapter of my recent video game themed saga, seeing as how they were the first games that were popular with massive amounts of people. I had many ideas for which game I wanted to talk about, but it seemed like all of those early arcade games had horrible environmental messages, so it was just too darn hard to narrow it down. Without further ado, Green Tip #68 is don't attempt to use the logic with which the developers of these arcade games used so many years ago. Here are several examples:

Frogger
There is something seriously wrong about the city that this Frog lives in. I was confused why there were so many cars on the road (take the subway people! Or ride the bus!). I mean, less cars are not only better for the environment, but they would save a frog's life! I thought a little harder about the residents of this city and realized that they hate the environment. Why else would they be living downstream of a logging area? All these logs floating downstream clearly show a blatant disregard for sustainable forestry.

Space Invaders, Galaga, Galaxian, Phoenix, etc.
One of the hottest trends of arcade games was to have these types of games where you play as a single spaceship and you have to take down vast armies of aliens or alien bugs or alien spaceships or other alien things. Well, anyone who's played one of these games knows that throughout the course of the game, you end up shooting hundreds, if not thousands, of enemy space ships. Aliens, I have to question your tactics here. STOP BUILDING REALLY WEAK DISPOSABLE SPACESHIPS!!! If you had half of a brain cell, you'd stop wasting your planet's precious resources on ships that blow up after one hit and you'd apply yourself better to make a smaller fleet of indestructible spaceships. I can only imagine how much damage your alien mines are doing to the planets you live on.

Dig Dug
This game is a thinly veiled attempt to make strip mining seem glamorous and fun. I'm not buying it.

Centipede
I get that you hate bugs. So do I. But I've never taken a laser gun to shoot all these helpless lifeforms. I use shoes or tissues (used tissues in accordance with Green Tip #8) or fly swatters or my roommate's homework. Notice that none of them waste all the energy that laser guns do. And really? What did the mushrooms ever do to you but get in the way? Leave them out of it.

Pac-Man
Finally, Pac-Man. I don't even know what amounts of pot he has to have smoked to have munchies this bad, but sober up, man. You can't just go tearing through those little glowy pellet things like that. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Reduce is first for a reason, buddy.

I think I've pretty clearly demonstrated how bad of a message video games are sending to our children. Check out the IGR again Friday when I'll be going back to my normal routine with a very much run-of-the-mill (windmill) Green Tip.

It involves goats. :)