Best Ways to Bring Green Into Your Life
Global warming, its threat to the world's existence, the need for us all to save the earth we live on--none of this is a new concept. However, we may all know about the fight but the majority of the population does nothing to support it. Here in America we tend to feel more responsibility towards the environment than most and often are leaders in climate protection, but there's always room to do more. We may realize the real threat and want to try our best to protect the environment, but most people don't know the options and how easy it can be to help the environment.
In this article we attempt to offer you some great methods and leading ways to practice green. Help become more environmentally-friendly while you save yourself a few hard earned bucks. To help simplify reading all the different ways we can lend a hand in the fight, we have organized this article in four categories: Green in the Home, Green in the Office, Green Driving, and Saving Our Earth's Water.
Replace old light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs. This is probably one of the most common and popular methods of bringing green into your life. Easy too! If you would like more information about how to choose the right light bulb for you, read our article: "Picking the Right Light Bulb for Your Lifestyle." You could potentially be saving $10 per lightbulb per year!
Keep your thermostat to milder temperatures. During the winter move your thermostat to 68 F and wear an extra sweater. During the summer move your thermostat to 75 F and shed a t-shirt. By keeping the temperature milder, you could potentially save $115 per year.
When looking for household cleaning products, try to find ones without hazardous chemicals. Once the chemicals have entered the air it will never leave, so the best way to protect the environment is to not use them at all and use alternative, environmentally-friendly household products.
Instead of using rat poison or insect killers, use good old fashioned traps! The chemicals in rodent and insect killers hurt the environment, but good old fashioned mouse traps and insect trap don't! It may be a more unappealing way to go but not everything can be beauty and glamour!
Instead of using mothballs or spray, use cedar chips. This is a much greener way to protect your clothes and the environment--how bad could it be, it's a natural repellent, direct from our forests to your closet, and an added bonus: it smells much better than mothballs.
Walk or ride whenever possible. This is more realistic in larger cities with efficient public transportation such as San Francisco or New York, but it is still possible to bike to the nearest grocery store in suburban areas.
Use reusable bags rather than disposable plastic or paper bags. Already in common practice in Europe, we are just starting to cut down on our use of plastic bags using methods such as charging for each disposable bag used. By using reusable bags, you help the environment by cutting down on the use of non-biodegradable products.
Unplug seldom used appliances. Even when not in use appliances and electronics are still using energy, it can save more energy than you think!
Purchase appliances with Energy Star Labels. These appliances and electronics meet energy efficient requirements, guaranteeing that it saves the world from using more energy and saves you a ton of money.
Check the seal on your refrigerator. As one of the most heavy energy users in the household, it only makes sense to make sure your refrigerator is saving as much energy as possible. How you ask? Place a piece of paper or dollar bill in between the door and the rim. Close the door and see if you can slide the paper or bill easily. If you can, that means the seal requires replacing--it is currently leaking refrigerated air. Of course, if you are upgrading or remodeling and you wish to purchase a new refrigerator out right, make sure to buy one with an Energy Star!
Plant trees to shade the home. This will help shade the house and keep the house cooler during the summer. It will also help insulate the house from wind and cold during the winter.
Plant more trees! The more trees there are the less carbon dioxide there is in the air and the more oxygen is available. So why not plant extra trees? Remember that at Simpluxe we donate enough money to plant a minimum of at least 10 trees with every close of escrow so join the fight and plant some trees in your yard! To read more about our efforts to help fight global warming, refer to our Practicing Green page.
Use an electric lawn mower rather than a gas one. Electricity is always better than gas, less emissions, less odor!
Use leaves, wood chips, and other biodegradable yard items as compost rather than burning them or throwing them away. Your flowers and trees can always use some extra fertilization of the natural kind. Don't forget you can also use other types of biodegradable items such as vegetable scraps! Otherwise you can always recycle them in the useful green trash bin.
Install weather stripping around doors and windows. During the summer, this will prevent cold or air conditioned air from seeping out of the house while keeping the warmth from entering. During the winter, this will prevent the warmth or heated air from leaving the house while keeping the cold from entering through unnoticed cracks and holes.
Wash clothes in warm or cold water instead of hot water. Since the water no longer needs to be heated first or less so, you save energy.
Clean the lint filter after every load. This will help conserve energy since the more lint there is the less efficient a dryer will be when drying a load of laundry.
Lower your water heater's thermostat to 120 F. Since the water heater is always lighting on and off in order in order to maintain water temperature, you are essentially lowering the amount of work it has to do.
Wrap your water heater in an insulated blanket.You can find these blankets at most any hardware store (e.g. Home Depot, Loew's) for about $5-10.
If you expect to leave home for an extended period of time, turn down or even better, turn off your water heater.By turning the thermostat down or, ideally, turning it off, you prevent the water heater from using extra energy maintaining the temperature of water that will not be used.
These are some of the top rated ways to conserve energy and practice green in the office. Most everything here is very simple to follow and apply to every day office life. Please choose your category of interest: General Tips, Commute Tips, Correspondence Tips, and Paper Tips.
Use a ceramic mug for your coffee or water rather than a paper or styrofoam cup. You can decrease the amount of trash you create--especially of the un-biodegradable kind.
Recycle printer cartridges. Just like Office Depot commercials, it's easy! You can bring your cartridges into any Office Depot and get a discount on future purchases. Or you can buy refillable cartridges and refill at your need.
If your office machinery does not conserve energy automatically, turn them off before leaving the office. You could save a surprising amount of energy by turning equipment off overnight.
If your job allows, commute during off-peak hours. For you, you will save gas and time. For the environment, you will lessen carbon dioxide gas and other harmful emissions.
Join a carpool to work. If you live somewhere close to a co-worker, or even a friend who works near by, don't hesitate to carpool. This will save fuel costs, emission pollutants, and even help eliminate bridge tolls in many cases.
Use email whenever possible. The email is the newest method of communication that does not use paper or ink, it just requires a reliable internet connection.
Use E-Fax instead of a standard fax machine. Even if the E-Fax is one-sided and you can only receive faxes, it is better than receiving 10 or even 1,000 actual pages of faxes everyday.
Copy and print on both sides of the paper. Saves paper!
Use paper that has only been printed on one side as scratch paper. You, your clients, or your co-workers will always need scratch paper, so use paper that's already been used!
Put memos up on a bulletin board or send them through email. By doing this you can save the office and yourself save tons of paper and ink.
Use recycled paper. This is probably a no brainer and you've heard this time and time again, but this is a great way to save paper and reuse the paper that this world has already created. But keep in mind, to be honest, this is a more expensive option of saving paper.
One of the most important factors of fighting global warming is to improve our driving habits. It sounds easy but for the most part, we rely on our cars so heavily that leaving our cars in the garage is close to impossible. These following methods attempt to optimize your car's performance rather than take you out of your car entirely. All these methods also help save you money by optimizing your car's mileage.
Drive in the highest gear. By driving in lower gears you can use potentially 45% more fuel than you would normally using the higher gear.
Keep tires inflated to the right level. Keeping your tires inflated to the right level of pressure can improve your mileage by up to 5%. Remember that if you decide to over-inflate your tires, you may get better gas mileage but your car will be a bit more difficult to control in certain circumstances.
Drive with stability. You can save gas and improve your mileage by not constantly braking or accelerating quickly. A smoother drive will result in better gas mileage, which also results in you saving money on gas.
If unnecessary, do not open your windows. If necessary, use your air conditioning. Your air conditioning is actually more gas efficient than opening your windows while driving at high speeds, which creates significant wind drag on the car.
Here are some methods to help save one of the most precious resources we have on this earth--water. Despite the fact that more than 70% of the earth is water, most of that is salt water, which means that we have to work that much harder to save the fresh water we do have available to us. The good news is that scientists have already successfully experimented with the ways of desalinization, but the technology is still in its early stages. The process of desalinization is still too premature to be used on a massive scale and is still incredibly expensive. On the conservation side of things, here are some simple ways to conserve water in every day activities:
Fix any leaks. This includes leaks that occur in the bathtub, shower, sinks, toilets, etc. You would be surprised how much water is wasted by small leaks in the house.
Do not have your faucet continuously run water while washing dishes. You could potentially save gallons of water while washing your dishes by first rinsing your dishes and turning off the water before scrubbing.
Only do full loads of laundry and dishes. By doing so you are conserving as much water as possible by not requiring multiple unnecessary loads. Using energy efficient appliances also helps tremendously!
Try not washing your car that often. If necessary, have your car washed at a car wash. As you probably already know and noticed, washing your car uses quite a large amount of water and soap; so the less you wash your car the better it is for the environment. Surprisingly rainfall can also do wonders! However, we understand that washing your car sometimes is just not an option. In these cases, bring your car to a professional car wash. They follow strict water drainage guidelines to help protect the environment from the harmful results of soap and car cleaning products.
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