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Julia finishes up the eight-week Green Challenge by rethinking what goes in the trash and down the drain.

Monday Feb 26, 2007.     By Julia Steinberger

Lifestyle Feed

Water conservation isn't just Earth-friendly. In light of our limited freshwater supply and its uneven distribution, it's humanitarian. Conserving hot water in particular spares fossil fuels and cuts CO2 emissions. Since I already have a low-flow showerhead in my shower, the Green Challenge made me get even stingier with my H20...which is how I ended up at the kitchen sink.

When gauging my current impact, I had prided myself on not owning a dishwasher, as I figured that the modern appliance must waste far more water than the old-fashioned method (hey, it's true with toilets). Turns out I was wrong: The average dishwasher uses only eight gallons of hot water (if you're wise and skip the extra rinse cycle), while washing dishes by hand with the faucet running can use nearly twice as much. Without the faucet running, it's a different story, which is a fact I've known but sidestepped due to nothing more than my fear that washing dishes in a sink full of standing water would be, well, really gross.

This week I rolled up my sleeves, drain-stopper in hand, and took the plunge. It's a little embarrassing to say that I wasn't even sure how to do it, exactly, so I had to test out a few strategies. First off, a little suds goes a long way, so I used about half a teaspoon of soap to get bubbles just along the top of the water. I used a sponge-stick to do the washing. I did end up turning the faucet on for a few seconds at a time to rinse things, but for the most part, I have to say, the water didn't get too gross, the dishes did get clean, and the hot water I would have used stayed put. I guess I'll do it again. Whew.

On to Week Eight, which focused on paper waste. In my day job at a publishing company, I go through a ton of printouts and copies. Some of them are necessary; others are just easier than writing things down. To keep my own paper use in check, I made a point to write notes and addresses by hand, rather than print emails or memos when I only needed a few lines of info. I set the copier to double-sided and I stapled used one-sided copies together for scrap notepads. Most of this earned me some good-natured guff from my co-workers, which made me think that generating eco thoughts around the office could be the single most important reason to take green practices to work.

A last paper-saving tip took me right back to the kitchen: I let washable dishtowels do the job instead of taking the paper-towel way out, and skipped paper plates when it was at all possible to wash a real dish, even for office snacks. These little habits seem insignificant, but it turns out they're some of the hardest to break, especially because it seems like everyone else is doing things the disposable way without feeling guilty, and the Earth is still turning. These extra-work-generating steps in a culture of convenience feel like a compromise in the beginning.

Watching those compromises became habits toward a big-picture outcome was the most important things I've learned from the Green Challenge. According to the Slate quiz, I cut more than my pledged 20 percent of carbon, and the numbers say that my good actions took the equivalent of 2.42 cars off the road in CO2 output—and this was all without making too many major changes to my life. By re-training myself bit by bit rather than all at once, I'm learning that it's just not as hard as it seems to fight the good fight.

After four greener-than-average college years as a co-op dweller-turned-aspiring-permaculturist, Julia Steinberger finds it hard not to feel guilty about her one-bedroom apartment, daily commute and indulgence in the occasional dollar burger. She'd like to dream that she could live in a tent/treehouse/rabbit hole, but the truth is, she'd rather stay in the city while doing her best to leave a lighter footprint on the earth. You can contact her here.