environmentally friendly

Who Won The Week — 10/09/22

Fandango24 Comments

The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

This week’s recipient of Who Won the Week recipient is not a who, but a what. It’s green burials. Green burials, also referred to as human composting, or natural organic reduction, is an environmentally friendly type of burial. And California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, recently signed into law a bill allowing human composting.

Natural organic reduction is an alternative to conventional burial and cremation. It offers less of an environmental impact. In general, it avoids direct use of fossil fuels like in cremation and takes up less space than conventional burial. It also avoids the use of materials like concrete and non-biodegradable caskets often used in conventional burial. Cremation, which accounts for more than half of “burials” in the state, is an energy-intensive process that emits chemicals such as CO2 into the air. Through a green burial, the body is naturally broken down into soil.

The process involves placing the deceased in an 8ft-long steel box with biodegradable materials such as wood chips and flowers. After 30 to 60 days, the body breaks down into soil that can be returned to relatives.

Of course, the California Catholic Conference opposes natural organic reduction, saying the composting process “reduces the human body to simply a disposable commodity.” Well, yeah. Whether you bury the body or cremating it, you’re disposing of the body, aren’t you? I thought the Church was focused more on the soul than on the body.

I, for one, am going to change my death directive from from cremation to natural organic reduction.

So who (or what) do you think won the week?

If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

Booyah!

Fandango26 Comments

This was the headline that came flashed on the newsfeed on my iPhone this morning. Seems that the national average price for gas has topped $4 a gallon as gas costs continue to soar in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Don’t hate me, but seeing that headline made me smile. Why? Because last August I bought an electric car and, as a result. I haven’t set foot in a gas station ever since.

Photo credit: Frederick J. Brown via Getty Images

And what made me smile even more was this photo above of a gas station in Los Angeles. Ouch!

I live in Northern California, and California is the only state with an average cost per gallon over $5. In fact, the price of gas for regular gas is averaging a whopping $5.28 per gallon in the Golden State, by far the highest in the nation. Selfishly, as the owner of an electric car, this dubious distinction for my home state doesn’t faze me at all.

And at the risk of sounding like I’m gloating, I just finished doing my federal income taxes for 2021 and instead of having to write a check to Uncle Sam for north of $900, because of the federal tax credit of $7,500 for the purchase of an environmentally friendly electric vehicle, Uncle Sam will be sending me a check in the amount of $6,600. Booyah!

So yeah, I’m very happy with my decision to purchase an electric car last summer.