Be green

"Buying nothing is better for the earth than buying green." -National Resource Defense Council

It makes me think of the national change-a-light campaign, urging people to replace their old lightbulbs with CFLs. When I think of that, I wonder what happens to the tens of thousands of old lightbulbs that people have recently discarded. Are they piling up somewhere in landfills?

For those of us that go to WashU, it's pretty disappointing how NOT green the campus is. All of our dining halls use plastic and paper for packaging, without an option of reuseable silverware, cups, plates or bowls. I was thinking about trying to get them to serve me on my own plate, but I am not so sure how they would react. I at least want to bring my own silverware

The biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption in this nation and around the world is the buildings in which we live and work. They require tons of energy during construction and for all of the electrical needs of a building. We gots to start designing better buildings...

I'm wondering what other people think about the "going green" movement. To me its got alot of the aspects of a buzzword and while companies will make changes that are green I don't see anyone making the changes necessary. For example Walmart has put doors on their refrigerators and freezers and sunroofs on their stores reducing their electrical use by close to 20%. But they still ship 90% of the crap they sell all the way from China.

The best way to be "green" is not necessarily to go back to living in the wilderness and stop living our 21st-century lives, but to innovate and create new, environmentally-friendly technology. If the industrial revolution kick-started global warming, an eco-industrial revolution will get us out of it.

Alternative-fuel cars (along with ideas like WeCar {http://wecar.com/} and ZipCar {http://www.zipcar.com/index}) are a start, but we need to do much much more.