Going Greener

This may sound like nitpicking or a way to procrastinate editing my novel (which quite possibly it is), but I've just spent some time on Google Maps charting the distances to places I visit frequently, to see if I can make use of resources closer to home. Yeah, I already drive a Prius, but having to drive 12 miles and back through rush hour traffic to visit a chiropractor across town, like I did last week, seems wasteful to me. I am considering strategies to change my habits. Most Americans waste too much, plain and simple, and it is often the small ways we can change our daily habits that can result in savings in money and environmental costs. I suppose I'm trying to go from "beginner" to "intermediate" on the environmentally responsible scale.Two ways I am working to improve my own behavior fall into the categories of less wasteful use of household materials (using less stuff/recycling more stuff) and less driving across town when there are options closer to home.Recycling and Using LessIndianapolis is behind other cities in "going green," for a host of reasons, including the fact that much of it is a sprawling collection of suburbs glued together around a pretty nice central downtown, without a very good public transportation system. We have curbside recycling, but it isn't included in the normal trash pick-up. Users pay an extra fee. While this fee is small, we are the only household on our block who takes advantage of it. My family in North Carolina gets to put all sorts of things in their recycling bins, like cardboard from cereal boxes. Ours only takes glass, #1 and #2 plastics, and magazines and newspapers.I'm excited that we just got some large dumpsters that take paper, including office papers, junk mail, catalogs, etc. There is one in the parking lot at the high school where I teach on Mondays, as well as one on the college campus where Stephan teaches. So now I am loading up a grocery bag with paper and taking it every week. It is amazing how much less we fill up our kitchen trash can without all the junk mail. Of course, the best solution would be to just not get the junk mail in the first place.I've heard a lot lately about how wasteful it is to drink bottled water because it isn't really safer than tap water and going through several bottles a day generates too much trash or materials to recycle. I already drink tap water, filtered through a Brita pitcher, because Indianapolis tap water tastes awful. However, I'm addicted to carbonated water and go through at least a liter a day. I'm looking into buying a sink water filter and a gadget to make my own carbonated water at home, and reuse the same bottle. In the long run this should save money and our recycling bin will be less full of seltzer bottles.I've already got 6 fluorescent bulbs in the house, three here in my study, and plan to use more as others burn out. The ones they are coming out with now really put out decent light, though it takes a little getting used to.Driving HabitsI'm actually doing pretty well in this category, but there are a few areas where I can do better. I can't help that I commute to another city two days a week to teach, because that is an important part of my professional life and income. I already am resistant to driving "all the way to [insert congested shopping megopolis about 9 miles away]" to get something. I'm more likely to order something online. I'm not sure at what point it becomes more environmentally sound to have something individually packaged and sent to your house via US mail or UPS than drive out to the store and get it, but driving a round trip of 20 or more miles to get some computer gizmo or other item is a pain in the butt, say I.I tend to do most of my work, shopping, banking, appointments, etc. in what I consider to be my "home territory," extending about 4 miles to the north and about 6 to the south. But I do venture outside of this to go to a chiropractor, a vet, a gynecologist (she used to be closer but she moved), a car dealership service dept. (just slightly, Google puts it at 6.17 miles from my house), a few parks, and a hospital complex where I've gone to have tests done on occasion.I'm lucky to live in a neighborhood with some great restaurants, shops, banks, etc. in many cases within two miles of my house. What if I restricted myself to some radius or other from my house for a set period of time, as an experiment, to force me to look for resources close to home? Realistically, there will be some exceptions, because I'm not going to switch the vet for my two elderly cats who has dealt with their current and prior health crises. But when they are no longer with us, for any new critters, I'm going to consider a vet's office that is just a mile and a half up the road, and is already where I buy their prescription food. There's a great independent mechanic about two miles away that worked on my Honda, but I think I'm going to stick to the Toyota dealer for work on my Prius, be good and follow the recommended maintenance, and hope it pays off and I can drive the car for a long time. But I would like these sorts of things to be the exception rather than the rule.I've wanted to get a new primary care doctor for a long time, not because I have anything against my doctor, but communication with the office has been extremely poor on more than one occasion and the office is in the network of the hospital across town. My current doctor is only three miles away, but so are lots of other doctors. I want to get someone who is affiliated with the hospital 4 miles away, not the one 10 miles away, so when I get sent for tests or in the event I have to be hospitalized, I am not going all the way across town. (I also want to support the closer hospital for other reasons I'm not going to get into here.) Though I like the chiropractor across town, there's no reason not to give someone closer a try.While I won't preclude a trip to southern Indiana to see the fall leaves or going to an out-of-town festival, the next time I get in my car to go somewhere around town, I'm not going outside my "home territory" unless I have a really good reason. Perhaps this is picky and won't help the environment much, but I also like the idea of supporting businesses that choose to locate in my urban neighborhood rather than driving across town or (heaven forbid) out to the suburbs.So that, in a rather large nutshell, is what I've been thinking about lately with regard to small changes I would like to make.