What are some things to limit my impact on the environment?
We’ve been learning in science lately how human waste and carelessness impacts the environment. It makes me feel so guilty. What are some practical, everyday things I can do?
We’ve been learning in science lately how human waste and carelessness impacts the environment. It makes me feel so guilty. What are some practical, everyday things I can do?
LOL, aside from committing suicide, here are a couple of things you can do:
1) Stop buying wastefully, Reuse or Recycle
-Out of the three, the first one is the best choice. The reusing is second and recycling comes last. Recycling takes energy to process and transport goods. By not buying something in the first place (ex: not using plastic bags or canceling useless magazine subscriptions) there is no need to recycle or reuse. Reusing, unlike recycling doesn’t require any process of transforming the object back into it’s raw state (i.e. melting aluminum cans to get raw aluminum again, which can then be used for other purposes). Instead, reusing involves reusing what you already have in the same form. You can make a magazine/newspaper bowl for example. Or a raincoat made out of plastic bags. There are several things you can do, and several craft projects that reuse materials are available online.
2) Turn off lights when you leave a room! (saves you money too!)
3) Buy a power strip for each room. Whenever you’re not using appliances in that room, unplug/turn off the power switch. Plugged in items still tend to use electricity even though they’re not on!
4)Take quicker showers/turn off water when brushing teeth
5)Turn down temperature on water heater. If you can give yourself extreme burns by turning the hot water nob, chances are, your settings are too high and you’re wasting money and hurting the environment.
6)Carpool to school with some friends.
7)Ride a bike to places near your house.
8)Pick up trash as you walk buy it and at least throw it away (although recycling would be better)
9) Start a campaign at school! Provide green boxes for each classroom and have teacher dispose of papers and stuff in those boxes and not the trashcan! Have someone take it to your local recycling agency.
10) Stop buying things that require lots of packaging
11) Regive old clothes or give cotton based clothes to a company that will convert it into insulation for houses.
12) Have your parents invest in better insulation for the house! Not only will this drive down prices for heating and cooling the house, but it will also say energy, thus helping the environment.
Basically, look at how you can reduce water, waste, food and energy use! When you lessen your those, your footprint will decrease!
Good Luck
The black pill will remove almost all of your imprint, but that is really drastic.
Just don’t knowingly throw away things that can be recycled, don’t encourage the destruction of critical habitat, or support polluting countries like China and India by purchasing Chinese or Indian made products until Chinese and Indian Factories clean up their pollution.
Bike to work/school/etc,recycle, bring reusable cloth bags for shopping, if you ever buy a car buy one that is made in your region, encourage others to do the same. also, you could make sure your house has energy efficient lightbulbs
Kill yourself. And have your remains used for compost. That’s the most environmentally friendly thing you can do.
die
Hi!
You could start building solar panels for your self or your friends. It can be done for about 200$ per panel. You can get DIY instructions and information at http://www.1greenpower,com.
First things first, you need to learn how much CO2 you personally emit. Only then will you know which area you need to focus most on.
A really fantastic way of doing this is to use http://www.thecarbonaccount.com which is a free service that builds a graph of your emissions as you enter your car mileage, meter readings, and flights. If you can afford it, get Google Power Meter too http://www.google.com/powermeter/about/ – very cool energy monitor
I found that we use loads of gas and really we need to fit a new boiler as a priority. For others it will be different as we all have different carbon footprints.
Generally speaking, most CO2 comes from our cars, taking flights, heating our homes. So cycling more, going on vacation nearer home, and insulating our home really well are often amongst the best ways to cut down.
There are other things that thecarbonaccount.com cannot measure – because they are tricky to calculate. However, they an equally huge effect on CO2 emissions.
Buying less "stuff" is another effective habit – see http://www.storyofstuff.com for a very interesting video on the subject. Anything made in China will have created large amounts of CO2 during its manufacture. It might seem like a painful sacrifice, but instead why not spend your money on mp3s, haircuts, iphone apps, or the cinema – all of which are very low CO2 purchases.
Eating less meat is a really great idea, although for some people the transition needs to be really gradual or it will be torture. Try to cut down by 10% every 6 months or so. Around 50 times more crops have to be grown to feed livestock than if we were to eat the crops ourselves.
A tricky subject, but an important one, is to not have too many kids. Sorry, I know that sounded bad. It’s even less popular than eating less meat, but something to think about if want to seriously reduce CO2…. moving on…..
Those are the things that have the biggest impact. Together they probably account for 80%+ of global green house gas emissions.
To answer your question then, here are somethings you can do every day: -
Insulate your cavity walls and loft – my mum looked into this and it turns out there is a local scheme that installs it for free.
Reduce your drafts – ensure your house is not leaking air by fitting draught excluders
change your lighting to CFL bulbs
have your food delivered to your door instead of driving to the store.
turn down your thermostat by a degree or two
use a laptop computer instead of a desktop
dry your clothes on a line, not in a tumble dryer
drive without accelerating and braking so much – can save up to 30% of your gas
switch your electricity supplier to "Good Energy" or another 100% renewable supplier
Thanks for reading. If you found this useful don’t forget to click the thumbs up button. Cheers.
Turn off the lights
Close the door
Turn off the TV/Computer/Video games when no one is using them:)
Unplug unused appliances like toaster coffee maker hairdryer etc
Always use reusable shopping bags
Try to grow own produce or buy organic
Don’t use pesticides or herbicides
Make my own cleaning products
Breastfed (when old enough or have wife do it)
Didn’t use disposable diapers
Low flow shower heads
Low flow toilets
Don’t mow grass often
Organic fertilizer
Car pool with other parents
Bike and walk or use public transport
Support community projects that promote things like co-op vegetable gardens and orchards
Use energy saving light bulbs
Support local farmers/organic farmers buy shopping the farmers market and the coop
Set the thermostat down in winter and up in summer
Or better yet Open the windows for cross ventilation
Don’t water the lawn
Take 5 minute showers
USE USE USE the heck out of your recycling program
Buy used when possible
Donate donate donate to friends family charity and hardly ever throw out something that can be reused
Compost food
Have a rain collection barrel (and no we don’t live in the country we live in a rather nice neck of the woods neighbor hood and have a really nice yard and still manage to "go green"
Was clothes on cold
Hang clothes to dry when possible (even if it means in the garage with the big fan going)
Don’t get your car washed (pet peeve about my mom and dad)
Don’t burn trash
Have energy company out to do free energy assessment for outlets, switches, where pipes enter, windows, doors, etc to make home more energy efficient
Use sustainable products used for new flooring (bamboo love it!)
Use bamboo towels and other sustainable products around the house
Educate Your friends and family about going green
ALWAYS ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME
There are about a million things you can do! Here’s a list of suggestions:
http://www.greeniacdigest.com/101-easy-ways-to-have-a-greener-2010/2010/05/18/
The basic principle is that you want to buy less stuff, use less packaging, create less trash, and burn less gas and oil.