Originally Posted by cooker

I'm about as far from Machka and Rowan's situation as can be. Twenty-two years ago I chose to take on a huge mortgage and live in the heart of a large city, 8km (5 miles) from work, and close to schools, shops and other amenities, instead of in a larger house in the cheaper suburbs, in part for environmental reasons. For 18 years I've been biking to work about 150 days per year and using public transit the rest of the time (when there's ice on the road). As a result we have one car (essentially my wife's) instead of two, and my kids have always walked to school, and now two of them take the subway to University. One of them doesn't even have a driver's license (to my partial dismay). My wife does most of the grocery shopping, but when I do it, I do it by bike. I was decades ahead of the curve in refusing to take stuff home in their plastic bags.

I've repeatedly tried to grow vegetables but our back yard is too shady, so all I get are a handful of smallish garlic bulbs, 5 or 6 large tomatoes, and one (!) asparagus stem that keeps coming back every year. We fight over who gets to eat it.

Most of our lightbulbs are cfl. I wondered if they were an environmental hazard due to their mercury content, and then I read that incandescent bulbs actually release more mercury into the environment, because there is mercury in the coal used to provide part of our electricity, and the incandescents use much more electricity. We've replaced the furnace with the most energy efficient model, got a front load washer for the same reason, added extra insulation to the basement, and upgraded about half our windows and doors to more energy efficient ones. The rest of them will gradually get done.

I shower every weekday due to biking to work, but I’m super quick and I don't use shampoo. I don't use fabric softener on my clothes and I hang dry about half my laundry - I do use the gas dryer for office clothes as it helps clear the wrinkles.

I've done the "meeting thing" in the past, spending a few years on the traffic subcommittee of an environmental group and my neighbourhood association, and I am the financial officer for the Green Party in my constituency.

My job includes flying to a site 700 km away, for 24 days of work every year, and the original expectation was that it would involve a two day trip every month, which suited my wife when the kids were younger. In the last few years I negotiated that to be 3 days every 6 weeks (30% fewer flights) and next year I'm planning to go for a week every 2 1/2 months, so 5 round trip flights per year instead of 12. There is no passenger train service to that site, but when I go to Montreal, Ottawa, or London Ontario on business (once or twice a year) I always go by train. If I stay at a hotel for up 5 days I try to tell them not to change the sheets or give me fresh towels, but they don’t always listen.

I could improve a lot. I eat less meat than I once did, but I do still like our steak or roast beef dinners from time to time. Mind you, my mom used to cook a roast almost every Sunday and we’re far below that level of indulgence. We probably run the home heat and air conditioning systems more than we need to, and I do some lazy driving, like returning videos by car late at night when I realize they are overdue, even though I could walk or bike almost as quickly. I let the backyard grass grow too long and end up cutting it with the old two stroke mower once or twice a year. (I use a push mower normally). Even though I have a bunch of ceramic coffee cups in my office, if I’m going by the cafeteria I often grab a paper cup of coffee since “I’m already there”. I take the elevator too often (hey, I am on the 11th floor!) and I could probably print a few fewer documents (but sometimes it’s just easier to read them on paper). I could offend the neighbours by growing vegetables in the front yard.