Environmental
Mangement at Home
nvironmental Management asks
that organizations be aware of the aspects of their operations
that affect the environment and understand their impact. What a great
idea for all of us. A great place to start: awareness. We could
do this at home. Each member of the family sits down and draws up
a list of items in the home that have an impact on the environment.
The impact could be in the present - like the impact of a house upon
the land - or in the past - the trees cut down to produce paper. As
many items as possible. The idea is to create a starting place for
looking back along the item's path to see how each step in its journey
affected the environment. My list started like this:
| Food
- where it comes from, how I get it, how I prepare it |
Clothing
- where it is made, where its material comes from, how it buy
it |
My
house - how I heat
and cool it, where the furniture, walls, roof, paint, drapes,
flooring... come from, how I get it |
Water
- that I drink, shower in, flush. Where it comes from - the
source and its path to me |
Transportation
- my car, my bike - where the materials come from, how do they
get to me |
| Paper
- computer, magazines, towels... where does it come from, how
does it get to me |
Electricity
- where it come from, how does it get to me |
Houseplants
- where grown, how they get to me, where does fertilizer come
from |
Cats
- where their food comes from, their litter, their toys. |
Appliances
- where the materials come from, how they get assembled and
get to me. |
I see that the
list can be huge - we have so many items in our home and they all
come from somewhere else. And, since many items are made of parts,
the project is even more complex. For example, to trace the parts
of my toaster back to their original source and then through all the
stages of becoming a toaster is probably impossible. I don't even
know all the parts of the toaster! How in the world can I get any
sense of the impact I am having on the environment by buying a toaster.
(Of course I may think that it is just one toaster, but since we all
have them, their cumulative effect is large.)
This is a huge
problem. We are so disconnected from the impacts of our actions, and
they are spread across so many places, that individually we feel we
don't have an impact, or at least not one worth doing anything about.
I wonder if the part of us that evolved for millions of years in a
different relationship with the earth is trying to get our attention.
Maybe if we start by being aware, we will learn something that will
lead us to a better understanding of our impact on the planet. It
is a good first step.
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