Getting Started with Living Green

I am setting up this site to discuss and promote discussion about how living green is not only a trend, but a lifestyle change.  Living green isn’t just about preserving your environment, but preserving yourself as well.  In a world filled with pollution, depleting natural resources, and inefficient energy methods there is a need for the people to come together and have an eco-evolution.

The best place to start when living green is recycling.  I personally think that recycling household trash is the easiest and most efficient way of living green.  You can start by purchasing three separate bins to store the recyclables.  When you are throwing away your trash, you can separate the trash into paper, glass, aluminim cans, and plastics.  You can collect these and leave them out for the recycling truck if your neighborhood has one.  Some communities have trash companies that provide the color coded bins.  If you don’t have such a service available, you can take the bins to a neighboorhood recycling center, and maybe even earn money back on the waste.  Simple recycling helps to keep tons of trash out of the garbage dumps.  One statistic in 2005 collected by the EPA states that recycling in North America led to 79 million tons of waste that was kept out of the landfills.  Recycling also saves energy; recycling on aluminum can saves enough electricity to power a television for three hours. 

Rehabing your house to make it green on the inside can help as well.  Here is some suggestions about areas to change in your house:

• Light Bulbs:  a lot of people have started doing this.  You can go to you local home improvement store and purchase these bulbs for as low at $1.50 each.  The new flourescent light bulbs use 25% of the amount of electricity of traditional bulbs.  The prices isn’t that high, and installation is easy.
• Window and Door Insulation: Another inexpensive idea.   A lot of this insulation comes in rolls, and can be foam or rubber insluation.  Be sure to cover the seals and opening  joints around windows and doors.  Cutting down on draft to the outside can reduce your gas bill in the winter and your electric bill in the summer.  Remember, less energy used in your house means less coal is burnt to produce energy (which means less pollutants in the air).
• Consume Less:  This is my philosophy.  Be aware of the products that you buy and how much packaging material comes with them.  Try to buy fewer items.  For example, fresh fruits and vegetables have less packaging than tv dinners or frozen pizzas, not to mention the fruits and veggies are much more healthier.  Also look at any household items that you shop for that you could just do without (paper towels, swiffer and swiffer refills, household cleaning gadgets that do a job you could easily do yourself).
• Open some windows:  Use the natural light rather than your lights.  Some people just plain forget about their windows.  I personally appreciate the value of natural light over the electric lighting in our house.
• The Basics:  These are things we might have been taught as a kid, and can save a great deal of energy.  Turn off the lights when not in the room, don’t run the water in the sink while brushing your teeth, take shorter showers (but not too short PU), don’t leave lights on when you leave the house, and check your sprinklers to make sure that you are not doing any more watering than needed.  These are the ABC’s of water and energy conservation.

To sum is all up, it is about three things:  REDUCE, CONSERVE, and LIVE BETTER.  We all need to do our part to leave a legacy to our children.