How to Preserve the Environment
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Preserving the earth's environment is all about keeping the rate of our usage of the earth's resources slower than the rate at which the earth can regenerate the resources, the earth's resources will be available to us indefinitely and our subsequent generations can enjoy the earth as much as we do.
Earth resources are limited. And many of them are not renewable. Even renewable resources such as food require space, water, soil to produce them and this ultimately mean that these resources will be taken from other living beings of Earth. Natural resources are not distributed evenly, so wars in military or economics terms are reality of our life.
Consuming less stuff is moral choice and may be justified in any world religion, except economy and marketing.
Basically you need to answer to simple question: who defines meaning of and control your life? You or faceless organizations with only profits and taxpayers support/bailouts in mind?
Let's think about Tao concept of Chinese philosophy. Everything should go natural way without human intervention. Try to evaluate particular technology from Tao/anti-Tao and action/not action points of view.
Contents |
[edit] To Do
[edit] Principles
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair, Share: don't acquire what you don't need. When you do acquire stuff, make sure they are reusable or at least recyclable.
- Reuse: cloth bags for groceries instead of paper/plastic.
- Recycle: donate old furniture, computers, clothes, books instead of trashing them.
- Repair: try to repair broken stuff instead of buying new one. This could make you feel great because of learning, achievements and understanding that you control things, not things control you. You may be interested to visit Maker Faire to meet same minded Do-It-Yourselves or organizations, share ideas and inspirations.
- Share: books, household items, magazines, newspapers, toys, tools, car, etc.
- Use recycled material wherever you can (and products thereof).
- Avoid waste (unnecessary expenditure) of time, energy, money, material, resources. This is a good thing to do in general. Of course, the relative pros and cons need to be considered on a case by case basis. (Example: walking to work is not an excuse to come late to work everyday.)
- Encourage businesses that behave responsibly. Discourage those that don't.
- Educate: encourage you family, friends, classmates, colleagues to behave in more environmentally friendly way.
- Use common sense:
- Don't acquire stuff just so that they can later be recycled. Example: recycling plastic water bottles, paper/plastic/thermocole cups is good. Even better is to reuse a bottle or a cup (say, to refill from a water fountain).
- Avoid being taken advantage of by people/companies that try to make a quick buck in the name of saving the environment. Examples: dubious 'organic' labeled products, organic products sold at an exorbitant price, 'alternative' anything that is sold at a premium that doesn't make sense, etc.
[edit] At Home
- Next time you need to replace a light bulb, use a fluorescent lamp instead of an incandescent lamp. A 20 watt fluorescent lamp gives as much light as a 60 watt incandescent lamp — an incandescent lamp converts only 10% of its power into light; most of the rest gets converted into heat. (But because of this, switching to a fluorescent lamp may make the room feel colder.)
- Reduce the number of lamps in a room. One 60 watt lamp may provide sufficient light instead of two 40 watt lamps.
- Consider solar power. But do the homework in terms of cost and benefit before making a decision.
- Use Energy Star-compliant and similarly energy-efficient appliances.
- Use rechargeable batteries. This reduces the number of dead batteries to be trashed, and hence the amount of hazardous chemicals in landfills.
- If your home computer doesn't need to be 'always on' (e.g., it is not used for work), consider consolidating your computer usage to only a few hours every day. Turn the computer off the rest of the day.
- Use draft instead of air conditioning during hot days.
- Plant a tree(s) so shadow will reduce heat during hot days.
- In the winter, set your thermostat at 68 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night. In the summer, keep it at 78.
- Showering uses up 40% less water than a bath.
- Install low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators.
- Wash full loads in your dishwasher and use short cycles for all but the dirtiest dishes.
- Set the appropriate water level for different size loads in your clothes washer, wash in cold water when practical, and always rinse in cold.
- Don't use dryer to dry you clothes after washing. Let them dry themselves on hangers or rope in natural way.
- Wrap your water heater in a water heater blanket, especially if it's located in an unheated part of the house. This prevents heat loss through radiation.
- Opt-out from unwanted mailings: credit card offers, free newspapers, catalogs, advertisement, etc.
- Use Internet for latest news or library for newspaper/magazine articles.
- Bring reusable bags with you when you need to visit store.
[edit] At Garden
- Grow a garden. Every new plant helps convert a little more carbon dioxide into oxygen.
- Any flat or apartment will have space for at least one plant.
- Every plot of land or a street has space for at least one tree
- When possible, water the plant using recycled water.
- Do not water plants during daytime, early morning/evening/night is much better time when less water will be wasted because of evaporation. Also water drop behave like lenses and condense sunlight thus may damage you plants (for example, strawberries).
- Do not forget to turn off your automatic sprinklers before/during/after rain.
- Replace lawns with other forms of ground cover. Lawns are thirsty, greedy drinkers (they don't share water with neighboring plants or even with nearby patches of grass).
[edit] At Work
- Bring own kitchenware if you work at office. Avoid using paper/foam cups or plastic forks and spoons.
- Turn light off when you don't need them. Open window blinds if Sun's light is available.
- Set-up box for collecting electronic waste. Those will allow to increase rate of recycling batteries, electric bulbs, and also reusing some of old electronics. May be source of great stuff for DIY-ers. Or you could just give away stuff for free using various sites.
[edit] Food and drink
- Drink tap water whenever possible. Avoid bottled one and soft drinks.
- Buy just enough perishable goods so that they are used by their expiration date. Avoid buying too much and having to throw them away after their expiration date.
- Prepare food yourself. Don't buy deeply processed food, since it consuming evolve unnecessary warm/freeze stage.
- Take food with you from home to work in reusable container if you could. This will reduce amount of transportation if you don't have place to eat in walking/biking distance and also reduce amount of waste on packaging/thrown away kitchenware.
- Buy locally grown food. This will reduce transportation toll on environment
- Buy organic food if you have such choice. Organic food production doesn't allow usage of chemicals pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers.
- Buy seasonal fruits and vegetables.
- Reduce meat consumption. Meat production is ineffective way of producing food and also cause pollution with manure, methane as green house gas. Industrialized meet production also means animal cruelty: animals are not raised in natural environment; in many cases they are not feed with food they used to consume in nature; animals are not allowed to follow their natural instincts and kept in small space.
[edit] In the Car
- Keep tires inflated. Under-inflated tires reduce gas passage.
- Do tire rotation, balancing and alignment regularly as prescribed in user's manual. This will increase lifetime or tire which are rarely restored or recycled and most likely burnt.
- Do oil changes promptly. Clean oil reduces carbon dioxide emission. Change oil as prescribed in car user's manual, not every 3,000 miles as recommended by oil changing services.
- If you're in the market for a new car anyway, consider getting a car with an order of magnitude better mileage.
- Drive less:
- Designate one day each week as a car-free day.
- If possible, consider one car-free weekend each month.
- Share ride to work with colleges. Carpool lines are also faster during traffic time.
[edit] Miscellaneous
- When using a notebook, write on both sides of each page.
- When printing documents from a computer, print double-sided. If you can't (say, you don't have a double-sided printer), don't discard the one-sided print-outs. They can be used to create scratch note pads and use the blank sides for shopping lists, making quick notes, etc.
- If you can read smaller print well, see if your printer software allows you to print two pages of a document on one side of the paper.
- Borrow books from the library first. Consider buying a book only after you've read the (borrowed) book once and really feel it is worth buying (e.g., if you think you'll consult the book many times in the future).
- While using the toilet; don't flush until you have used it 3 times or more. Saves a lot of water but it smells horrible. :[
[edit] Details
[edit] Junk mail
This step will greatly simplify your life, since you will not need to transfer unwanted paper from your mail box into recycle bin (if you have one) and will definitely help environment by excluding tree from being cut, energy and chemical from paper plants, energy and emission from mail transporting and recycling.
All you need is persistence to archive this goal since process of getting rid of junk mail is similar to fight of Hercules with Hydra. Catalog Choice (http://www.catalogchoice.org/) is great start, since it's independent service which doesn't have commercial interest in junk mail industry. However it process only catalogs and not all of them covered. You'll definitely need to look on sites of distributors of local grocery stores and coupons (Red Plum, Pennysaver, ValPak in my area) and look on unsubscribe links. These links are buried in websites but they are definitely exists. You may also need to call or e-mail issues of catalogs or local (so called) community newspapers. Don't forget to demand easy to use method of unsubscribe from corporate mailing and not sale/rent your name to 3rd party companies. Companies suppose to listen to customers needs. Al least in theory.
[edit] Shopping
Always take reusable bags in store with you. Regular paper or plastic needs resources and energy to produce for shame purpose to be thrown in recycle bin if they'll have such luck.
You could reuse plastic bags, for example from bread, for packing green produce.
[edit] Water
Use tap water instead of bottled one. Who knows where bottle water really originates and how better or worse it is. But transporting it and recycle packaging are taking toll on our planet. Bottled water production involve privatization of water sources by multinational corporations. Taking water from underground aquifers is unsustainable and affect both local ecosystems and communities. Consuming bottled water also leave less motivation to improve local water quality and delivery system.
Will be good idea to consider that mass bottled water marketing and production and human habit to consume it instead of regular water was started quite recently, at the end of 1980s in USA.[1]
Sweet beverages have own health issues, so may be drinking teas (especially green) one will be better for you. And you could grow or harvest (if you have such possibility) plants for teas such as mint, raspberry, rose hip, etc.
[edit] Electronics
E-waste is growing problem. Most likely thrown away items will end in poor areas of India or China where they'll contribute to environmental problems.
Before upgrading you PC think do you really need newest versions of operation system (unfortunately mainstream Linux distributions are not too much better them Microsoft Windows in terms of resource) or software? Or you could keep it same without loosing too much?
Before upgrading your TV think what you'll get? I'm sure that good movies with interesting stories will not need outstanding visual or audio effects. If you don't believe it, try to watch French new wave, Italian neo-realism, Iranian or Soviet movies...
When looking for new cell phone think did you ever use any of features except phone itself and SMS. So may be you could live with old model if it still functioning well?
[edit] Leisure time
Shopping was invented as way to increase consumption. Just try to analyze what it gave for your soul or conscience/mind? Did you see or learn something really new and unusual or achieve something in supermarket, mall or commercial website? Or it just waste of time at the end?
Look at map of neighborhood area and find parks where you could hike. Physical exercise will definitely improve your heath and fresh air is definitely better then conditioned one in gym. And, sure, look around how many natural wonders exists in this world! Of course it is not TV or Internet and plant and animals don't exist for humans entertainment. But you'll definitely feel moments of discovery when you something new... For example I noticed nine species of dragonflies and five species of damselflies in nearby ponds area. Invite you friend for a walk and you could share wonderful moments...
I may sound old fashioned but I enjoy to visit public library and read books or watch not mainstream movies, especially international ones. Taking stuff from library will make you more disciplined since you'll always have goal to read, listen or watch before due date. Additional benefit: bigger choice of subjects and lots of great discoveries! It's much better then buy books, music or movies and keep then in home. Just try to remember how much times you returned to stuff sitting on your shelves? And you definitely will appreciate reduced number of items when you'll have need to move...
[edit] Transportation
Walk or ride bike in every possibility. Remember that car is always big source of pollution: green house gases, emissions, lube oil and other liquids leaks.
[edit] Further readings
- Archie Duncanson. "Ecology Begins at Home" ISBN 190399845X. Free downloadable version is available. Contains many methods to reduce your footprint on planet Earth.
- Sophie Uliano. "Gorgeously Green: 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life" ISBN 0061575569. Women way to solve everyday problems with reducing impact on planet and improving heath.
- Anita Evangelista. "How to Live Without Electricity and Like It". ISBN 0966693213. Provides great insights into low-tech solutions for everyday problems.
- Giles Slade. "Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America" ISBN 0674022033. Gives overview of history of technologies embedded in everyday life of modern society and wasteful culture.
- Richard Heinberg. "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies". ISBN 0865714827. Interesting philosophical outlook on history of technological civilization and it's possible fate.
- Human Footprint video by National Geographic Channel
- Elizabeth Royte. "Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale And Why We Bought It". ISBN 1-59691-371-1. History and problems of bottled water with comprehensive review of issues with tap water and additional filters.
- "Food, Inc. How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer — And What You Can Do About It". ISBN 978-1-58648-694-5. Great insight into modern industrial food production system.
[edit] References
- ↑ Elizabeth Royte. "Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale And Why We Bought It". ISBN 1-59691-371-1
