Friday 23 April 2010

Green living

Bit of a late write up this but... In February I received a commission to 'go green' for the week for the 'Green Issue' of the Vueling inflight magazine, Ling. The idea was simple: to be as eco friendly as possible with regards to recycling, shopping, getting around, eating, etc... and discuss how it affected my everyday. Now, I already consider myself to be a thoughtful if relentlessly hypocritical friend of the earth (like much of the working planet that doesn't live in a tree) so I didn't think this piece would be too much of a challenge. I can't have been thinking straight. My mind must have been busy trying to figure out how wise it was for a magazine promoting a low-cost airline to be running a 'Green Issue'. Anyway, ethics aside and commission underway, the article was certainly a wake-up call to my sleep-walking wastefulness. I fitted timers to boilers, stopped eating meat, lowered my heating tariff, cycled everywhere, wore a few more layers of clothes (Valencian flats are built to keep cool, which is great in 35 degrees but bad news in 5 – the magic number on the thermostat during February's 'eco week') and sorted a 'pre-eco week' shop into literally a dozen bin bags. At the end of the experiment, when I was lugging those dozen bags full of plastics, metals, milk cartons, wine bottles and food waste down my stairs and then to the communal bins at the end of our road, I got thinking. Not just about how much of my money I was needlessly giving away to an energy company, but about the amount of other peoples' shit I'm willing to pay for and then dispose of in my own free time. Bastards! Never again. I resolved that I wouldn't become more eco-friendly because I love the planet, but because I hate getting treated like a mug.