Monday, April 8, 2013

Week #13


April 8th, 2013

When I initially completed the quiz I fared at 4.7 earths if everyone lived like me. So I went back and completed the more in-depth questions thinking I’d score better, not to my surprise did I see I scored worse by .1!

Upon exploring the options to further reduce my carbon footprint it asked me to eat less animal products – meat, fish, poultry, dairy, etc. Then it requested I purchase more post-consumer material and packaging. Which nowadays is the norm, but I don’t go out of my way to purchase it. But if I happen to need/want it and it is recycled packaging, we both win. The last thing it suggested I do was to take a trip locally instead of flying (I fly once a year, if that! Sheesh).

These requests are untenable in my eye – asking me sacrifice my dietary needs for the planet is abhorrent. Not to mention having me drive instead of fly when if I’m lucky make one trip up to Virginia a year.

The least obtrusive request is to buy more recycled products and materials. As I mentioned before, many items sold now have some sort of recycle initiative and if I happen to purchase one or a few in a trip to the store than I am contributing to reduce my footprint.

In all honesty, I’m not sure how much the earth would be able to sustain if everyone lived like I do. Perhaps not very many since I seemed to just surpass the 4.5 – 4.6 planet earth average range. I looked again on my results page and didn't see it listed anywhere.

What would be more interesting to me is to see how the algorithms are compiled and the basic guidelines are chosen. To someone who finds this to be a bunch of bologna anyway, I wonder how scientific the science is behind it to begin with. 

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