Waste

Imagine if every time you flushed the toilet you were charged $1 in water usage. 50c if you have a water wise toilet. I think that people would either piss in the sink (seen this in 3 TV shows/movies in recent times?!) or just be more awar of how much water they are using. The same is for plastic bags. "Oh double bag it" might be used less if the pay for plastic bag trials were to continue. They do this in Amsterdam. It was great to hear Australia is phasing out incandescent light globes too. I've heard a little bit of buzz (during the lets go green phase) of agencies going carbon neutral. I was even going to do a post on Bannerblog on this until I realized how ungreen we are :( Trust me when I cry a secret tear when I go to the printer and see half a ream of paper with jst junk printed on it. Not junk as in "emails" but actual printer error junk... half a ream which the printer kept printing until it ran out of paper. I'm the kind of guy who prints 4 up on a page when I have to print. That and staff leaving their little monitor lights on (vampire power graph here) That said I happily leave the PS3 and XBOX on stanby 24-7 so the hypocritical nature of my statement is not lost. I know that I wont live to regret it, i'll be dead before any of the major ramifications of this generations waste takes hold but I feel guilty about my carbon foot print. If I ever buy a car I'll implode with guilt :) So to my point. I wish that basic services cost more. Energy is cheap, water is not even considered an expense at all and plastic bags are disposable. If having a 12 minute shower cost me $4 in water I'd consider it a luxury that I can enjoy occasionally. Safe in the knowledge that most people will be taking shorter showers to save money not the environment.