PS: Those who know my posts, may well be wondering why I’m not writing about the horror going down around us. I’m not ignoring it intellectually, but, for the moment, am just trying to breathe, it’s so incredibly monstrous, alarming, and offensive that I find it difficult to find a reality in which I can navigate. I will get to it, and, of course, every day there is more fuel added to the fire burning up our democracy, civilization, ourselves. In the meantime, put aside the evil for a minute and consider the following.
Lyft or Uber
FYI: Lyft kept its promise after January 6th to not donate to any election deniers. They’ve kept that promise. Uber never made such a promise, and with its CEO contributed $2 million to Trump’s Inauguration fund. [Courtesy of popularinformation@substack.com, which I highly recommend. Started by Judd Legum, they do excellent documented research on current issues. According to my research on Lyft’s website, they also have a strong DEI statement and practice what they ‘preach.’ [https://www.lyft.com/careers/life-at-lyft]
Paper
Paper or plastic? How about neither one. Unless the paper is 100% post-consumer or other waste recycled, every time you use paper, it means dead trees. Let’s look at the use of paper towels. OK, one paper towel isn’t going to kill a single tree, but how many rolls of paper towels do you use in a year? It takes approximately 17 mature trees and 20,000 gallons of water to produce one ton (roughly 2,000 rolls or enough for about 25 individuals) of virgin paper towels. Per year in the United States, data indicates we use 13 billion pounds of paper towels annually, which translates to roughly 80 rolls per person per year, the highest usage per capita in the world (no surprise) and almost half of world-wide usage. Obviously, individual use varies, even within a single household. Most of these paper towels end up in landfills, require excessive water and other resources to produce, create habitat destruction, and impact climate change. As we, too slowly, work on reducing plastic, consider slowing down on paper also, and use recycled as much as possible. [Some of this information was generated using AI, which I backed up using diverse sources from corporate and environmental organizational data.]
There are many alternatives to paper towels, for example, cloths made from 100% organic cotton, hemp, linen, and bamboo or a combination of cellulose and cotton or, in many cases, rags cut from old, worn out clothes. It’s easy to just throw a cloth or rag into a load of laundry without causing excessive use of washers/dryers. Speaking of dryers, try a portable, collapsible wooden drying rack. It saves a lot of energy, and you end up with fresher smelling clothes. In terms of toilet paper, certainly a bidet cuts down on its use, plus buy TP made from recycled materials. You can buy most paper items made from recycled materials from coffee filters to office paper.
Take a look again at the photos of my baby piñon trees.