Greetings! I’m Alvin Hayes. I live in Centreville, Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C.
I recently took time to reflect about my life and lifestyle, and discovered something very curious that led me to start this journey.
During business hours, I’m a communications manager for ESS, a software company that helps industrial organizations reduce production of air, water and waste emissions, among other functions. As a promotional professional, I take great pride in creating strategies that raise public awareness among business executives about environmental sustainability.
However, after business hours, my lifestyle isn’t always consistent with my daytime advocacy.
Like most other people, I have my excuses. I don’t want to drive to work, but public transit is so inconvenient. Buying meals in styrofoam packaging is a necessity because I don’t ever have time to sit and eat in a restaurant. Thirty-minute showers are a necessary evil; they relax my sore muscles after my morning run. Those are just the most flagrant examples of my own environmental footprint.
And so, after discussing this irony with one of my coworkers, I decided that I disliked being a hypocrite, so decided to practice what I preach.
The journey began when I went to zerofootprint.net, a website that promotes environmental issues and green friendly products, and used the calculator to compute my carbon footprint. I’m pretty close to average consumption for an American, but that’s no great shakes. If I were Canadian, I’d be awful.
Bottom line…I can do better. But it’s going to take some sacrifice, and there will have to be many lifestyle changes.
Part of the purpose of starting this conversation is to share my angst as I have to make changes in the way I live, and then live with the consequences.
Feel free to share your own experiences, or pass along suggestions to help make my new choices more palatable.
