February 18th, 2008 @ 11:15 am
Thrifty Environmentalist
So I have a dilemma, the dilemma of the thrifty environmentalist.
I have an electric toothbrush that I bought at my dentist’s office for 5 bucks. That gets me the batteries and brush and everything. After a while, the brush head needs to be replaced. At Wegmans, 3 replacement brush heads cost $20. Add to that the fact that the 2 AA batteries don’t last much longer than a single brush head does, and the cost of keeping the toothbrush quickly adds up.
It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that its cheaper to just keep buying new complete brushes at the dentists’ office, but it also creates more waste to not reuse the body / motor / etc.
The same thing happens with Pur water filters. It is actually cheaper to buy a new faucet mount filter enclosure that comes with 2 filters than it is to buy a 6 pack of replacement filters (I am talking cost per filter here). This is with the bulk discount at BJ’s, not even the incredible cost of buying single filters 1 at a time at walmart /wegmans or something.
We did buy the 6 pack of filters because we didn’t want to be wasteful, but I sorta bought a whole new toothbrush at the dentists’ office.
2 Responses to “Thrifty Environmentalist”
As you are well aware, I struggle with this question frequently. I really want to be environmentally sound…but budget constraints often don’t help.
I believe each situation has to be evaluated to see if it is financially feasible for you to do the right thing. Also, if you recycle the batteries out of the old toothbrush before you throw it away…it’s not as bad…
It’s not as if you are buying a refrigerator every 6 months and throwing it out when you are done with it.
By Kevin February 18th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I have the opposite perspective. I spend 8 hours a day working in sustainability and environmentalism.
I have come to hate the environment.
I’ve realized that no matter what I do personally, it doesn’t change anything in the grand scheme of things and the less I use, the more other people will have to use. Therefore I propose to use and waste so much that the rest of the world is forced to change.
By Will February 19th, 2008 at 12:36 am