Four weeks after receiving it, I finally cracked open my July/August edition of Wired magazine. (You’d think I would be better with all my home time right now.)
Although Wired dedicated plenty of space to pandemic coverage, the story “Energy Stars” served as a bit of a prompt: Remember sustainability? Remember when eliminating single-use plastics in daily life was at the top of your mind, Kate? Remember reliably bringing your own grocery bags to the store before they were temporarily banned in March? Now I set phone reminders to try to remember those same bags.
I’m still rebuilding some of those personal habits as we at the Business Record finish out our fourth month straight working remotely. Naturally, we’ve been sending out a lot of emails, so when I read Wired writer Clive Thompson’s story about “green programming” and cutting carbon on cyberspace, one highlighted line caught my eye:
“Our throwaway habits can add up. If every adult in the UK sent one less ‘thank you’ email per day, it would cut 16 tons of carbon each year.”
In other words, saying everything I need to say in one email, one text message. Of course, there’s more to the story to really make an impact, but how easy is that? I apologize in advance if you missed that second thank-you email from me, but I promise I’ll say it in the first email. Take a look at how coders are streamlining web design in the full story: https://bit.ly/3hCBUYk.