Five Simple Ways to Green Your Life Today
By Wesley Joseph • Jul 1st, 2008 • Category: Chemicals, Climate Change, Household, News and Media, Products and Shopping, Recent Posts, Recycling, Resource Waste Reduction, Transportation, Workplace
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We all see the constant stream of news, commercials, and websites claiming new ways we can and should green our lives (hey, you’re on one of those sites right now!), but it can get difficult to discern from that, or rather, sift out of all of it, a few tips you plan to implement immediately to improve your personal envirohuman impact.
Here, I have compiled for you a list of five areas of your life for you to examine and begin making improvements to reduce pollution. Ready?
- Transform your transportation: If you can (and have not changed already) consider getting to school, work, shopping, and play by means other than your own personal vehicle. So explore the opportunities of using public transportation, biking, or walking. If these options do not fit the bill all of the time, consider implementing them some of the time, so maybe you can walk to the store but public transportation may not be available to you, so you might end up driving to work. Also, the option of carpooling is available in most areas, so try a website such as e-rideshare or a slew of others. Also, make sure your tires are fully inflated and do not accelerate and break suddenly. With gas prices as high as over $4.00, if you are tired of filling the tank on your older car (or for many, SUV!), consider buying a hybrid or other more fuel-efficient car — it will pay you dividends for the less gas you use and reduced carbon footprint!
- Change your household cleaners: I’m going to direct you to our rapidly increasing list of product reviews for specific products’ information, but concentrate on finding truly greener products, ones that list the ingredients on the label, and if you have the time, investigate the safety of those ingredients, an area where usually, Wikipedia can help. Concentrate on finding one quality “green” dishsoap, laundry detergent, and all-purpose cleaner, looking for natural, petroleum-free, plant-based, biodegradable products, especially, and you will be well on your way.
- Greener thinking by greener reading: Begin frequenting a green website that can offer you daily news and tips related to your new, green lifestyle to offer you encouragement and continued ideas for little ways to live a more environmentally-friendly life. What does this do for you? While websites like Grist and Tree Hugger are great, and rather all-encompassing, for some, it can feel almost like too much advice and tips. You can count on EnviroHumanImpact to provide you with something everyday that puts you in a greener mood, including tips, our different series of posts, like Greener Under Twenty, can give you realistic, simple life changes, usually for less than $20 in fewer than twenty minutes. EHI provides, “just enough,” rather than more environmental information than you can possibly read in one sitting — and we will not overflow your RSS feed everyday — typically one or two per day from us at EHI. You can join our RSS feed for a daily dose of information and advice. Plus, reading a green-focused website will keep you on track toward a more sustainable lifestyle!
- This one is easy! Save some energy, money, and the world from significant amounts of pollution by switching over to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), which now can be recycled at Home Depot!
- Speaking of recycling, if you are not recycling, then you should be. Find ways at work and home to recycle paper, metals, plastic products, and organic matter! It is highly energy- and environment-intensive to extract raw materials from the earth, and it is in most cases better to recycle your garbage.
So, try these tips today for a boost toward a greener you! Once you get started, you will begin to find small ways to green your life, all on your own! Remember, you do not have to wait — the tips above can be accomplished today!
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Wesley Joseph is the primary editor for EHI. He comes from a strong political science background and is interested in the effect humans' actions have on the environment, how in turn the environment affects humans, and how environmental policy at large and personal actions can both change into positive envirohuman impacts.
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Where did you get your blog layout from? I’d like to get one like it for my blog.
If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times - solar/thermal-molten sodium - electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, ($650 Billion), today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It would be equivalent to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and storeable hydrogen gasoline replacement from the electricity, for all!
After the millions of murders, and $650 billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich Arabic saber dancing daddie’s boy oilman, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep! (also see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan)