Green Work

There is a lot of talk right now about how to "green" our home lives--from carbon-offsetting of car usage, to the food choices we make, to the cleaners we use, etc. But I suspect that you, like me, spend a large amount of your time not at home but at work (and in my case, I spend more time at work than at home). And so I often struggle with the question--how can I green my work life? It is an important question because I think that history shows us that people make very different decisions when they are part of larger organizations and institutions than when they are on their own or in a social context other than the work institution (it is easy to place the blame or fault for something you feel may be wrong on the institution and then disconnect yourself from being an actor in the situation: "Oh, this is the way we do business," "Its about the numbers," etc.)

Of course, if you are in a power position in an organization there are an immense number of of ways you can green your work: make green building choices; reduce product waste; educate your employees; increase efficiency and reduce waste (green = efficient = $$$ saved or lost). But most workers are in control of these decisions. What is there to do?

I look at my daily habits--are there things I do everyday that create unnecessary waste? Say buying a coffee every day on the way to work? If so, I try to find an alternative (i.e. I make my coffee every day and bring it in a thermos). Other ideas:

• Waste. What am I throwing away every day? Just because I don't have to pay for the trash removal doesn't mean my garbage isn't accumulating somewhere.
• Avoid bottled water. Bottled water requires at least 2-3x the amount of water found in the bottle for the filtration process and in the process of creating the bottle itself. And then you have to do something with the bottle. Buy a water pitcher/filter pitcher and keep it at your desk. Saves ya money too.
• Turn off your computer. Plain and simple--it is a myth that leaving your computer on all the time is good for it. Turn it off every night.
  
• Optimize your computer's energy usage. Your computer (Mac or PC) has a Power Savings or Energy Savings setting. Turn it to optimize power usage or battery life. By default, your computer is set to optimize performance. Think of how much energy could be saved if everyone switch their computers to optimize energy esage (one estimate I saw recently was the switch from Windows XP to Windows Vista, where the energy saving options will be the default, will save $25B (that's billion) in energy).
• Stop printing. Especially emails. And always, always, always, preview what you are about to print so you only print the pages that you want.
• Buy Adobe Acrobat. With Adobe Acrobat (the program, not Adobe Acrobat Reader) you can create PDFs from any document. Want that Excel spreadsheet as a PDF? You can do it. Why is this important? Because Adobe Acrobat comes with annotation tools. So instead of printing out a document and marking it up on paper, you can do it all electronically.
• Carbon off-set your work travel. Some organizations do this already (I believe Bank of America carbon-offsets all their employees travels). There are many organizations that you can donate to that will invest in carbon-offset projects. I prefer to give to an organization like Nature Conservancy that preserves and conserves land--something that has a much broader (positive) environmental aspect than building, say, a wind farm. Or if you have land (I am of the landless masses of apartment dwellers), plant some trees (native species only!!!).
• Bring your food from home--how much waste is generated by take-out, delivery people, driving to a restaurant, etc?

Other ideas are welcome . . . .

Manchester City Sports Stadium

This seems to me to be the way to do it: when building something make it as self-reliant as possible. Manchester City's footbal club just got permission from the city of Manchester City to build a giant wind turbine to power their stadium. I like the idea of wind-power but those turbines are such an eyesore. At least this turnbine is relagated to another eyesore--the stadium itself (even if it is built by one of my favorite architects, Norman Foster). But the basic concept is sound--make your new construction as self-reliant as possible, much as Norman Foster did with the cooling and heating systems that he built into the German Reichstag in Berlin.

Going Green - Something More?

This past September I wrote about "going green" and the efforts I was trying to make to "green" my life. My list included things such as buying and eating local & organic food; off-setting my car's carbon output; buying my electricity from alternative energy source (wind, hydro, and solar); etc. And over the past few months I have noticed and read about other people doing similar things (mostly recently Ben Jervey in Good Magazine).

While I think that all these efforts are admirable (if I can give myself a self-congratulatory pat on the back) and while I do think that these efforts will make some difference (would Wal*Mart be selling organic food if more and more people weren't asking for it?), I don't think that these efforts are nearly enough. The best way to sum up why I think this (although perhaps not the most rigorous of reasoning) is that none of these efforts, by me or by others, really push us past our comfort zones. Not that comfort or discomfort is a good measure of whether or not something is good/bad; but it strikes me that none of the things that I am doing to go green change anything fundamental. Essentially, they are efforst in efficiency and productivity. Necessary efforts, but not sufficient.

The real question is what can we do that is fundamentally changing? It strikes me that too much of the green efforts and talk these days is a consumerist talk. Doing good through consumption. Even if it is not of the buying sort of consumption, it is still a way of being that sees the world as something to use, to consume, to deplete, even if it is an efficient manner. What is needed is a way of being that is not consumption based.

Where to start? Well, first off, I don't think that there is any one way to approach these issues. I can say that I am trying to stretch myself in several directions. One direction is what I would call the self-sufficiency/fundamentals route. I think that there is a lot to be gained (both personally and on the green side) for trying to do things for yourself, whether that is making things for yourself, raising your own food, repairing things, etc. And in order to gain a level of self-sufficiency you need to have an understanding of basic fundamentals (how do you grow vegetables? how are clothes made? what really is going on in the belly of my apartment building to create heat? where is all my water coming from when I turn on the tap?).

Another direction is simply trying to do with less. I am feeling particularly bombarded with junk these days. In my apartment, in the world outside (try walking down a Jersey City street on an early Monday morning--all it is garbage and rubbish strewn everywhere). And of course, in the media, shopping areas, etc--oh, oh, here comes Thanksgiving and Christmas, time to gorge ourselves. Ahem, I digress. But my next direction is really to prune out the junk that surrounds us everyday--but to try and reduce it in a manageable and responsible way.

Why I like Information Design

This is up there with the Simpson's take on USA Today (#2 still #1).