Blog the Environment: 3 Green Things Anyone Can Do.

Good morning and welcome to Blog Action Day.

Here are some of the things that I do to help the environment. They're all pretty easy; anyone can do these things.

1. I don't own a car; I haven't done for years. Instead I take public transit or walk.
a. Four days a week, I walk to the BART (commuter train) station near my house, ride it for two stops (fare = $1.40), and then take an express bus to the office park where my main office is. This is made easier (and less expensive) because the office park sponsors a free bus pass for anyone who works there. That means that my round-trip commute costs less than a gallon of gas. Plus, taking transit means that I can spend that time doing what I want, instead of grinding my teeth because I'm stuck in traffic.
b. On Fridays, I alternate between having the day off and walking to an office that's about 1.5 miles from my house. Not only am I saving the environment, I'm getting some nice exercise.
c. The grocery store is a 20-minute walk from my house. I bought a folding shopping cart and assorted tote bags (including an insulated bag for cold/frozen things). The folding cart plays nicely with the store's shopping carts, and the checkers are getting the hang of pcking a lot of things into a few fabric totes instead of putting a few things in each of a dozen or more plastic bags.

2. I don't own a washer and dryer. I do my wash in the kitchen sink and hang it out to dry in the back yard. Yes, it takes longer this way, but I'm saving electricity, and I don't need dryer sheets to give my clothes that fresh-air smell.

3. I've replaced almost all of the incandescent bulbs in my house with compact flourescents. The exception is certain fixtures where they just don't fit, and which I'm not presently in a position to change.

What part of "Spare the Air" don't you understand?

Here in the SF Bay Area, when the temperature gets (and stays) in triple digits, and the wind goes away, we get smog. Maybe not like LA smog, but bad enough. To try to minimize that, the worst of these days are declared to be "Spare the Air" days.

On Spare the Air days, we are asked to cut down any unnecessary power usage, and especially cut down on driving. Instead, we are encouraged to car pool or take public transit. To encourage this, all the local transit agencies provide free rides. Most of them are free all day on Spare the Air days. A few - like BART and the ferries - offer free rides through 1pm, and charge the regular fare thereafter. They started that this year, because last year a lot of commuters were unable to get on the trains and ferries, because those were full of people who took advantage of the free rides to spend the day playing in SF.

But an odd thing happens, and I notice this on almost every Spare the Air day: traffic is actually worse on those days, and it's mostly solo drivers. I've thought about why this might be, and I've come up with a few possibilities:

• They didn't find out that it was a Spare the Air day before they left for work
• They didn't feel that transit was sufficiently convenient for them (and maybe it wasn't - we have good transit here, but it's not perfect)
• They figured that everyone else would be car pooling and using transit, so they'd have the roads pretty much to themselves.

I think the last one is the most likely, and I think it's the most common reason for it. The trouble is that when everyone thinks that everyone (or someone) else is doing something, what usually happens is that no-one does it.

I haven't owned a car in over a dozen years; I've managed quite well using transit and the occasional taxi. On most weekdays, I walk to the BART station (about a half mile), take the train to the second station down the line from me, where I catch an express bus that drops me practically on the doorstep of my office. This has removed a major stressor from my life. Instead of spending an hour behind the wheel in traffic being mad about the waste of time, I can spend that hour reading or writing or just staring out the window - whatever, that time is my own to use as I wish. On alternate Fridays, I work at an office that's closer to my home - about 1.5 miles away - so I walk to and from work. Yes, it takes longer than driving, but it's free workout.

Anyway, if you have Spare the Air days where you are, leave your car at home!