earth day thoughts

The other day I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water while one of my housemates was cooking. She was watching Oprah as she chopped vegetables. The theme that day on Oprah was "Going Green." As I was pouring my water, I heard one of the guests say: "I've been working on going green, but at this point I'm just a mint green."

According to this blog quiz I took, my green quotient has gone down from 72% prior to entering the novitiate to 48% today. I attribute this to several factors:

1. I am no longer the sole decision maker in my household - I used to pay more for green power, organic produce, etc... as a matter of course. Now I help to make those decisions as part of a group, and within the context of simple living (IE less discretionary funds).
   
2. I'm living in a part of the country where "going green" is less mainstreamed. For example, my old local grocery store in Portland labeled everything - conventional, transitional, organic, local, regional, etc... It also seems we were able to recycle more. And styrofoam is illegal in the Rose City. That's not to say it's not possible to go green here in the NY/NJ area, just that it takes more effort!
   
3. I used to live in a walkable neighborhood with stores, library, coffee shops, etc... close by and great public transit to take me to work.

The quiz doesn't account for everything though, so I bet my green quotient is currently above 50%, maybe even in the 60% area. While I don't take public transit much anymore and can't really walk anywhere worth going, the Novitiate does have a hybrid vehicle.

At our last novitiate community meeting, we discussed ways to be more environmentally conscious as a house. One thing we committed to doing was buying Compact Fluorescent light bulbs for the house. So today, in honor of earth day, I took the novitiate hybrid car to the store to stock up on CFL light bulbs. That must boost my green quotient!