Things you don't have to do when you are green.....

I have guests coming in this weekend, interestingly from both the east and west coasts in one weekend. As such, a good host I'm working to clean up my place and make it more than bachelor hospitable and I realized that I had to take out the trash. This little gesture caused me great pause, and I realized I hadn't done it for a long time. Not because I hate taking the trash out, which I do share that affliction with teenagers everywhere. But that I didn't take the trash out often enough to meet the schedule of the garbage pick up. That's actually pretty radical, since growing up in the suburbs, it was imperative, mandatory, necessary to take out the trash every week and have it picked up by the garbage truck otherwise you'd be buried in refuse. But since I've tried to make my life greener, it's not been a problem.

So a huge benefit of going green is that you tend to consume less, focusing on other things to make you happy. Another thing is by consuming less, you throw away less. Which means you don't have to take out the garbage as often. That's pretty cool, since when I was a teenager, I hated taking out the garbage. Now if I don't produce as much Garbage, the garbage truck doesn't have to come every week. That means less gas burned by the big garbage trucks. It means less noisy garbage trucks in the neighborhood. And it's not just consuming less, it's being smart about what you do with your waste. Imagine creating a compost pile, that's even less garbage.

Now imagine a world without garbage! Pretty amazing, fewer landfills, less stench. Less of everything, except quality of life. By consuming less, I don't notice having less of a life. The only odd thing is that I don't have a TV, (Did you know that Americans average 28 hours of television watching a week!). Living a greener life, means that you have less garbage, it's not planned, it just happens that way.

Now who wants less garbage in their (sic) life? Thought so.

So what is the difference between access and ownership? And does it matter? Something to think about in the next post.