Six Miles on the Ground Gets You One Flush in the Air

Here’s an interesting tip I found the other day at IdealBite.com:

Say you’re waiting at the airport for a flight and there’s fifteen minutes to go before boarding starts. You feel nature calling but you decide to wait until you’re on the plane to use the roomy facilities there.

Well, the tip is that using the airport lavatory instead saves just a bit of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere. For every airborne flush enough fuel is burned to run an average car for six miles.

Who knew?

Of course, you’re already in an airplane that probably burns enough fuel just to get lined up on the runway for takeoff to run that same car for a year, so we shouldn’t think it’s really going to make that much difference where we relieve ourselves – and when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Still, if there is a choice in the matter, use the airport lavatory. Every little bit helps!

This reminds me of the recent flap over singer Sheryl Crow’s “joke” about using on sheet of toilet paper as a means of finding one’s inner “greenness”. I really didn’t think it was that funny. Sometimes I’m just grumpy.

I think the point is that there are a number of little things we can do in our everyday lives that, taken collectively, can make a difference in the size of our environmental footprint. Are any one of these little things enough to turn the tide toward a sustainable society?

No.

But we’ve got to start somewhere, and with each little thing we do (despite Crow's ill-advised humor) to be more “green”, we train ourselves to think positively and creatively in moderating our lifestyles toward a friendlier environmental impact.

By putting one foot in front of the other, before we know it, a substantial change will result.

Something to think about when you’re heading to the in-flight lavatory…

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Six Miles on the Ground Gets You One Flush in the Air

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