Consumption is the least of it

I've become taken with the zero-waste household. My own household is nowhere near that standard, and the few stabs in lowering our consumption and the creation of waste (recycling without fully researching what can and cannot be recycled, a compost bin that gets around a quarter of the kitchen scraps, competing with the garbage disposal and the trash can for whichever is most convenient in a given moment) are halfhearted at best. So my sense of moral superiority and self worth as a result of green living is more than a little tinged by my understanding of the minimal impact of my minimal actions.

And I have flown in excess of 20,000 miles this year. So it's not like my carbon footprint (what a lovely phrase that is) is in good shape.

There's a whole slew of carbon footprint calculators on the web. Set for US consumers, even if you eliminate all consumption, you still get a carbon footprint 2.5 times larger than the global average. If you don't fly at all, don't own a car, eat nothing (not just organic/local, literally nothing), buy no services or electricity or clothes or electronics, live in a house with zero square feet, just living in this country, supporting and being supported by its infrastructure, your carbon footprint is 2.5 times larger than the global average. Or some other number: the different calculators give different numbers.

A zero-waste household isn't the goal. A zero-waste civilization is the goal. And lowering the waste of a single household is morally superior, perhaps, but by itself ineffective compared to other ways of decreasing resource use (and maybe increasing resource efficiency at the same time). You could get involved in politics, on the retail or national level, with your time, money, and attention. You could organize your neighbors, and fellow church members, and PTA members, and choir members, communicate your best intentions and follow through with them. Zero-waste household the blog may be more effective at resource conservation than zero-waste household the household. Changes in the blog-reading audience are tough to measure, and the blog is much more effective for being the story of a real household. The other zero-waste households out there, though, the ones who don't blog, don't talk about their homes and their choices, don't try to convince others and to create, through government and education as well as their personal market choices, systemic changes for resource management, aren't doing half as much as they could for this thing that takes quite a bit of forethought and follow through.

Yesterday's flight destination: DC with the grandparents

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: french toast
lunch: salami and cheese and crackers
dinner: carbonara lite