One Geek, One Earth

One of the things I’m learning as I start to immerse myself in the green news world is that there are a lot of things that would seem to have an obvious green benefit, but when you look closer, it isn’t such an obvious decision. I had been reading about bamboo and how it was a trendy option for flooring and furniture because it grows so quickly, making it an excellent renewable resource. But then I did some reading at Gristmill and Treehugger and it turns out the choice isn’t that easy. Oftentimes the people harvesting the bamboo are tearing down natural forests to plant bamboo and are using pesticides as part of the growing process. So what seemed like an obviously green choice suddenly requires a lot more thought.

In my case, Joy and I have been deciding what to do about our drinking water situation. Joy drinks a lot of bottled water and I’m planning to move away from drinking a lot of Kool-aid (I really don’t need all that sugar). It seemed like the easy decision would be to get a Brita pitcher. But the decision was complicated by the fact that we’re in a drought. Does the environmental savings from not buying all these bottles of water (that are now being recycled) outweigh the fact that we’ll be using more local water, which is in short supply these days? What I originally thought was going to be an easy decision turned out to be a little more complex. We thought about it for a little bit and decided that the amount of water saved from drinking bottled water was not a particularly high percentage of our water usage, so it was best to go with the Brita pitcher and stop buying the bottled water.

So no easy choices. I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised by that.