Turns out being sustainable is a whole lot easier when your roommate is out of town.

I've been doing a pretty good job of trying to correct many of my detrimental habits lately; I'm recycling at home, taking shorter showers, and much to my chagrin, even eating less meat. No telling how long that last bit is going to keep up. I love meat.

But speaking of my walking ecodisaster of a roommate being out of town, I happened to stumble upon an interesting experiment that Japan-based Nippon Airlines is taking up.

While strictly a cost-saving measure with little concern about the environmental impact of the project, its a laughably simple way to lower their jets' impact as far as carbon emissions. The whole idea is, to put it in eloquent terms, "please take a dump before you get on the plane. You'll save us some gas."

Nippon's research suggests that, assuming each passenger does their business before hopping on one of their jets, they can cut down on 5 TONS (yes, as in 10,000 lbs.) of CO2 emissions per month simply due to the reduction in weight that each plane would be carrying. Also, each flush of the on-board toilet supposedly costs the airplane a liter of fuel. Not sure where they came up with that figure, but I'll play along.

Obviously, the Japanese are known for their interesting theories and concepts (see right), but this one may actually, on the long term at least, pay dividends to investors and environmentalists alike. Stay tuned.