Thinking globally and acting locally seems the only attainable goal for me. Sometimes that means as local as the bathroom and kitchen. I’ve stuck with a couple of decisions I made a few months ago about my daily living that, in retrospect, belong together in the category of things I can do that will make a difference.

When my can of shaving cream sputtered its last flecks of foam into my hand, it was the weekend and a couple of days out from a regular shopping trip. I have a shaving brush and a mug of soap, so I was set. When I got to the men’s products aisle the next time, I reached for the Gillette and stopped. Was this really a more convenient way to shave? Did I actually save any time splurting cream into my hand rather than lathering up a brush? Sure, maybe thirty seconds. What was the trade-off? A couple of dollars every month or so to buy a can I’d add to the landfill. When I thought about the energy and resources needed to make the can and plastic nozzle, create the propellant, inject the foam and and seal it, package and transport it, I realized I just couldn’t justify it.

Williams Shaving Soap has been around since 1840. A cake lasts probably twice as long as a can of shaving cream. It gives a better shave. It comes in a small recyclable pressboard box (which even appeals to my love of solid design). Why would I go back?

I’ve been a coffee snob since before Starbuck’s busted out of Seattle. (I hate that term, though. Am I a cheese snob if I like Vermont cheddar more than American slices? A beer snob if I reach for a local brown ale rather than Budweiser?) I grind my beans and use a French press to make my daily rocket fuel, have done since college in the mid-eighties. When the puppy in his crazed house-destroying phase knocked the coffee grinder to the floor, smashed the plastic housing, and chewed off the cord, my knee-jerk immediate plan was to buy another grinder. Gotta have freshly ground coffee.

Again I stopped to think about it. I buy my freshly roasted beans from Prime Roast and use a pound every couple of weeks. In what way would even the last pot made from the bag not be fresh if they ground the beans for me? I was a fresh coffee snob. I realized that letting them do it would save me the hassle, the noise, and the electricity of doing it myself. Surely their commercial grinder churning up a whole pound at once would use a lot less energy than my daily pot’s worth.

So I shave with the brush again and leave the grinding to the professionals. My carbon footprint and contribution to the waste stream are each a little bit smaller. And sometimes when the steaming mug of coffee is on the sink next to the lathery mug of soap, I can imagine myself wiping my partially shaved face with a towel to answer the door with my pistol drawn, just in case.