Pitch it in a bay.

If you live close to a bay (or any water) use it for your personal water bottle “recycling” program.

Stow it in a dumpster.

Dumpsters feed landfills and landfills feed global warming. A dumpster is a perfect place for your empties.

Leave it behind.

when you leave the bus, train or station—leave your bottle. The cleaning people will trash it for you.

Hurl it in the hedges.

If you like to visit parks (and who doesn’t), give that bottle a good lob into the bushes and it will be out of sight and out of mind.

Drop it on the street.

They’ve got big machines to sweep the streets in most cities. Why waste time looking for a recycling bin.

The old reliable trash can.

They’re everywhere—this prime feeder of the landfill. When you toss trash into a can, it’s as though you’re acting responsibly, without changing a thing.

What brown alternatives to recycling plastic bottles can you come up with?

You’re told to reduce your driving. But really, how often, since the nineteen twenties ended, do modern people go on pointless motoring trips? These aren’t novelty machines that dad tinkers with in the shed and the family piles into on Sunday for an “outing.” For the majority of you ape-people the point of driving a car is to get somewhere you want or need to be—hard to reduce anything there. Perhaps you should consider asking the paramedics to park their ambulance—just carry you to the hospital the next time your left arm goes numb.

Reduce your purchases. Ah, that seems to make sense. Instead of carelessly throwing your money around to buy computers, television sets or video games—spend your free time sitting in an empty room glaring at the other bored members of your family. For their next birthday, instead of jewelry or electronic gadgets, give your spouse a tree planted in their name. Explain to your dinner guests that a cup of boiled beans has the same protein content as a grilled rib eye steak with pepper and herb butter sauce. Tell your children they can’t have clothes to wear because the grown-ups are trying to save the planet—perhaps even bring it back to where you were all swinging through the branches and grazing off each other’s fleas.

No, the answer is not to start walking six or seven blocks to the store. You don’t need to stop buying pasta machines or bread makers to store at the back of your cabinets. You humans are a highly evolved and complicated species that require the exchange of your constant labor for meaningless objects. What would the point of your existence be without ankle bracelets, bobble-head dolls or cleverly engineered “food” providing zero calories of energy? If you’re concerned that your excesses will wipe the species out a few hundred-thousand years ahead of schedule, consider the words of the aptly named Beatles—”Let It Be.”

Have any worthless yet guilty pleasure products you can’t give up? If so, comment.

It’s true; the California Department of Motor Vehicles says it’s legal for a car to use a bike lane as a parking space. It says so right in the handbook the DMV publishes for drivers to use to study up for the written driving exam. Here’s what it says:

Did you catch that middle part? You may park in a bike lane unless a "No Parking" sign is posted. Here you’ve been coddling those clean-air communists when you could have been on time to a movie for a change. You could’ve been fifteen feet from the popcorn instead of hunting the streets for an open spot to hang your bogus DISABLED placard.

Now you know why "Motor" is in the name "Department of Motor Vehicles", and monkeyman you know who’s important to them.

It just gets better and better to be part of the brown revolution. Think of how this opens up your world. No place to park that Hummer while you run into Starbucks? How about that nearly empty space those kids are riding in to get to school? Need some quick cash but you haven’t the energy to walk the block to your ATM? There’s now a whole new strip of free parking for you!

Oops, it turns out that written California law says something different. In fact, unless you save lives or cart garbage you might actually get a ticket for parking in a bike lane. (In theory at least.) It’s a matter of whom to believe, the person who wrote the DMV book or the actual state law. Seems like a toss up to us poor stupid cockroaches. If you’re willing to risk a ticket you can increase your convenience while speeding global destruction.

Perhaps it’s a typo from a cash-strapped state department but we prefer to think of it as a gift from the agency tired of being hated. If you don’t want to risk it, read on to see what the real law says:

Okay, it’s legal for emergency vehicles, working garbage trucks and tow trucks on the job. Surely a Venti Americano is an emergency sometimes. Possibly somebody at the DMV decided to open up the parking a little with their own spin on the following part of the law:

See the part where it says, "To park where parking is permitted." This section of the vehicle code deals with driving in a bike lane—allowing a car to drive through a bike lane to get to a curbside (or other legal) parking space. Who knows, maybe it could be okaying you to park your carbon burner in a bike lane. Maybe they just forgot to use the word "park" in the (a) section. Someone must have approved the DMV handbook, right?

We roaches don’t drive (or park) but we’re not past encouraging you take a chance. (We won’t pay for your ticket though. We won’t pay to reprint all those DMV booklets either.)

Before you get smart and look for our own typos on this website—remember that it’s amazing enough roaches can even press down the keys on these crazy computers of yours.

Dateline: Final Days of Humans

FOX News, the network most associated with protecting the rights of American ignorance, today announced that it would cease broadcasting “news” at the end of this week. A one-time gold mine of the conservative mouth, FOX, in recent years, had been reduced to pandering for its gold, and then simply to pitching for its pennies. The realities of global warming have had an ironic effect on conservative arguments against the reality of global warming, the conservative voice having dried up by the need to conserve saliva on a scorched planet. People these days in general, unable to feel their tongues, have a reduced interest in the exercise of mock debate.

Standing in front of FOX World Headquarters in New York—with the remaining human population listening to his words—the media giant’s most recent President fought back tears as he delivered his announcement of the network’s final days. The swirling dust, noxious fumes, and parched NYC backdrop made the tears come quite easily. “Oops,” he said. “As it turns out—kinda funny if you think about it—global warming—actually a serious issue. Our bad. Sorry for misleading you.”

While some industry experts continue to argue the need for a conservative voice of the people, many now admit that since fewer than a hundred humans remain alive, they can probably work it out for themselves.

Choking Planet explored ways that product packaging negatively affects the Earth and came up with this list of six simple things you can do to help it happen:

• Drink bottled water for bigger landfills.
• Support over-packaging.
• Get a free bag with every purchase.
• Value the package as much as the product.
• Buy products in convenient plastic containers.
• Buy “fresh” foods in wrapped packaging.

Too strapped to manage an oil spill? Unable to add more than a few quarts of old chemicals to the water table in a year? Save the larger jobs for the industrial experts. You can contribute something though. By supporting companies who help scorch the Earth and by doing a few simple things yourself—you can contribute. No big changes here, we’ve put together a list of just six little actions that will make a difference. You don’t have to try them all either. One or six, anything helps.

Drink bottled water for bigger landfills.

Consider that if one person made the effort to drink two bottles of water a day, that would amount to almost 750 bottles to make, fill, warehouse, truck and dispose of in just one year. A couple of people would account for nearly 1500 bottles. 3,000 for a family of four and up it goes. Just imagine a lovely pile of 700 to 3,000 empty plastic bottles and what it could do for the future planet. Glorious! Of course disposable soda bottles—as good as always.

Support over-packaging.

When you buy something that comes with lots of extra packing material, foam or even paper, let the product manufacturer know how much you appreciate their part in your grandkids’ future. Send the big guys a letter to let them know that you know, they don’t care, and you appreciate that they don’t care.

A few companies create their packaging with relatively little wasted material and yet still manage to protect their somewhat fragile products. But, since without magic it is only possible to protect a computer monitor if it is packed with three times its size in foam. The package design people for companies like Apple Computer, who use only a few square inches of foam to protect a new iMac during shipping, should obviously be burned as witches.

Get a free bag with every purchase.

When a store asks you, “Paper or plastic,” you should say “Double bag it!” Choose either of the materials or mix ‘em up with the convenient “paper stuffed in plastic” option. (Has handles but stands upright in the trunk!)

Always take a bag, whether buying thirty or three items. The cost of groceries includes the cost of bags, so nobody’s hurt. Forget the reusable cloth bags they want you to bring yourself. You didn’t land a six figure income to save the environment or five lousy cents off your grocery bill. Leave the cloth bags to old ladies and guys with dreads.

Value the package as much as the product.

Refuse to buy a product that doesn’t have a full four-color box. Encourage companies to put their products in large, beautiful packaging that has been printed on bleached white paper and is coated with only the finest high-gloss UV or varnish chemical coating. Manufactured chemical coatings on a box add useful byproduct waste when they’re made and they can’t be recycled when you’re through with them—a double win!

More money is often spent on promoting the image of a product than spent making it. You wouldn’t want people to think you purchased a loser in a brown box would you?

Buy products in convenient plastic containers.

Lots of household products come in nifty toss away plastic containers. Even Arm and Hammer sells a slightly more expensive (and smaller) version of their respected baking soda brand in a cool little plastic shaker. You see, even a product that is quite environmentally friendly can be upgraded to add a little litter to the planet.

Whether it’s cheaper or more expensive, products are classier when they come in cool containers. Who doesn’t think cheap candy bars stepped up a class when they switched from paper to the same stuff garbage bags are made of? (Let’s face it, we roaches love garbage.) Let the Swiss eat chocolate from environmentally friendly aqueous-coated paper wrappers. Like the Stars and Stripes, popular American candy wrappers are made to be around for a long-long time.

Buy “fresh” foods in wrapped packaging.

Buy products like meat or produce in wrapped packages, especially if it’s a foam tray and has those cool absorbent pads inside. Suggest to your market manager that they sell fruits wrapped in protective foam nets. Fruits are part of sexual reproduction and protection is important when it comes to sex. (A humble attempt at carnal humor because we’ve heard that humans find it enjoyable.)

It’s the little things that build the biggest landfills. Pay attention to the little things and the big things, when they happen, will tip the balance on their own.

What are your favorite packaging issues?

Consider for a moment that regular exercise can cause the human body to expel many toxins. What happens to these toxins when they are released? One might suspect that unloading human toxins into the environment could someday have a devastating impact of its own.

Cyclists tend to drink more water than the non-cyclist. It is clear that the world is experiencing problems with its water supply and to allow some individuals to drink up more than their fair share could lead to eventual ruin.

Cyclists also require more oxygen and expel more carbon dioxide than normal people. This puts unnecessary pressure on what limited plants remain to process this bad air back into something that is breathable by all higher life forms. Think of every bicyclist you see as someone who is literally taking your breath away.

Cycling consumes calories (or more accurately kilocalories) and the only source of this precious energy source for humans is food. The Earth is facing a worldwide food shortage, no doubt exasperated by unnecessary exertion and the increased appetites of these pedaling individuals. Even without a food crisis, the resources required to grow the food and process the additional human waste must be causing some sort of stain on the fragile ecosystem.

One risk seldom considered is that unlike basic modes of mechanical human transport, bicycling does nothing to rid the land and oceans of the vast amounts of crude oil deposits currently festering below the planet surface. Can anyone say with certainty that allowing this oil to remain pooled and unprocessed will not have devastating consequences for the future? We certainly have found no evidence of such a study.