Tiny Choices Survey: Lisa!
By tinychoices | June 25, 2010
Vital statistics (name, age, location, link to website/blog)?
Lisa, Columbus, OH I blog at Condo Blues
How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)?
My husband, one eyed rescue dog, and I live in a freestanding condominium. It looks like a regular freestanding house but acts like a condominium meaning I own the building but technically not the land the house sits on. We joke that condo owners are serfs and not the landed gentry!
Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
By choice. By buying a condo we got everything on our want list and wish list at a lower price than we would for a free standing home of the same size. It is a new build, has a tighter thermal envelope, and only took a few cheap some improvements to seal air leaks to improve its energy efficiency. My 1500 square foot home uses an average of 15 Kwh of electricity a day.
How do you travel (transit, car, etc)? Are your travel decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
Mostly by car. My city rates poorly for walking and the city buses rarely run past 5 o’clock and do not go to most parts of the city. Biking near my home is dangerous because we don’t have bike lanes or berms. However, that is changing. The city is extending a nearby bike trail to run past my house.
Tell us about a Tiny Choice you’ve made in your life.
I challenged myself to lower my home’s energy use by 20% over the course of one year. Many said I could not do it without chucking my new with the house but non Energy Star rated appliances. My husband and I felt that was wasteful and used more energy to dispose of and manufacture new more energy efficient appliances. I built that into my challenge as well. I changed habits, did some cheap home improvements, and changed a bunch of light bulbs and saved 32% over the course of the year instead of 20%!
What is the one environmental dilemma you personally struggle the most with?
That you cannot please everyone with every environmental practice out there. Sometimes people like to punch holes in whatever you’re doing because it isn’t green enough or good enough according to their personal best practices. If I buy in bulk, I am dinged on the item being in a BPA free plastic container. If I buy it in glass, I’m causing more gas to be used in its transport. If it’s a prepared food item like a condiment, I might be dinged for not making my own. It can be discouraging.
What is one Tiny Choice you can make in that direction?
I made a New Year’s Resolution one year not to give into Green Guilt. Guilt isn’t productive especially when the person trying to inflict it on me refuses to recognize that my way may not be their preferred way but it’s more often than not a different green way. I should revisit that resolution.
What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you make that people question (in either a positive educational or a negative hassle way) you the most about?
Using cloth napkins. I’ve been told “you can buy them you know” meaning disposables by several people. Well, I bought the cloth ones too and I never run out!
What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you would like every single person to adopt?
I don’t think I should tell everyone to make one of my personal choices because I don’t know what their lives are like and if it will work for them as well as it does for me. I’d prefer for people to make a list of things that they want to adopt and choose one to work on for a month until it becomes a habit.
Do you feel like you make sacrifices for environmentalism? Please explain.
No. I grew up in a family where we weren’t allowed to waste things and if something broke we fixed it. This is really just my life. I hope I can lead by example but I’m not out to make myself a martyr.
Are you generally: optimistic, pessimistic, neutral about environmentalism and the future?
Optimistic. I grew up on Lake Erie where they still talk about the Cuyahoga River Fire that lead to the formation of the EPA in 1972. Many experts said that the Cuyahoga River would take centuries to come back from the pollution that caused the fire. Mother Nature is a curious thing because there is wildlife in the river now! You can’t eat the fish but the fact that there are fish in the river is quite amazing.
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Topics: Surveys | 2 Comments »
2 Comments
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It sounds like you have a great story - I’m with you on a lot of what you said here. I’m looking forward to reading your blog. Thanks for taking the time to fill out the survey, Lisa!
Good article, looking more like it, hope you can still see good work.