Sometimes I really hate my brain

For the past year or so I have been making serious efforts at reducing our footprint on the earth, environmentally speaking. We put in more energy-efficient windows, installed a programmable thermostat, and turned the heat way down at night. I'm on this local food kick, because I've become convinced that more localized food production systems need to be the way of the future. We have almost 100% compact fluorescent light bulbs in the house now. I'm tracking our weekly driving miles and gas mileage, so I can start trying to measurably reduce our gas usage.

But so many choices are not so clear-cut. For example, I have become increasingly concerned about plastics. They will not break down in the earth for 100 years, or maybe ever. Scientists don't seem to know, exactly. Plus they take oil to produce. And while a certain amount of recycling is possible, it has limitations. (I know, I should be linking to citations to back all this up, but I'm feeling lazy. I'm sure I've read it all somewhere.)

So, grocery stores are cutting back on plastic shopping bags. Some cities are even banning them. But what is our main use of plastic shopping bags here on Holly Street? As poop bags for our dogs. We have to scoop our poop, not only because it's polite and it's the law, but because all that poop matter going into the watershed really is a problem. (Ok here I'll link to a study on this, because it's actually quite fascinating, if you spend anytime at all thinking about dog poop.)

Because the grocery stores cut the bags, we were buying more plastic bags. But the whole public policy discussion about the bags in the first place made me think about all those poop bags going into the landfill. Is it better to flush our dog's poop, as King County used to suggest? The thought is kinda gross, but I was willing to consider it. Except if we all did that - we, Seattlites, the dog-lovingest city in the nation - the sheer volume of dog poop could overwhelm the waste management systems. And, even if you bring the poop into your house and flush it, you still had to scoop it up in something impermeable - and probably plastic. Thus you have eliminated the poop from the landfill, but not the plastic.

So I found, and ordered, 100% compostable and biodegradable "plastic" bags, made from corn. Which is great, and it makes me feel better. But the bags are produced in Denmark, which means they're shipping them all the way over here. How does the incremental amount of fuel used to ship those bags to Seattle compare with the amount of petroleum used to produce and ship a comparable number of regular plastic bags? And how do you weigh the fuel use against the potentially infinite time the regular plastic molecules will circulate in the environment?

And then Enrico points out that in landfills, nothing composts or breaks down, because they are huge and capped and there isn't any oxygen. For as long as the landfill holds, neither plastic bag will break down; nor will its remains leach into the environment. But the centuries will go by, and eventually that stuff will get into the earth and the water, right?

So since the bag is compostable, and poo eventually breaks down into harmless organic materials, should we dig a compost hole for our dogs' poo on some corner of our property? I mean, people use cow and horse poop for manure all the time. The Seattle Zoo sells the damn stuff to gardners. Armed with our compostable bags, couldn't we just compost our poo?

Apparently not, since the aforementioned study posits that the bacteria in dog poo - due to the nature of their diets and their digestive systems - does not break down quite so easily and harmlessly as poo from animals who mostly eat grass.

None of this even gets into the question of whether corn production for biofuels and compostable plastic bags is exacerbating the food crisis. I have my doubts about that, or at a minimum I suspect it's a red herring, something that could be addressed if we fix our food production systems, globally, which we need to do anyway. But still. Oy.

So what the hell. And this is just one little thing, the poop bags. Magnify it across all of daily life, and the questions, the dilemmas, the tradeoffs, all become overwhelming. The problem is, we as individuals just don't have the tools available to make all the changes that are needed, even if we are fully willing and motivated to give it a go. There are some meta-problems that need to be solved. But will the meta-problems be solved if there aren't individual people clamoring for the solutions?

You think this is bad? Don't EVEN get me started on my quest for a new garden shed.

Stupid brain.