How I got Religion and Saved the Planet

I Awoke screaming in the middle of the night, my eyes filled with visions of an environmental hell that would have frightened Hieronymus Bosch: rivers transformed into angry, bubbling flows of lifeless, radioactive matter; dark skies weeping never-ending acid rain; twisted, cancerous mutants--human beings only in the broadest definition--prowling a bleak, treeless landscape....

How about this, instead: I have information about the biggest environmental cover-up in our nation's history that I am now going to relate to you ...?

Or this: In the following pages, I will tell my tale, which makes the story of Karen Silkwood sound like a day at Disneyland ...?

If any of the above were true, you'd have no trouble understanding how I became an environmentalist of sorts. But, alas, none of them is. All I can honestly tell you is this: Without fanfare, pyrotechnics or an incident that had the major movie studios bidding for my life story, I somehow managed to become an environmental activist, a regular enviro-nerd. You know the type: the guy who recycles his soft-drink cans and nags co-workers about their Styrofoam cups. That's me.

This change didn't happen on a particular day at a particular time and it didn't happen for a particular reason, at least none that I can put my finger on. It happened in a cumulative way, which I guess isn't all that hard to believe. As a living, breathing human being, I'd read headline after headline telling of ecological horror after ecological horror in country after country since the notion of an environmental issue gained popularity during the Sixties. How long could I go on believing it wasn't happening; or that, OK, it probably was happening, but it wouldn't get real bad for a long time and by then, scientists would have found a way to fix it; or that maybe it was pretty bad now, but it was affecting only people who weren't me?

Don't misunderstand. In no way am I laboring under the delusion that I was the first, or even among the first, to climb aboard the environmental band wagon. I admit it--I'm late. But I don't believe anyone who got on the wagon before me wants to push me off for not getting there sooner. The point is, I got there.

Prior to my environmental enlightenment, I'd thought of myself as fairly ordinary when it came to these matters. I never had much desire to heave an empty can out a car window when a garbage receptacle was at the end of a ride, or willfully punch a hole in the ozone layer, and I'd never been behind the wheel of a supertanker that broke up off the coast of Alaska--at least not while I was drinking. On the other hand, if I saw a bit of garbage in the street, I'd walk past it without picking it up--hey, I wasn't the slob who put it there, so why should I be the saint who picked it up? When getting rid of toxic household substances--say, (continued on page 152)How I Got Religion(continued from page 128) a can of stripper (good for removing paint, skin, brain cells, whatever)--maybe I hadn't disposed of them as carefully as I could have. And I had no beef with plastic or anything else manufacturers called disposable--it's tough to beat that convenience. Where the stuff ended up after I got through with it ... jeez, to be honest, I guess I, duh, never gave it much thought.

But it eventually came time to admit that it was my problem, and as a typical American consumer, I was guilty of contributing to the pollution of the environment, even if I weren't doing it on purpose, and even if I myself weren't a multinational chemical company. There was no particular reason to start taking responsibility now, but there was even less of a reason to wait.

I needed a game plan, one within the realm of the possible. I doubted very much that I could, say, figure out a better way to dispose of plutonium if I had one, ten or even 100 years. I wanted to find out what I could do to make a difference. And I needed a deadline. Seven days seemed like as good a chunk of time as any. I figured that if God had created the whole ball of wax in only six days, with 24 extra hours, I should be able to do something.

Day One

Believing that saving the planet was probably not unlike making thighs thinner in 30 days, I beelined for the local Barnes & Noble. I didn't get too far before stumbling onto a shelf that featured enough books on the environment to chew up our redwood forests. Titles included 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, How to Make the World a Better Place (Over 100 Quick-and-Easy Tips), Save Our Planet--750 Everyday Ways You Can Help Clean Up the Earth and the daddy of them all, The Green Lifestyle Handbook--1001 Ways You Can Heal the Earth.

I started with 50 Simple Things and quickly discovered why it is so popular. It made saving the earth appear easy and not all that inconvenient. After pointing out the problems we face, without bludgeoning the reader over the head with them for too long, it tackled the top 50 picks, which were divided into three categories: "Simple Things" (On aerating a faucet: "According to stats in Home Energy magazine, we would save over 250,000,000 gallons of water every day if every American home installed faucet aerators"); "It Takes Some Effort" (On car pooling: "In one year, traffic congestion alone wastes three billion gallons of gasoline--about five percent of the nation's annual gas consumption"); and "For the Committed" (On eating low on the food chain: "According to Diet for a New America, over a billion people could be fed by the grain and soybeans eaten by U.S. livestock every year"). That night, my wife, Lisa, and I immediately became participants: Opting for pasta at home, we walked right past the local fast-burger emporium, eschewing not only high-food-chain comestibles but also the Styrofoam containers that are non-biodegradable--500 years from now, they'll still be around.

Day Two

The next morning, I hit the ground running. Before I even left the apartment, I was able to save approximately 15 gallons of water by trimming a mere two minutes off my time in the shower. I then saved another 15 gallons while shaving by filling the sink instead of letting the water flow, and more than five gallons of water while brushing my teeth by turning the faucet on only when I had to rinse my mouth instead of letting the water flow continuously ("A household can save up to 20,000 gallons of water each year by getting a grip on its faucets," according to 50 Simple Things). None of these measures wasted any time, either.

After making sure all the lights were turned off (this was my own idea), I left the apartment (we're city dwellers--New York) to grab the subway. Although it was as crowded as ever during the morning rush, for the first time in my eight years as a straphanger, I had a reason to feel good about using mass transit. After all, the subway is essentially car pooling.

When I arrived at my job, the work on my desk left over from the day before inspired an idea: Like most offices, ours runs on paper, most of which is turned into garbage almost immediately, if it isn't already garbage. Perhaps there was a way to recycle it.

I called our office manager to ask if we had a policy on paper recycling. She said that as far as she knew, there wasn't one and quickly added that if I wanted to take the responsibility to look into it, it was perfectly all right with her. She put herself even farther out on a limb by suggesting that I call "someone in the city for more information" before she hastily hung up.

With minimum directory assistance, I contacted the Office Paper Recycling Service, a subdivision of The Council on the Environment of New York City, and spoke with a woman who informed me that as of July 14, 1989, a recycling law (Local Law number 19) was enacted with various parameters for the residential, governmental and commercial sectors. For the commercial sector, the mandate is that 50 percent of the "aggregate waste" (paper is included in this wide definition of what is more commonly known as garbage) must be recycled. The law, which is a bit confusing because the city is still clarifying portions of it, stipulates that the "waste generator" is responsible for recycling its aggregate waste. I wondered who the waste generator was--the building or the tenant? This environmental stuff could be tricky.

Next, I called our building manager. The receptionist said he wasn't there right then, but he would return my call when he got in.

On the way home from work, I picked up a can of latex paint (less toxic than oil-base) from the hardware store to paint a window sill in the apartment. I asked the clerk what the best way was to dispose of the paint and he said, "Just make sure the lid is on tight and throw it away; it's no problem." Stunned by his obviously reckless advice, I put a notice up in our building telling other residents I had paint for anyone who could use it.

Day Three

Cleaning up the planet is somewhat like making love--you can do it by yourself, but it's better to involve someone else. Sure, I had Lisa, who unflinchingly separated our bottles and cans (in our state, both are redeemable for five cents each at grocery stores and supermarkets) from the rest of our garbage and took our newspapers down to the street on designated recycling days.

But I wanted other environmental partners as well. Directly across the hall from my office sits Bob G., a recent college graduate ever eager to debate the cultural significance of Paula Abdul, RoboCop 2 or the Mazda Miata MX-5. What might he, a regular guy who stood to inherit more of this mess than I (I'm 34), be willing to do about it? I decided to see if he was recruitable.

"Of course I'm concerned about the environment," he said as he stuffed his second individually wrapped-in-plastic baloney-on-white sandwich into his mouth as part of his prelunch ritual, "but not to the point where I could see myself doing something about it."

Why was that?

"Because I don't think it's as big a problem as people make it out to be."

As I walked back to my office, I ran into our office manager. "Find anything out about reprocessing?" she asked.

Recycling, I said, and not yet, since the building manager still hadn't returned my call.

Day Four

Ed W. occupies the office to my right. He's 43 years old and has been politically liberal "since around '65, before there was a mass anti-Vietnam war movement." He has been concerned about the environment since the Sixties as well and sees some similarities between activism then and now.

"Whenever you can make people aware of the disasters they've created, it's a good thing," he said. "But the real question is, What will people be willing to give up in their personal lives to help the environment? Americans represent about two percent of the world's population, but we use nearly a quarter of the energy. Are we willing to face the fact that minerals and fuels are finite resources? Are we really willing to find alternatives, even if they're expensive, to cars, electric appliances and the products used to build and furnish a private American home?"

I asked him if he, as someone who had participated in the peace, civil rights and women's rights movements, thought people could work together to come up with solutions, to give up certain luxuries, to pay taxes, if necessary, to create a more environmentally sound planet.

"We'd better," he said. "But I don't think we will, because our culture is no longer based on Christian or Judaic concepts of community-it's based on consumption. The environmental movement must ask people to change their culture-to consume fewer finite resources. And I'm not sure Americans really want to.

"But the good news is, environmentalists have slowed down their nattering about the disappearance of this or that rare minnow and are starting to deal with issues, especially health-oriented issues, that may actually be meaningful to mainstream Americans. The problem with the movement is that it has always put an astonishing amount of energy into alienating the majority. Maybe it'll be different this time."

After our discussion, I immediately removed the nonbiodegradable Styrofoam cups from the water cooler, hoping that my co-workers would be forced into using their reusable coffee mugs for water.

Day Five

It took only 26 hours for a cup problem to arise. Today, at 2:30 in the afternoon, Julie E.--two offices to my right--walked down the hall happily brandishing a large package of 50 Styrofoam cups for the water cooler. The expression on her face seemed to proclaim gleefully, "I got them! Here they are! Here are the fresh, clean Styrofoam cups that will outlive us and our children and our children's children and our children's children's children, everybody!" Not wanting to be accused of employing any left-wing fascist-style tactics, I waited until she went into her office. I took the cups, walked into her office, closed the door and explained-calmly and quietly-that we'd be better off using the ceramic coffee mugs we all had in our offices than the not-so-disposable-after-all cups. Embarrassed, she agreed immediately and even apologized. We decided to stash the bulk of them until I could figure out what to do with them, but kept a few out, with a note that read, Whenever possible, please use a washable cup for water. Please use "Disposable" cups sparingly. Since they are not recyclable. I also found some disposable wax-paper cups and put them out. It seemed like a fair idea, since we occasionally had visitors drop by and providing mugs for everyone seemed impractical.

Not wanting to lose the momentum I'd built up, I decided the building manager had dodged me long enough--time to attack and find out if he had the answers regarding recycling paper in our building. I got him on the line and it turned out that a confrontation wasn't necessary-he said that our building had been using a garbage hauler for the past year that separated our trash and recycled what was recyclable (the rest went to a land fill). He said that this policy, common for buildings in New York City, was in compliance with the law.

No doubt, you are now muttering dark suspicions about this ecolo-pest and chronic do-gooder. Well, around this time, I was starting to question some of my behavior myself. I'm generally not a nudge, but it's difficult to influence others without at least appearing annoying and petty. I didn't want to be a nag, but if I were going to make a difference, I resolved that it was a price I-and those around me, apparently--would have to pay.

Still, I was a newcomer, an amateur, so I decided to get an opinion or two from a real pro. I phoned Environmental Action, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research and advocacy group, which put me in touch with spokesman David Goeller. I wanted to know if he, as someone with his fingers on our collective environmental pulse, thought all the recent activity was for real or only the latest fad.

"No, it isn't a fad at all," said Goeller, "at least not among most people in this country. Earth Day '90 was a good example. On the grass-roots level, people turned out in very large numbers. If it is at all faddish, it's among corporations. They all like to wrap themselves in green these days. It's not easy to figure out whether they're good or bad, whether they're genuinely trying to help the environment or not. They may be good in one area and then cited for violations in others. It's a good idea to write and complain to corporations. They may be more responsive to this kind of pressure than politicians are."

Day Six

While writing out a check last night to pay for our gas and electric bills, I noticed that Con Edison, our local utility company, was offering a water-saver kit to all its customers. The kit ("a nine-dollar value"), which contained a water-saver shower head, two faucet aerators, two toilet-tank displacement bags and dye tablets to help detect leaks, was offered free to aid water conservation. All I had to do was fill out a coupon and pick up the kit at Con Edison's Conservation Center.

The center, on the ground floor of the Chrysler Building, is the only one of its kind in New York and promotes 50 (there's that number again) ways to conserve energy at home. After receiving my kit (I was a little taken aback that it came in a plastic bag), I took the tour and was suitably impressed. I learned savings strategies for lighting (when reading, "use daylight. It's free"), the kitchen ("Use an energy-efficient refrigerator--a refrigerator uses as much energy as all other household appliances combined") and insulation, and there was a very nice bathroom display showing how many gallons of water can be saved where.

The savings were significant--saving energy is practically synonymous with saving money ("We'd save how much?" a woman next to me exclaimed in a combination of horror and glee when she learned that the one water-saver shower head could save 6000 gallons of water and more than $20 per family member on heating bills).

When I returned to the office, I encountered my friend Bob G. and decided I had been too hard on him earlier. (He had, after all, participated, along with approximately 750,000 others, in New York City's monumental Earth Day '90 celebration, which included a huge music festival in Central Park featuring the B-52s and Hall and Oates. His assessment of the world-wide event in which more than 130 countries participated: "Great tunes!")

To his credit, Bob G. confessed that his family had been acting on latent environmental urges by recycling their cans and bottles, never leaving lights on when they were not in a room and, in general, exercising "common sense" on matters of consumption.

"But I'm not going to go out and protest or anything," he warned me.

"That's OK," I told him, "but you might want to consider the fact that many women these days like men who are environmentally sensitive and frequently have sex with them."

"How do you start a protest?" he asked.

After work, Lisa and I went food shopping. We don't have any children, but if we did, we would have walked right past the disposable diapers (about one percent of a land fill is taken up by these things that can take as long as 500 years to decompose), using a diaper service instead. We bought fruit juice in a recyclable glass bottle instead of individual boxes (individual servings usually mean more plastic, and the combination of the container and the inner foil lining makes recycling difficult). We chose eggs in a recyclable cardboard container, not Styrofoam. In general, we tried to get away from as much plastic as possible, opting for products packaged in recyclable materials. And we decided to buy tote bags that we can take to the store from home so that we don't have to use plastic bags from the supermarket. I had tried to remove the sacks from the supermarket the old-fashioned way--in brown paper bags sans plastic outer bags--but it wasn't easy.

Day Seven

My time limit was just about over and it was time to take stock of what I had done. I felt that I had been able to influence others and also make a difference in my own life. At my current rate of consumption, in the approximately 40 more years I plan to be around, I will have used up far fewer resources than if I had done nothing. The people I spoke with were mostly willing to listen and take positive steps. For example, the day after my Styrofoam-cup encounter with Julie E. at the water cooler, she mounted a similar offensive at the office's other cooler, putting up a sign that was even more sharply worded than mine. As I had, she replaced the Styrofoam cups with wax-paper ones. Obviously inspired, Julie E. has begun waging a one-woman assault on the New York subway system by berating riders who drop their litter in the cars, and I have a feeling that this is only the beginning.

Well, almost everyone was willing to take positive steps. Bob G. had a brief relapse and asked me how I thought a T-shirt proclaiming Money, Sex and the Environment would sell.

I did, however, come upon an article in the The New York Times that tested my optimism. It stated that during the Exxon Corporation's annual shareholders' meeting held in Houston, a series of environmental initiatives--including proposals for detailed reviews, public disclosures on the handling of toxic chemicals and the creation of a committee of directors devoted to environmental issues--had been soundly rejected. The vote wasn't even close. It seemed to be pay-back time for Exxon. The company was mad as hell at its accusers and it wasn't going to take it anymore.

Headed by Exxon chairman Lawrence G. Rawl, the company's shareholders came off like an arrogant lot. When shareholders belonging to environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and an organization of Alaskan fishermen tried to speak, they were booed or shouted down. Valdez was a moment best forgotten, at least in the corporate mind of Exxon and its stockholders.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a tad frustrating and depressing to see a company as large, rich and influential as Exxon stick its head in the crude-drenched sand and pretend the atrocities it committed didn't exist--or, well, maybe the company did acknowledge their existence, but with little consequence. I banged my head on the wall for a while and then, as if I'd been struck by a lightning bolt from above, it hit me: If I kept banging my head against the wall, no matter how hard or long I banged, Exxon wasn't going to budge. The company put the issues to a vote and elected not to get involved.

But I could get involved. I had already become involved. I was the one who was refusing to do business with companies based on their environmental records. I was the one who was using less energy. And I, with what I hoped was a mature and effective manner, had influenced those around me to do the same.

I am painfully aware that it takes a lot more to save the planet than having me, or a bunch of people I know, snip six-pack rings before tossing them to the manatees. But an important fact remains: I, as an individual, am working harder to bring about change than one of the world's largest corporations. My efforts may be small, but at least they are real. It isn't depressing--I am the one with the real power, I am the one taking action.

I truly believe this. I won't let myself consider the alternative.

can a mild-mannered enviro-nerd rescue the world from styrofoam?