It Ain’t Easy Being Green (Unless You’re Lazy)

One of the main reasons people give for not being more environmentally friendly is how much effort and money it takes to live greener. Sure, converting your automobile to biodiesel and installing solar panels on your dog might be a little extreme and therefore not for everyone, but it’s not actually not that hard to start living a more eco-friendly life. In fact, I realized the other day that I live one of the greenest lives out of anyone I know, and it’s all because of one special trait that I proudly carry: LAZINESS.

For decades, eco-enthusiasts have made valiant efforts to show ordinary people that by exerting just a little more energy, they can help save the planet. Sounds easy enough, right? Then why are people, for the most part, still refusing to heed the call to help ensure a better future? Four simple words, folks: People Are Fucking Lazy.

They already hate being inconvenienced in even the tiniest capacity – go to any Starbucks where the milk bar is more than 10 feet away from the counter to see what I mean – so imagine trying to ask them to willingly inconvenience themselves for a non-tangible, non-instantaneous reward. You’ll get the kind of looks that Clay Aiken got when he told People Magazine that he was gay–blank stares followed by sheer apathy.

If you really want to get regular people to live greener lives, you have to appeal to their ennui. Why haven’t scientists and intellectuals been able to figure this one out yet? The key to energy conservation is energy conservation. I’m one of the laziest people I know but as I said before, I’m also one of the greenest. What are my secrets?

• Reuse towels and clothing – Washing towels, washclothes, t-shirts and jeans after only one or two uses is not only wasteful, it’s unnecessary. Unless you’ve been rolling around in shit all day, chances are your clothes are fine to wear again on Wednesday. Same with towels. In fact, after you’re done drying yourself off, go ahead and use that same towel to dry your dishes off. No harm there, it’s all soap, right? You’ll not only save yourself several trips to the laundromat, but hundreds of gallons of water that the washing machines would have used. Plus, the more you wash your clothes, the quicker you’ll have to replace them. Wash them once every three or four wears, and you can triple their lifespan.
• Shower every other day – You know those days when you wake up and you just want that extra 15 minutes of sleep? Well go ahead and hit that snooze button because you’re sacrificing your shower this morning for the good of the environment (and your laziness). The same principle mentioned above applies here-unless you were frolicking in feces for the better part of yesterday, chances are, no one’s gonna notice you didn’t shower today-especially considering that you probably never broke a sweat sitting on your fat ass watching Law & Order reruns all last night. Just throw on some deodorant and a splash of cologne (or as it’s known in Bensonhurst, an Irish Shower) and you’ll be fine. Trust me, the only people that NEED to shower everyday are Madonna, Derek Jeter and Richard Simmons.
• Take mass transit – It takes just as much effort to go to a gas station and fill up your car as it does to walk to a bus stop or subway station. The only difference is, you don’t have to drive the train or look for parking for the bus. You just sit on your ass and let an MTA employee chauffeur you around town. And for anyone complaining about not being able to get a seat during rush hour, it’s amazing what a simple wooden crutch can do for you.
• Recycle newspapers and cardboard twice – Shoeboxes are not only great places to innocuously store incriminating evidence, they also double as cheap dinner plates. Save yourself a sink full of nasty dishes (and wasted clean water) by eating your eggplant casserole in the box that used to hold your new Nikes. What’s that? Need a place mat to keep spills off of that post-consumer recycled dining room table? Grab the business section of today’s paper. Don’t worry, there’s only depressing stuff in there anyway. You can even recycle that newspaper a THIRD time by using it as makeshift toilet paper after you’re done reading it on the bowl.

These are just a few of the many lazy things that you can do to help the planet prosper. Remember, the less energy that we exert, the more energy that we save for the planet.