A Dim Idea

Last night, I unplugged my TV after watching a show.

I also drove to the grocery store across the street from me because it was a bit too hot out to walk.

I am such an environmentalist.

As another sign of good intentions, but poor execution, a new survey found that Americans don't really know how to save energy.

As if daily traffic jams were not enough of an indication.

It turns out that just turning off your lights before leaving a room and buying that new ENERGY STAR laptop don't really add up to much in a big-picture sense.

And what's more, the green movement may be partially to blame, with erroneous information leading people into thinking that buying green products is the key to environmental utopia.

The lead researcher from the study, Shahzeen Attari, says that, rather than doing the small, easy things to curb your carbon output, you're probably better off "switching to efficient technologies [which] generally allow you to maintain your behavior and save a great deal more energy."

The idea is to change how you do things, and not necessarily what you do. I mean, sure, you could buy soy ink cartridges for your fax machine and use 100% post-recycled paper to print off your 50 or so pages of documents and drive your new hybrid car over to your client's home for their signature (using a soy-based, recycled pen of course), but wouldn't it be easier, more efficient, and more environmentally-friendly to simply use DotLoop and have everything done online, without wasted paper, ink, or gas?

After all, sometimes being green simply means doing things better.