pixelated.me

Today is Blog Action Day, The purpose of which is to bring the enviroment to the forefront of people's minds through blogs. As my blog has a rather small readership somewhere between 2 and maybe 10 it occurred to me to almost not write anything about the environment. When blogs like lifehacker, google blog, etc are writing about this what sense is their in me doing so.

but then i realized that in a way that reflects the very same attitude most people have about their environment, there is a profound sense of impotence that keeps us from acting.

I live in Mexico City a large, chaotic city of some 20,000,000+ inhabitants. It can be very frustrating to see just how little everyone else seems to care about the other 19,999,999+ people they share this metropolis with.

My sister who upon watching An Inconvenient Truth decided that amongst other things she would start separating her organic and inorganic trash was disillusioned when upon handing said separated trash to the garbage man saw him toss both bags into the same mix. She still separates her trash and perhaps one day she'll watch the trash man take note of her separation. It really is about making the little efforts that i believe will have a cumulative effect one day. It's about not letting ambivalence cloud our attitude.

Small choices can have small impacts and thats better than no impact. My sister keeps separating her trash and that reminds me to do what i can in my own life to minimize my impact on our environment.
I realize that what i have written are neither new nor revolutionary ideas but i write it because if in doing so one reader decides he or she will change her light bulbs, or shut of the water whilst brushing their teeth, then that will make a tiny dent in the problem.

and though i rarely write about technology in this blog it is very much a part of my life. Technology products sadly use materials that are horrendous for our environment. Mercury and Lead top that list. So i urge all 5 or 6 of you who read this to take a second look at that computer or cell phone you're considering tossing in the trash. Technology can be given wonderful second life's as machines dedicated to singles uses.
That 6 year old PC or Mac can't keep up for most new computing task but can still make an excellent web browsing terminal that can be set up for guest or children to use. Consider installing Ubuntu which is for most people with a decent understanding of computer a fairly painless task. It will give that old computer a a new lease and keep it from ending up in a trash dump.