More from “The Desk of Mitch Westall”
GREEN things commonly missed.
Things you can do to help our children, our childrens’ children and so on.
1. Recycle — Most things can be recycled, except organics. 2/3’s
of my trash is recycled. 1/3 — mostly kitchen stuff, toilet paper,
paper towls are not. In my neighborhood. I would guess only 1 in 8
families actually recycle — even though our trash company recycles.
2. Recycle at the bike shop. I discovered not all bike shops recycle.
Metal parts should not end up in the landfills. No carbon parts as
carbon can not currently be recycled.
3. No store bought or shipped bottled water. It is not right to
spend energy to ship water by automobiles. Filter the water from the
tap is the best solution. Use reuseable water bottles. This is
basic energy conservation. You don’t get your basic foods from
Russia do you? No, cause there is good food grown here locally.
Buy locally if available.
4. Don’t drive. You have legs and an ability that most people don’t.
Use the burley to get your groceries. Ride to go to dinner with
the wife downtown. As racers / MTBers we already drive more than
most to go play and race. Hence we need to make up for this and
commute / ride to decrease our carbon footprint. Combine errands
when you do drive. Carpool whenever possible.
5. If you have money, you have a greater responsibility to be
environmental conscientious. If is not fair for a rich person to
drive a car getting 10 mpg in the esclade just because they can.
Nor for a huge house for a small family without any green features.
Buildings consume 1/3 the total US energy consumption.
6. Reuse, reuse, reuse, don’t throw away the old car you drive.
Drive it until the repair exceeds the value of the car. When you buy
new — buy green. This simply rule, may make you look poor to
everyone that sees you in your car. But may make you very wealthy —
cause cars loose substantial amounts of money. If you have extra
cash put it in your business, your house, your family, your bike —
things you live with more often than the time spent in a car.
7. If you are going to throw something out. Put it on Craigslist —
see it anyone else may find value in it.
My reason why — there is finite amount of easy energy — oil, gas and
coal on this earth. Modern Humans have existed for what 1,500,0000
million years. Average life span of 60 years, meaning I’m the 25,000
offspring. If we use it all up, future generations will do without.
The future, technology exists but no energy to do it with. Every
renewable energy source starts with easy energy, oil, gas and coal to
do it with. This is similar to religion — not belief in a God —
but belief that the human race will continue and will need the
resources that we are leaving behind. Hence as a religion I am a
sinner and I’m trying to correct my ways. I do believe there will be
innovations that make life better — but until they are discovered and
are found viable — let’s be responsible to the future.
Mitch
Peak Cycles - BikeParts.com Blog 
For the life of me I didn’t realize mitch was such a liberal. He’s had me fooled all these years.