Baby Steps to Going Green
"I'm not bothering to do all that!"
Speaking from experience, the best way to accustom yourself and your family to a more ecologically conscious lifestyle is with small, simple steps that they will very likely not even notice. You can't climb a flight of stairs in one giant leap, but you can if you take them one at a time and one step leads to another, then another and before you know it, you're as green as Ed Begley Jr.
The key is to start small and give everything a try, seeing if it fits into your lifestyle with such a slight modification that it becomes barely noticeable and in some cases, seeing if you like it. Some things you will honestly like and will fit seamlessly into life and some things may not, like vegetarian diets didn't work well for us, but you should make an honest go of it if you truly want to live greener.
Here are a few options to usher in a greener lifestyle…
Recycle Trite but true and it goes without saying that everyone should recycle. Did you know that there is a landfill near Los Angles that is taller than a 10 story building? Yikes!
Change a Lightbulb So simple it's a punch line to hundreds of jokes and yet amazingly efficient. CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs) drain 1/3 the electricity and generate less heat while giving off the same amount of light as a standard incandescent light bulb. If everyone in the U.S. used energy-efficient lighting, we could retire 90 average size power plants. Saving electricity reduces CO2 emissions, sulfur oxide and high-level nuclear waste.
CFLs do not have that eerie glow usually associated with fluorescents but they do give off a spectrum of light that plants just love. We discovered this horticultural bonus by accident when we changed the bulbs in our dining room. Every plant in the room turned toward the light and began sustained growth.
Earn a Degree No, not a university degree…a temperature degree! Turn your heat down just 1 degree or your AC up 1 degree and see if you or your family notice. Two days later, subtract (or add) another degree. Continue the process every two or three days until you reach a temperature that is slightly uncomfortable, then roll the temp back a notch or two to make life pleasant again.
Dress the part too. If you are walking around inside your home in winter time wearing shorts, your heat is too high. When I complained that it was cold in my mother's house, she told me "it's winter, put a sweater on or pay the heat bill"
Don't forget to adjust the thermostat for periods that you will not be home. Why pay to keep your home at 75 degrees when no one is there? Turn the thermostat up or down before you leave and readjust it when you arrive home. Programmable thermostats are available and usually run 60-100$ but really, we're talking about pushing a button and waiting 5 minutes, is that really such a big deal?
It's tough to calculate the monetary savings with energy costs fluctuating regularly, but a round estimate is 1 degree = 1% of your energy bill, not to mention that using less energy means less needs to be produced which means less CO2, less fuel, less etc etc.
Bag the Bag Ever go into a store, buy one or two things and the cashier puts them in a bag? Ever had a cheap plastic grocery bag break open because they can't hold more than 3 jars? Ever bought something with a handle but they still put it in a bag?
Last week I bought a new briefcase and the cashier looked stunned when I said "No, I don't need a bag, I'll just carry it by its handle" Say "No thank you" to pointless bags and reduce the trash in landfills and roadsides (oh, we've all seen them blowing in the wind like children's kites) along with the need to produce these astoundingly useless products.
Consider carrying a backpack, canvas bag (some are really stylish) and further reduce your "dependency" on bags. I have a net bag that I use for produce at the market. Vegis and fruit go into the bag as I shop, out to be rung up by the cashier, then right back in to be carried home. This allows me to avoid countless clear plastic produce bags as well as the plastic bags they would put those bags into at the checkout.
My husband was a bit embarrassed by my net produce bag; I guess he really cared what the other people in the produce aisle were thinking. *shrug* Then one night he happened to see the same exact bags being carried by shoppers in a movie set in Italy… "You're not nuts, you're European!" he exclaimed.
Old Fashioned Ice Box - A full freezer and/or refrigerator runs less often tan and empty or partially full one. Ours is never full so I filled a few empty juice bottles with water and tossed them in the freezer to take up the unused space. I was amazed to notice that the fridge came on less often.
I mentioned this in conversation with my mother, who replied "how do you think an ice box worked?" Duh! She told me to raise the temp on both the fridge and the freezer, I did and it came on even less often but the food remained cold and frozen respectively. Amazing!
My inspiration for this wasn't really to save money or to require less electricity be produced to maintain my house or to prolong the life of the appliance, though they were side benefits. The honest inspiration was that my fridge sounds like a rocket taking off when it turns on!
Water, Water Everywhere water conservation is a hot topic here in the desert, but it should be so everywhere. Gallons go down the drain as we do daily tasks&hellip A four minute shower uses an astounding 20-40 gallons of water! Ok, a four minute shower might be a bit short, but you can cut down the amount of time you do spend in there. Just think, if you shave 4 minutes off your regular shower, you're saving 40 gallons!
Installing a low flow shower head is a good idea too. They use 2.5 gallons per minute where as older versions use 5 to 7 gpm. They are mandatory here and I won't lie and say that you won't notice a difference, you will but it's really not such a big deal and after a month or so, you won't even remember the blast from the old shower head.
For a more fun and sexy fix, turn off the lights, light a few candles and shower with your sweetie.
Do fix (or have fixed) any drips or leaks around the house. A drip can waste 15 gallons a day, 105 gallons per week or a shocking 5,475 gallons per year! Turn off the tap when you brush your teeth and don't leave it running while you wash dishes. Never run a dishwasher when it is less than ¾ full.
If you pay a water bill, why would you want to pay for water that is going down the drain without having been used? I wouldn't and just think, all that water that you will be saving can alleviate the strain on water-less areas like Southern California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico. Thanks!
The City of Soledad has more great water saving tips on their website.
That's it for now. Small, baby steps to get used to a more environmentally conscious lifestyle. Give the changes a few weeks to become ingrained and if you fall off the wagon for a day or two, get back on. It takes 30 day to turn a behavior into a habit, so I recommend picking one thing and sticking with it for one month. By the end of the month, you might just find that you forgot that you did it differently before!
You may be surprised that these simple changes lead naturally to ideas that you once thought extreme or too much of a bother.
All suggestions are practiced regularly by the author and are validated by her as "not being a pain in the arse".