How wasteful are we, really?
Is Baltimore a throwaway community? There's a ranking out of the least wasteful cities in the US of A, and good ol' Baltimore comes in 16th. We're behind the usually crunchy places like San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, but also trailing New York and Pittsburgh, even Dallas and Orlando.
The ranking - which I saw on Mother Nature Network - is the second done by Nalgene, the reusable drink bottle maker, and Baltimore actually dropped four places since 2009, when we were judged 12th least wasteful. Guess we're getting worse.
Or rather, should I say, when we judged ourselves - because the rankings are based on a survey in which about 150 residents from each of the 25 cities rated were asked to score themselves on 23 different behaviors and practices that are either wasteful or frugal.
Here's some of the things our city's participants in the survey say we don't do:
- hanging clothes out to dry when possible
- limiting showers to five minutes
- composting fruit and veggie scraps
- turning off the water when brushing teeth.
Of course, some of the top cities have a head start on establishing social norms around some of these behaviors. San Francisco, for instance, has the nation's strictest recycling law, it seems, which has sparked a big jump in residents composting their food scraps.
Not that B'moreans are total wastrels. There are a few things where we prided ourselves on our responsible behavior.
Here's what we said we do better than most:
- save leftover food to eat again (Yeah, but do we eat those leftovers, or let them turn into science experiments in the back of the fridge?)
- use reclosable bags or tinfoil (goes with saving leftovers, I guess)
- borrow from the library or buy used books rather than purchasing all our reading material new.
So how honest were we - or rather, those folks who represented the entire metro area? Are we lagging in reducing waste in our lives, or is this just another manifestation of Charm City's chronic inferiority complex?
(Photo: Compost bin at San Francisco restaurant, 2010; by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Comments
We are such a wasteful society. I would love to see public entities and private companies recycle, compost, reduce, and reuse all things they are able to.
Posted by: Michelle Brown | January 21, 2011 2:56 PM
We must review the entire stream from extraction of natural resources to reuse in the same or different form (recycling).
The first question we must all ask ourselves before purchasing anything, "do I really need this, how long will it last and what to do when it is no longer needed?"
New plasma arc generators are using landfills as an energy source. If we must waste and finll up landfills, we should continue to keep it in the state so that at least in the future we might have another source of energy. Baltimore City takes the garbage now and uses it to provide steam to heat downtown.
Posted by: Stan Sersen | January 23, 2011 8:46 AM
The real wasteful item in this story is that someone wasted time working on this study!
Posted by: Waste | January 24, 2011 1:10 PM
You guys are super wasteful. I have scene no incation that you will change. If there was a ranking of the most wasteful industries in town, my guess is you would be at the top.
Posted by: Dunn | January 24, 2011 2:33 PM
I wish that Baltimore came up with a way to collect compostable materials ... Seattle does it! You'd think with all the community gardens there would be a way to create a local system where you could drop off food waste and pay less for less trash pickup. I had a worm box for a while but as an apartment dweller I didn't have any use for the worm castings.
Posted by: dude | January 25, 2011 7:19 AM