Although it’s been talked about for decades, living green is finally something society is catching on to in a big way. The nice thing is that it doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars for you to start living a greener life. Here are five easy and inexpensive ways to begin.
1. Reduce Your Use of the Power Grid
You can help save the planet…and save some money at the same time…by reducing your electrical usage. Using less electricity means decreasing the demand for fossil fuels, coal, water, nuclear, or whatever other method your power company uses to generatethe power you consume.
A good place to start is with your hot water heater. The less hot water you use, the more money…and energy…you save. Buy laundry detergent that works well in cold water to wash your family’s clothes. The chances are excellent that they’ll never knowthe difference, but you will…and so will your pocketbook.
Encourage your family to take showers rather than baths. That alone can cut your hot water usage by more than 60%. Replace your old showerhead with a low-flow style. The new low-flow heads put out a nice spray that won’t feel any different from the old water-guzzling head, but you can save another 50% or more water by changing over. Between those two steps, your hot water usage will decrease dramatically.
2. Take Your Laundry for a Walk
Another huge energy drain is your clothes dryer. A typical electric dryer sucks 1,500 watts of energy that is only used to tumble clothes and then pumped outside through a vent. It’s a huge energy waster. To decrease your clothes drying cost to ZERO, put your laundry in a basket, take it outside, and hang it on a clothes line. We’ve all seen commercials for detergents and dryer sheets that promise to make your clothes smell as fresh as all outdoors. The good news is that you can get the REAL thing…at no cost whatsoever…simply by hanging your clothes outside and letting the sun do all the work. It may sound like a radical idea, but it’s worked for thousands of years!
3. Use Less Gas
If you live in an area where many of the places you normally go are relatively close, get out of your car and either walk or ride your bike to work. This can save thousands of dollars a year on gas, maintenance, and parking costs…and it will help make you a more healthy person in the process. Your heart will thank you, your weight will go down, and your muscle tone will be more defined. Sounds like a win/win all around…for you and for the planet.
Taking your vehicle off the road as much as possible will also help lessen the amount of traffic on the roads, keep pollution down, and help ease the stress of all the traffic on the highways at rush hour…or any other time, for that matter.
If there’s a way to do it, telecommuting is becoming increasingly popular, as well. Talk to your employer to see if there’s a possibility of doing your job at least a few days a week if not fulltime. That will also save a great deal of your precious time and money…as well as keeping your vehicle off the road more often.
4. Eat Healthier
You don’t have to become a total vegetarian, but even the simple act of having a least one meal a week that contains no meat will help the planet because there are environmental concerns involved in the way much of our meat is produced on factory farms nowadays. Meat is also expensive, so again it’s a win/win for you and the world as a whole.
When you do buy produce or meat, buy organically produced food. It uses none of the harmful chemicals that are used on factory farms, which is not only good for you and your family, but it lessens the demand for the chemicals themselves. Another benefit to buying organic foods, and especially locally grown organic foods, is that you’re helping local producers to make a living and to compete with the megafarms that produce so much of the food in the average grocery store. Remember, if you don’t buy local, there won’t BE a local.
5. Lose Your Bottled Water Habit
The bottled water phenomenon really took off in the past few decades, but you don’t have to drink your water out of a plastic bottle to get fresh, clean water. There are a number of excellent water filters that purify your tap water and reduce your need for plastic bottles. In most states, there is no deposit on those water bottles, so they’re not frequently recycled like soft drink bottles. That means countless non-biodegradable plastic bottles end up in landfills.
You can also buy reusable water containers, preferably made of aluminum instead of plastic, to further reduce your dependence on bottled water from the supermarket. Switching to purified tap water and reusing your water container saves thousands of dollars a year…and it makes great sense for the health of the planet.
Living greener doesn’t mean you have to buy a bunch of expensive high tech equipment. In fact, as you’ve seen from the five examples in this article, many of the greenest things you can do cost little or nothing. Going green is one of the smartest investments you can make…both financially and environmentally.
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1) cleaning up the environment
2) saving money on gasoline
3) making money?
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Copyright © 2009 Jeanette
