As more and more people reduce their ecological footprint by becoming conscious consumers, more and more dollars will be invested in greener energy alternatives. Each person's effort, no matter how small, makes a difference.
Green Living
Green living means being a conscious consumer of all those things that we depend on as part of our daily lives: transportation, energy, food, and shelter. Often these things are factors in our ecological footprint. Statistics show that Americans have the largest environmental footprint on the planet; Take the ecological footprint quiz and pledge to reduce your footprint!
Climate change has been a "hot" topic in recent years, with good reason. Eight of hottest years on record have occurred in the past decade. If you haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth yet, please gather some friends and check it out. While recycling, composting, and rain barreling are all worthy in their own right, to affect the current trajectory of global warming we have to immediately and drastically cut our carbon emissions by reducing electricity consumption, switching to green energy, and cutting oil usage. Luckily many states have incentive programs to help you do just that.
To reduce electricity consumption:
- Turn off the lights and unplug appliances when not in use.
- Switch all incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents.
- Replace appliances with the highest efficiency model available (when in doubt, check for Energy Star appliances).
- Congregate in a central area like the kitchen or family room and "turn off" the rest of the house. Not only will you reduce electricity consumption—you may enjoy some quality family time in the process!
- Switch to green energy. Rather than getting your energy directly from solar, hydro, or wind sources, in most U.S. states the consumer pays a premium (generally 5¢ per kilowatt hour) on the energy bill that goes toward construction of green energy projects around the country.
- Begin to rely on your own green energy, like home solar, or using your own energy to accomplish most tasks (push mower, hand chopping instead of using a food processor, line drying clothes, etc.).
To reduce oil consumption:
- Rely on public transportation, walking, and bicycling to commute to work, run errands, and visit friends. For the occasional weekend away or trip to visit friends, many cities now have car sharing services such as Zipcar, where you pay a monthly fee for a "share" of a car.
- Find a commuting buddy by posting a note at work or on a community bulletin board to increase the efficiency of your car trips.
- Condense your errands into one car trip per week, and reduce your need for errands entirely by buying less.
- Buy the most fuel efficient car that meets your needs, which might be a hybrid or biodeisel car.
- Lobby for pedestrian and bicycle friendly communities.
As more and more people reduce their ecological footprint by becoming conscious consumers, more and more dollars will be invested in greener energy alternatives. Each person's effort, no matter how small, makes a difference. Since profitability and sustainability go hand in hand, the American public will show the business sector the way by voting consciously with their dollars for green living.