Right now you're living large and you're loving it. Life
is good and the living is easy. But what if you could live
that lovely large life and use less? (And wasn't that a tongle
twister?) What if you could scale it back a bit and save a little for
later? Wouldn't that be a good thing? Let's find out.
    When 1 talk about "saving" things, I'm talking about saving
money, effort and resources, for the most part. 0 f course, by
saving these things, you are also saving your environment just
a little bit as well. You're cutting down on pollution and waste
and landfills and smog, not only where you are, but where all of
the things we buy and use are made to begin with: at the power
plants and factories around the world. A little savings here is
also a little savings there, and it all adds up. Or not, if you don't.
And let's not forget: everything you don't buy is something
that didn't have to be shipped,shoe store often halfway around the
world , just to get to you. That makes for even more
resource savings and less pollution. Sometimes eddoing nothing
is something. How Zen-like.
    Once you sort conserving things, all of the different kinds
of savings start to pop up all over the place. It gets to be a bit of
a game: How much can 1 save? How many ways can 1 save how
many different things? What can 1 save next? For ]oAnn and me,
it all started out so small and innocent, we hardly noticed we' d
started at all. Yes, then it all got out of hand, but that came much
later. It all started with ]oAnn's morning walk.
    Every morning, my wonderful wife gets out and walks three
miles. She's done it for years, and everyone sees her and knows
her as The Girl That Walks. On her way home from that morning
walk, she always buys a newspaper at a rack just a couple of
blocks from our house. 5he does that every weekday morning.
On the weekends, we usually walk out to breakfast at Tory's café,
just half a mile or so from our house. Along the way, we buy a
newspaper. On Sundays, we buy two (two different ones).
The thing is, buying a newspaper every day and two
on Sunday starts to add up pretty quickly when you goω
throw them away. And let's face it: yesterday's newspaper
is today's puppy trainer. It is, quite literally, old news.
50 what do you do with them all the very next day?
    It came to this: the newspapers were heavy, and
throwing them away - that is, bagging them and drag
ging them out to the curb for pickup - was a chore. There had
to be a better way. There was. 5everallocal churches and all of
the local recycling centers offer newspaper recycling bins. All we
had to do was save up our newspapers and take them to one of
these recycling bins every so often (every couple of weeks or so,
as it turns out). No more heavy trash bags, no more dragging
boat anchors of newsprint to the curb. Life just got a little better,
and all we did was put a big tub for the old newspapers out in
the garage, right by the door into the house. 50 it began, and the
truth comes out: she started it. It was a11 JoAnn's fault. (Thank
you, my dear.)
    Now, initially, that's a11 we did, and, yes, it actua11y did cost
us a little more to recycle the newspapers. JoAnn would put the
old newspapers in the truck (they're heat" remember?) and
drive to the recycle center to dump them in a bin. 5he did this
as she was running other errands, but still, energy (and therefore
money) was used. C'est la vie. It was probably less energy
(and money) than the big garbage truck was using, and we were
keeping those newspapers out of the localland and/or incinerator.
lt was a start.
    When most folks talk about savings, they mean saving
money, and that's OK. That's a great way to keep track of what
you're saving, as money saved usually does translate rather directly
into energy and resources saved as we11. Take our monthly
power bi11, for example. It was slowly creeping up and up and
then up some more. 1 didn't think we were using more power
every month - it was just costing more to use what we did.
As our monthly bill began to top $100 on a regular basis, 1 got
focused. Se.started making changes in how our house was run and the
things that ran in it. We changed light bulbs, unplugged stuff we
didn't need, and added things that would help. Over time, that
power bill came down. Way down. Despite the ever-increasing
rates charged for power, 1 don't remember the last time we had
a power bill over $35. It's been years. How's that for savings?
You can do this. You can save some serious money, just through
a little conservation and even less effort. It's easy. And wait until
you hear how much we're saving on our garbage bill. Go team!
    Look, I've already said that 1 don't consider myself any sort
of tree-hugging green freak, but apparently I'm alone in that assessment.
Maybe 1 am a green freak. All of my friends seem to
think so, anyway. Still, we have, at last count，have functioning
gasoline engines in our garage: a full-sized pickup truck, a 500cc
motorcycle, a 200cc motor scooter (with sidecar!) , a gas lawn
mower, and a gas chain saw (because an electric chain saw does
you very little good when the power is out after a storm). We sure
don't sound so green now, do we? Yes, 1 ride my bicycle to work,
and }oAnn walks to the grocery store, but we also put some miles
on those gas-fired infernal combustion machines. We watch TV
and 1 fuss in the garage and we do all of those things suburbanites
do, we just do them using a little less. And if that's all it takes
to be green, then, yes, we are green. I've just never thought of
ourselves as a11 at green. If we ever have the guts to ditch the
truck, then 1'11 say we're green. Don't hold your breath.
    Still, every little bit helps, and when you're looking at over
six billion people on planet earth,ladies shoes a little bit of change can make
a big difference if enough people do it. We're not doing much, but
we're doing our part. We're using less, living small, and helping
to maybe not po11ute the planet quite so much as we used to. It's
no big deal. It's not a major effort on our part, it's just how we
live our lives these days. But would be amazing if everyone
did it. Wow.
    We live in suburbia, surrounded by even more suburbia for
about fifty miles in every direction. Except for west. Nothing but
the (stunningly beautiful) Gulf of Mexico out that way. Living
as we do in endless suburbia, one of the big issues here, with so
many people, is the question of what to do with a11 the garbage.
It's a good question. A very valid question. An important, immediate
question. The two or three million people who live around
here can generate a considerable heap of trash in fairly short
order, and that's on a good day. What do you do with it al1? Where
does it all go? We have to answer those questions over and over
again, day after day, and again tomorrow.
    The county where 1 live operates one of the largest garbageburning
power plants in the country. lt's an impressive sight to
see, and it makes me proud to know that we're doing that, and
have been for years. This county was green before green was
coo1. 1 like that, green freak that 1 apparently am. sti11, as you
wel1 know, just because you burn something doesn't mean it
goes completely away. You stil1 have to deal with the ash and the
things that don't (or shouldn't) bum. Around here, that means
landhil1s. And around here, landfi11s can be a bit problematic.
There's just not that much "around here" left.
    We live, you see, in the second sma11est county in the state of
Florida. Close to one mi11ion people live on just 280 square miles
of lovely, semi-tropical sandbar between the Gulf of Mexico and
Tampa Bay. That's a lot of people on not much sand. 50 where
does all the garbage go? What doesn't go to the power plant goes
to the landfi11, and the land is about full. Then what do we
do? Then we recycle like crazy. Then we a11 recycle like JoAnn
and 1 are recycling right now. i fugure J oAnn and 1 recycle about
95 percent of everything we use. That makes for very little garbage.
(1 figure we generate about one small bag of garbage a
month. Maybe.) If everyone did that, we wouldn't have to worry
about landfills so much. Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe some
day. Maybe you can help. Where you live can't be much different
from where we live. All communities have to worry about what
they do with their garbage, and we're all running out of room.
Maybe it's time to do things a little differently. A little better. A
little smaller.