apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

On biodiesel - is it worth driving the price of corn, and everything that depends on it, through the roof?

My vote is no.

Boomer, You can easily convert your diesel car to burn used cooking oil. Thats right! Use waste to fuel your car! There are no toxic additives either- it's used oil from cooking and therfore food safe! The only way to do better is not to drive.

my confession is that even though i grow my own produce, compost, cook at home, champion adaptive reuse by living in a really old house, buy second hand furniture, ride my bike to work, have a degree in energy conservation and design, etc et al:

i still buy lots of cheap new clothes (made in china/taiwan/india) from tjmaxx, the mall, and target, instead of more judiciously buying expensive locally made organic items and simply buying them less often.

i buy shoes wherever i can get some i like, disregarding where or how they were made.

i still cling to my small SUV to bring home my craigslist furniture and my home depot plywood.

My confession is that I bouight a 5 years old SUV instead of a new hybrid. even with a third of the gas milegae, the new hybrid would have taken 15 years to balance out economically. Even the difference between buying a new hybrid compared to a comparable traditional car would take about ten years to recoup at current prices

On the other hand, I am a reusing a car instead of adding a new on to the road. Seeing as a approximately half of the CO2 emission from a car come from it's production and demolition, over all it could be said that I am actually impacting the environmental less by driving a SUV than if I had bought a new car...

i collect plastic shopping bags, scrap materials, etc. for re-use or recycle but i've been guilty of just taking an entire collection out to the trash on days when i am making a needed clean sweep of the house...

resolution - make good on my intentions before i find an excuse to avoid them altogether

ps. a small addition to michael's comment about vegetable oil as fuel - just remember to follow appropriate fuel taxation laws to avoid possible penalties in the future.

My Confession -
Even though I am normally a very good walker/user of public transportation, the past few days it's been so hot here in dc that I've taken out the car and driven the 5 blocks to the grocery store. Twice. I felt really guilty about it, but it was so hot and the thought of lugging all the grocerys back through the heat just...I know, it was terrible, I promise I won't do it again. Walking with heavy objects builds muscle and character. On a brighter note, since moving down here the car really only gets used about once a week to go out to the suburbs for various shopping needs - I can get everywhere else by foot or by metro - yay for urban living!

I think it is ok to have some eco-"flaws." I believe that if we really want the green lifestyle to work on a mass level, we need to make things as accesible as possible. Most normal people wont be perfect. They'll have a paper towel habbit, use disposable diapers, or drive their car to the store when they could walk instead. If we emphasize doing little bits at a time, more people will be willing to participate in a greener lifestyle.

My flaw by the way, is a shoe obsession. Yes, I have WAAY too many shoes. :)

Aerosol hairspray is my sustainability kryptonite. The cheaper, the better. Nothing works like the rattle cans. My addiction started in my young, punk-rockin, liberty-spiked and mohawked days which, ironically, also sparked most of my interest in environmentalism. Now my quarter-life crisis has me wearing a 'hawk, and i'm hooked again. I don't try to hide it though. I leave the giant cans of Aqua Net and Rave in plain view in the bathroom. The first step is admitting you have a problem.

With a shift to biodiesels, perhaps we can get out of the tricky practice of government subsidies for farms.

And loving (as JonathanB points out) the irony of an eco-fuel discussion happening on a JET AIRPLANE.

Re farm subsidies: a friend of mine bought a retreat in upstate NY. It involves quite a few acres of field. After buying it, she discovered it was subsidized because--good grief!--she wasn't growing corn! She went to the appropriate govt agency and told them it was a weekend place, and of course she wasn't going to grow corn, ever, ever, and that she shouldn't get a subsidy. They insisted so adamently on paying her that she now pays off her mortgage with the money. Insane?

I live in what would be considered a McMansion. I'm getting a rain barrel this week.