I have built 2 pep suits and 6 helmets over the last 3 years. You know how many reams of cardstock I've gone through? 3 and a half.
You know how many reams of printer paper I've gone through just printing essential papers and drafts for my school work during the same time? 11 and change.
Cardstock is a marginal issue. It's like styrofoam cups to me. I maybe use 10 in a given year so I don't feel at all bad at tossing them into the garbage or the campfire or whatever.
A lot of stuff has nothing to do with the environment either/save the world kind of BS. It's just smart or makes the world a more beautiful place.
Have a garden? Good for you, makes you feel good and you get some tasty stuff out of it. Does it change the world? No. If anything you are hurting agriculture and agricultural research and efforts at soil conservation.
Recycling paper? Over half of those paper recycling things are fake. My old university had paper bins and all that stuff. You know what they actually did with all of it? They put it in a big dumpster behind the Univeristy power plant and burned it. This is because shipping to a pulp mill across the country is often more expensive than it's worth.Over half fake is not stretching the statistics either. It really is that bad.
Second hand shopping? Well it's just the smart thing to do. You get quality stuff for a fraction of list price. And if you have classical tastes like me then it's the only way to get lovely Victorian furniture. Yard sales and the salvation army and stuff has been around forever and I've always gone. However, now, many of those people who used to turn their noses up at the thought of "used" are in there shopping with everyone else. Same with animals. When I was a kid, we always took in lost animals. People would turn their noses up and talk about their pure-bred this or that, but now brag about things being "a rescue". And you know it really is a good thing. But it has nothing to do with the environment.
The purpose of planting trees is not to do anything at all to save the Earth. Grassland strips and holds more Carbon from the air than a forest ever could. People enjoy trees, they are pleasing to the eye, they live long and stand as a memorial to a deed long past. They are lovely wonderful things. But to say you are doing anything for the environment by planting trees is like saying you are doing God's work on a church trip to 6 flags.
Now let me talk for a second about Conservation. I am 100% behind Conservation. The great Teddy Roosevelt, who spent several trips near my hometown during his presidency, always was a huge proponent, established out National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. To preserve the variety and majesty of nature is a worthy cause. You will not change climate, you will not save the world, but you can save a little magic left on earth for our children. Husbanding our resources is just the smart thing to do...
"We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life."
And to let you know my qualifications, I am a geologist with a Masters in environmental reconstruction, so I am really not trying to BS you.
