It is Earth Day. Just in case you haven't seen enough top-10 tips on reducing your carbon emissions lately, I'm going to add my own to the mix. I am by no means an expert on the environment, but I have picked up a couple of easy and environmentally friendly practices that I have, for the most part, added to my routine, and I hope you will try to add to yours. In no particular order:
1. Walk, bike, run, or take public transportation instead of driving. If you must drive, drive a car that gets good gas mileage.
2. Use reusable cloth bags instead of paper or plastic at the supermarket and during other shopping trips.
3. Replace all of your light bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescent ones.
4. Turn off the lights when not in use and turn off and unplug all all electronics when not in use. Buy energy-saver appliances and electronics when replacing old ones.
5. Turn your heat cooler a few degrees in the winter and your air conditioning a few degrees warmer in the summer. You will save energy and money on your utilities bill and you probably won't notice the difference.
6. Take shorter showers and don't leave the water running when you're brushing your teeth or washing the dishes. Run the dishwasher only when it's full and don't rinse the dirty dishes beforehand.
7. Buy local whenever possible (buy your produce at the farmer's market instead of at the supermarket). Buy fair trade.
8. Use Tupperware (or the equivalent non-brand version) to store food instead of plastic bags. Try to reuse them if you do. Use a reusable lunch bag or an old plastic bag as a lunch bag and garbage can liner instead of a brown bag. Buy a reusable water bottle for your water instead of single-use bottles. If you use a single-use bottle, recycle it.
9. Buy secondhand whenever possible. Buy books at used book stores or borrow them from the library.
10. Don't print this list out. Commit it to memory. Try to read most electronic documents on-screen. If you must print, use scratch paper or recycle it after you're done with it. Buy food and items with less packaging and recycle whatever isn't trash.
If you have any other easy tips to add, please do comment below!
2 comments:
11. Dispose of all trash/ recyclables in the correct places. Batteries do not belong with normal trash, nor does electronic waste (it could end up in your drinking water.)
Turn off lights at work! It kills me that the bathroom and kitchenette lights are left on when no one is using them. Employees with offices often leave their lights on at lunch and when they leave for the day. They lights do turn off automatically at 7pm but why wait till then?
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