Sunday, May 22, 2011

behold...the washing machine!



Who wouldn't want one of those?
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1 comment:

graceonline said...

Good graphics! They really bring home the points, don't you think? I always wonder, watching vids like this, how many of the folks listening go home and change their lives. In fact, I'd be interested to know whether other readers of your blog made a decision to change how they consume, after watching this. Or were they already working on it, as so many are. Even though we have taken steps in our home to reduce the amount of laundry we do each week, we still wash AND dry a lot of clothing in machines. Nor do I, living in an apartment building, have the luxury of choosing the most eco-friendly, energy-saving machinery. Still, we continue to take steps to change our expectations as well as our practices. One tiny step at a time. I worry sometimes that we're not doing nearly enough fast enough, though.

Unlike Mr. Rosling, I don't feel so much gratitude for the chemical companies. Only yesterday I read another article about a study on the number of chemicals we use in our households every day that have been banned in more than 100 countries because they are proven unsafe. That's why I keep trying to find ways to make my own products from materials I trust.

More and more of the so-called environmentalists I know are taking similar actions. Most are not, as the speaker suggests early in his talk, advocating withholding the luxuries we enjoy from other people, but seek instead to promote the use of known technologies, and create new when we have to, that do no harm, either to humans, animals or the ecosystem. That requires us as individuals to make changes. And it also requires a systemic change.

To change our consumptive patterns, we will have to change our economical model, from ever rising growth, quarter after quarter, year after year, to one that is sustainable. Greed must go!

3:26 PM

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