Travel, climate change and thoughts on recycling

Here's a fantastic chart about the relative carbon footprints of different modes of traveling. It's informal, of course, calculated on the fly, but the graphic at the end really hits home the point of the best modes of travel.

Interestingly, driving a car (according to this guy's calculations) is actually worse than flying a plane. Which sort of defeats the point of the article, wherein the author describes his efforts to reduce his carbon footprint by deciding not to take a flight to destinations any more, and takes a bus instead.

That article, at first reading, made me feel a bit holier-than-thou: we only have one car, we recycle and I take the bus everywhere! Then, on second thoughts, I realized that even our seemingly kosher lifestyle isn't all that green: while we may not fly too much, we are responsible for our parents' annual trips to the US; as a family, we drive everywhere; and our lifestyle in the US is definitely less environmentally friendly than our lifestyle back in India.

The rest of this article is going to make some broad generalizations, which may not be true for the whole country, but they were true in my household and among the people I hung out with, both in India and in the US.

In India, recycling is not something you boast and feel righteous about, you just do. Everything gets reused, from plastic bags to computer parts. Food (usually) isn't dumped into trash bags; it either gets dumped it into a hole in the ground for composting or given as left-overs to people who can't afford a decent meal. Old clothes are given away to someone else, or reused as dusting cloths (I once saw an old pair of underpants on the floor of someone's kitchen, used as an all-purpose mop cloth... perhaps a bit extreme).  Broken electronics are never thrown away; they get repaired. Old newspapers, paper products can be sold in stores for a small amount of money. There is a real market for recycled goods.

In the US, recycling is not a natural way of life. It requires thought and planning. We throw away used or broken furniture, electronics and clothes. Recycling is the 'good deed for the day'.  Earnest college students believe it will bring its own karma. And there is the forced feeling of virtue- one needs an excuse for using recycling goods beyond that of saving money.

I think the reason for these drastically different outlooks are rooted in the approach to money. In India,  it is practical (and expected) to recycle and save money. In the US, it is considered a sign of stinginess for relatively well-off families not to buy new furniture, but to reuse old ones.

Secondly in India, there is a general awareness of waste (maybe because trash isn't cleaned up tidily as it is done in the US). So people think twice about trashing things.

And thirdly, you cannot go anywhere in India without being aware that there are people less fortunate than you are. Even if you drive in an air-conditioned car with dark windows, you will see kids rooting about in garbage bins, people begging, painfully undernourished babies crying. Poverty in the US has a different face. And for an immigrant (and perhaps locals too), the rules of etiquette and political correctness are intimidating: is it kind to offer food to someone who looks hungry or will that be taken as an intolerable insult? Even more intimidating: what if this hungry-looking person has a gun?