I was walking out of the store today with my products in my reusable shopping bag when the idea for this post occurred. I was behind two girls walking out with two plastic bags for their products. One bag had a gallon of milk in it, the other had a bag of chips. What, I wondered, is the need for one bag, let alone two, when the products could just as easily have been carried with no bags? And the seed was planted... So I'm here to talk about eco pet peeves.
Littering This has to be my biggest eco pet peeve. Litter is EVERYWHERE. As much as garbage on the ground bugs me, I think cigarettes on the ground bug me more. How hard is it to walk the extra 10 feet and put your cancer stick in the cigarette disposal containers? Do people realize that discarded cigarettes can be ingested by animals, or even children, and take a very long time to degrade?
Paper Plates There's a commercial for one time use plates, I'm not sure which brand, where a woman says she enjoys the time she saves on doing dishes by using the plates because she gets to be with her children more. I'm sure her children will appreciate the extra ten minutes a day she spent with them, rather then loading the dishwasher, when it comes to having to solve the problem of overflowing landfills in their adulthood.
SUVs I realize some people purchase SUVs to have enough room for their large families. What bugs me are the people who use SUVs as status symbols, and then complain about gas prices. NEWS FLASH! SUVs suck gas! If that bothers you, and I know it brothers pretty much everyone today, don't buy one! Even those who get SUVs for their family... buy minivans or station wagons. They are safer than SUVs to begin with, and I would imagine that they get better gas mileage.
Tooth Brushing Ok, it's not tooth brushing that is a peeve. It's leaving the water on while tooth brushing. Why is it necessary? Are we really that pathetically lazy that we can't turn the water off when we aren't using it?
Unnecessary Garbage So often I see people throwing away household items that don't necessarily need to be thrown away. Just because that coffee table is outdated for you doesn't mean someone else won't want it. Why not donate it to charity or put it in the free section on craigslist? Same thing goes for clothing. Clothes that are still in good condition can be given as hand-me-downs, donated to charity, or even sold on eBay. Some charities will even give you a receipt so you can use your donation as a tax deduction. Clothes that are in unwearable condition can be repurposed as rags to use for cleaning. Even electronics and other household items that don't work anymore can be given away; someone might be able to fix it and make use of it.
Paper Lunch Bags No need to go out and buy a pink Barbie lunch box, but you do have other options than paper bags. You can pack your lunch in Tupperware containers instead of using plastic baggies, and use a canvas lunch bag or something similar.
So, what are some of yours?
June 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people throw plastic bags away in the street. I live in Baltimore, so I see these bags EVERYWHERE, from in the trees and on the sidewalks to floating in the bay and dangling from historical monuments. It's very sad.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Trish, I agree about the plastic bags. I see them in the trees ALL the time, it's horrible.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
the fact that although California is in an official drought, that the city of San Francisco feels the need to hose down Market street each week.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Grocery store flyers that are mailed to homes/apartments.
Paper napkins at food eateries. Way too much paper. And people take about 30 when all they need is one (or none).
June 19th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Matt, why are they hosing it down? You can have some of our water, it was raining like crazy until about a week ago and everything is flooding.
Aeye, we get the grocery store flyers at least twice a week. It doesn't make me any more likely to shop at the store, to be honest.
I think it would work in a restaurant's favor if they used cloth napkins. It wouldn't be much extra work to wash them, and it would save them money in the long run...
I was reminded of another pet peeve of mine yesterday when I walked out of a mall to find a cleaning lady's business card attached to my car window. Businesses even go up and down the streets of my condo sticking stuff under our windshield wipers.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I'm with you on all this. It kills me when I see huge piles of garbage out on trash day, including furniture that could easily be donated (the thrift stores will even send a truck to your house to pick it up!). And when I see people put tons of stuff in their garbage that could easily be recycled... we have curbside pick up of some recycling, and a huge recycling center that takes pretty much everything, just a few miles down the road.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Market street is full of bums sleeping and walking along the street so thats probably why they are hosing it down.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Frugal Babe said:
Unfortunately, we have no curbside pickup, but we bring everything over to the center ourselves, anyway. I think curbside pickup should be available everywhere, though, because it would encourage more people to recycle.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:27 am
I, personally, can't stand receiving shipments/orders that are over-packed and fail to use recycled boxes and/or packing materials. Sad.
May 26th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Here we do waste segregation. Most of our home materials were biodegradable. The documentary "The 11th Hour" by Leonardo DiCarprio was so awesome, hope more people were encouraged.
June 7th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Another one -- parties/schools/sidewalks/buildings in general that don't have containers for recycling bottles and cans that people are going to try and throw out.