Environmental Diva

By now you’ve seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” and if you haven’t - shame on you. After turning the DVD player off, did you run out to buy CFLs to replace your lightbulbs?   

I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” with a group of like-minded environmental types.  After the movie finished, we turned on the lights, and people started chatting.  Here are some snippets:

Guy 8*: After my wife saw the movie, she ran out and bought CFLs to replace all the light bulbs in our house.

Gal 4*: I’m going to stop at the store on my way home to get them for my house.

CFLs became the “get rich quick” scheme of less energy usage.  First of all, CFLs have been around for years.  Second of all, what about this:

Do you see how much packaging was put into these babies?  I love going environmental, but these lightbulbs are a physical manifestation of an oxymoron.  They may save on energy, but look at the packaging. It’s like a riddle of the chicken and the egg variety, only this one goes something like this:

Which is worse, CFL packaging or an incandescent bulb?

Sure, the savings over the lifetime of the bulb are probably greater, but shouldn’t they extend the environmentalism one step further and include the packaging? 

With that thought in mind, I scoured the internet and found this idea for reusing the packaging to store burned out bulbs.  It’s a great idea, but I’d have to hold on to the packaging for years before one of my CFLs burns out.  I’m trying to reduce clutter, not add to it. 

No, the real solution is to package CFLs like other lightbulbs - sans the plastic.  Lucky for me, I found some CFLs at lowes with this kind of packaging:

Hurray for lucky divas everywhere! 

And lucky for the rest of you, CFLs really do reduce energy usage, as this guy says in his summary of what we want to know about CFLs. 

They also save you money.  I’m all for that.

Diva on out, yo

*These numbers have no meaning.

How to achieve diva status and maintain a clear conscience? Slowly, that’s how. I started easy, with a “low energy” theme - just to get into the groove, you know?

My next step was to check out the competition - who are the other environmental divas out there? There’s not much, let me tell you.

I did find Elizabeth, a non-diva, who posted this blahblahblog entry, where she claims she’s not a diva (we believe you, Elizabeth). You know the blahblahblog type, right? Where the blogger rants on and on about something you might be interested in if he/she didn’t kill it with his/her ranting to the point where as you’re reading your brain starts going “blah blah blah” and you skim the rest of the entry to see if there’s anything good (there rarely is)? Yeah, that’s what that entry is like, but hey, at least she isn’t using comic sans.

Other than Elizabeth, there wasn’t much in the way of environmental divaism out there. Hurray for the niche-filler (me)! But what to blog about that might keep me even mildly interested? A couple of things:

• Consumerism (sounds lame, but I’ll spin it)
• Daylight savings (uh, what? are you kidding here?)
• What to shop with (surely there’s something other than those hideous canvas bags)
• Where to shop (now we’re talking!)
• Pro-environment shopping and products that replace non-environmental products
• Whatever else I feel like writing about

So, I’m going diva, environmental style. Get ready for a diva with a conscience.

Because a Diva Cares

P.S. Aside from a bit o’ ranting, Elizabeth has some interesting posts. This bit on polyester and consumerism is readable if you ignore the bit about not buying clothes for a year.

Let’s play “Guess That Tune.”

I’m too diva for hum vees too diva for hum vees
vees ain’t going to seat me

I’m too diva for M-hertz too diva for M-hertz
So diva it hurts
And I’m too diva for spray cans too diva for spray cans
light bulbs and fake tans

And I’m too diva for trash bins
too diva for trash bins
no way I’m not recycling

I’m shameless you know what I mean
And I drink coffee hot in a pink mug
Yeah in a pink mug in a pink mug yeah
I poor my ‘bucks latte in a pink mug

I’m too diva for cardboard too diva for cardboard
too diva to store
And I’m too diva to be fat too diva to be fat
Too diva to be fat what do you think about that

I’m a diva you know what I mean
And I buy bamboo clothes on the internet
Yeah on the internet on the internet yeah
I use my credit card on the internet

I’m too diva for my too diva for my too diva for my

‘Cuz I’m a diva you know what I mean
And I flaunt my canvas bag at the market
Yeah at the market at the market yeah
I flaunt my canvas bag at the market

I’m too diva for my pic too diva for my pic
no glossy no glossy pic
I’m too diva for hum vees too diva for hum vees
vees ain’t going to seat me

And I’m too diva for … this blog

You found me! I’ll admire your typing skills as we ponder your environmental diva edification (e-diva-cation, get it?). Let’s start simple with the black-screen/white-text-reduced-energy phenomenon.

The idea behind this phenomenon is that black backgrounds and white text use less energy to load on a page. Hence, environmentaldiva’s black background (although black and white was too undiva-ish and I had to have pink somewhere, right?).

Moving on.

The black-background/white-text phenomenon has been blogged about quite a bit, including this entry by prissycook (a delightful read, I suspect she’s a bit of a diva). And treehugger.com (probably anti-diva), of course, covers it. However, skeptics abound, as demonstrated here with this Google post that debunks the energy-saving notion. It includes links to the sites that do the real debunking, but beware the poor grammar if you click some of the other links.

Where does this leave me with my black background and pink text? It’s not quite diva enough for me, but I’m keeping it as a visual indicator that I support energy reduction (for now, but a diva can change her mind).

Signing off,

Go, go, Diva, go!