Earth Matters: So what do you choose?

The Island Now
Lynn Capuano, President Terrapin Environmental Solutions Inc.

By Lynn Capuano

Every day there are a multitude of choices to make and many have an environmental impact. Paper or plastic, but is paper better? Drive to buy items in bulk or walk to buy groceries locally (maybe even at the farmers market), but in smaller separately packaged options?

It’s not always easy to know what the right choice is and especially what the right choice is for the environment.

Not using plastic is the environmentally right choice, isn’t it? We know plastic is harmful to the environment and, in turn, to the climate and human and animal health and well-being. We can’t recycle the plastic currently existing in the world, and we keep generating and using more.

Why is that? In part, because plastic is lighter to transport which means it takes less fuel to move products in plastic rather than glass.

Using less fuel is good because that means less greenhouse gas emissions. Less greenhouse gas emissions mean less climate impact.

So, is plastic good?? No, plastic is not good, but it illustrates how some of these choices, like many choices in life, quickly become more complex.

Reducing plastic consumption and waste would go a long way toward helping the environment, climate and our health, but so would generating less waste overall, buying more locally produced items (sometimes) and consuming less.

I get it, sometimes it feels like you can’t win. The problems are vast and you don’t have enough time to figure out all the nuances of the decision. Do the best you can. Bring reusable bags to the store.

Reject a straw and bring your own reusable cup. There is no question plastic is bad and we need to stop using it. Any benefits achieved by its lightness and durability are unquestionably outweighed by its persistence in the environment, the death and destruction it brings to wildlife and wildlife habitats and the pollution released by its production from fossil fuels.

How about what car to buy? There’s not much question that larger cars are worse for the environment because they require more fuel to travel fewer miles. But what if you use a larger car to carpool more frequently?

By eliminating a car from the road by carpooling, have you made up for driving a gas guzzling vehicle? It’s possible, but how much are you carpooling and how much are you in the gas guzzling car alone running errands when you could have walked or driven a more fuel-efficient vehicle?

Odds are, you’re not making up for the lack of fuel efficiency by driving everyone else around and keeping their cars off the road, so buy the more fuel-efficient car and know you made the environmental choice.

Have you noticed how many plastic bags your newspaper comes in and how many unnecessary and unwanted inserts come with the paper? That’s a lot of plastic and a lot of paper consumed.

So, go digital. Get your paper online and eliminate the plastic bags and wasted paper. Seems like a simple solution.

But what about the effect of spending more time in front of a computer or similar screen to read the paper? When we start to examine the environmental impact of getting your news on newsprint versus getting it online, things get complicated.

Though newspapers are printed on some percentage of recycled content (the number varies by paper), a lot of trees are cut down to make the paper for newsprint.

Those trees are often from old growth forests which means their destruction causes more environmental damage in the form of less carbon dioxide storage than cutting down younger trees.

Then the newsprint production process is energy and water intensive and the newspapers have to be transported for delivery to your home causing more greenhouse gas emissions.

On the digital side, there is the energy consumed to run and maintain the temperature-controlled climate for the servers making the newspaper available online.

There is also the energy consumption for the end user being on the computer or similar device for the time needed to read the paper. The end user will likely replace his/her computer or digital device periodically so there is the pollution and energy consumption involved in disposal.

The flip side is you would have a computer regardless so some of the associated impacts of reading the newspaper online would happen regardless of how you consume your newspaper. This choice is a closer call than some of the others we confront daily; so it may come down to personal preference.

We’re living in what could be considered confusing times especially when it comes to making the “right” environmental choice. We’d love to address the questions you have in this space, so please send us your questions and we’ll do our best to give you the best option.

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