Be Eco-Lazy For Earth Day

In honor of Earth Day, I'm recycling (!) an old post about a concept I call "eco-laziness":

As I was mowing my yard yesterday in the hot sun, a new concept dawned on me, one that, if it were practiced on a large scale, could have a positive impact on the environment and, perhaps more immediately, save me some work. You see, dear reader, I’m lazy. La-Z. Lazy with a capital Z. Here’s what I started to ponder as the sweat started dripping: Why do we people who have yards have to mow them every week? Is it because the neighbors do? Is it because our aesthetic sense dictates that a mown lawn is the ideal?

The answer is probably ‘yes’ to both. Well, I want to propose a new way. The way I see it, there are at least two things that are harmful about our national addiction to a mown lawn: 1) it necessitates the use of gasoline, which is something we need to stop wasting and which releases bad stuff into the air and 2) it necessitates me exerting myself. Let’s say, conservatively, that one million people mow their lawn every week. Let’s also say that each uses a half-gallon of gas. The easy math says that if they went from mowing every week to mowing every two weeks, that would save 500,000 gallons of gas every two weeks! That’s exponentially huge when you consider the $2 million bucks it would save, not to mention preventing the environmental harm of drilling, refining and transporting the gas. (Obviously, I could save even more gasoline by mowing the yard with the push mower that is gathering spider webs in my shed, but if you think I will do that, you are missing the point entirely.)

Here’s another example. Aside from mowing the lawn every other week instead of every week, I practice eco-laziness when I drink milk straight from the container (thus avoiding having to waste water – and expend energy -- by washing a glass). So the definition of eco-laziness is: To not do something that harms the environment mostly to avoid doing work. An environmental two-fer, if you will.

Who’s with me?!?