Afraid to hug a tree?
Here's something you can do instead…
10 tips for Greener Living
Carry a mug
Each year more than 150 billion single-use beverage containers are sold in the US, not to mention a conservative estimate of 320 million hot and cold take-out cups purchased every day. Even taking into account the impacts of manufacturing and hundreds of washings, glass and ceramic cups reduce the amount of energy, water use, air emissions, water pollution and solid waste by between 85 and 99 percent(1).
Carry your own water bottle and install a home filtering system
In California alone, 1.2 billion single-serving water bottles are discarded annually, enough material to fill San Fransisco's baseball stadium 70 feet deep (1).
Keep a stash of cloth shopping bags handy
The proper answer to the paper versus plastic dilemma is still "neither". Cultivate a stash of bags that can be reused hundreds of times and last for decades rather than becoming disposal burdens or litter.
Minimize take-out packaging
Try staying at a restaurant rather than eating packaged food on the go. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 800,000 tons of fast-food foam packs and other plastic packaging were thrown out in the United States in 2001.
Switch off your computer monitor at night
Leaving a monitor on overnight uses enough energy to print 800 pages of paper (2). Leaving it on for a year generates almost 400kg of greenhouse gas emissions - that's equivalent to driving your car over 4000 miles from New York to Alaska (3)!
Buy new light bulbs
Replace your old light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) which are up to five times more efficient. A global shift from old incandescent lamps to CFLs would cut the world's electricity demand for lighting by 18% (4).
Fit a water-saving device in your toilet
A third of household water is used to flush the toilet. By fitting a water saving device in your cistern you can save up to three liters a flush. That's 5,500 liters per person per year - or enough to meet the needs of an entire average household for over four days (5).
Pump up the pressure
You can improve your gas mileage by over 3% by ensuring that your car tires are inflated to the correct pressure (6). This equates to an extra 144 gallons of gas per year for the average person who drives on under-inflated tires. Not only would that cost you between $300-500, but you'd be contributing an extra 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year (7).
Ride Your Bike
Motor vehicle emissions represent 31 percent of total carbon dioxide, 81 percent of carbon monoxide, and 49 percent of nitrogen oxides released in the US. By riding your bike four miles, you'll keep about 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe (8).
Blow Dry Your Hands
Electric dryers are twice as energy-efficient as paper towels, even towels made from recycled paper. Although the production of the electricity that powers electric dryers generates greenhouse gases, the production of paper towels is twice as energy-intensive and creates more greenhouse gases overall (9).
Sources
(1) Imhoff, Daniel: Paper or Plastic - Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World, 2005, Sierra Club Books
(2) Oxford Brookes University: www.brookes.ac.uk/environment/energyandwater
(3) Australian National University: www.anu.edu.au/facilities/anugreen/office/infosheets/_5a_switch_off_monitors_poster.pdf
(4) International Energy Agency (IEA): Light's Labour's Lost - Policies for Energy-efficient Lighting, 2006
(5) American Water Works Association
(6) US Department of Energy: www.fueleconomy.gov/
(7) Carnegie Mellon University study, 2005: www.cmu.edu/cmnews/extra///050921_tire.html
(8) League of American Bicyclists: www.bikeleague.org/
(9) Smithsonian National Zoological Park
