Living Green

How can I help stop Global Warming? Everyone uses energy, so everyone can stop global warming, just by using less energy. Think about the thimgs you do each day. Take a simple trip to the grocery store for example, while choosing one brand over the other, you can make hundreds of decisions that have real environmental impacts. With just a few simple changes, you can help stop Global Warming and make a world of a difference! 

Look for items without extensive packaging: most food packaging material uses some petroleum-based plastic.  Experiment with bringing your own packaging or buying in bulk. Purchase brands that use bio-based instead of petroleum-based plastic. Recycle or reuse packaging materials you end up having to buy.

Carry a cloth bag with you: an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. That's 1 million bags used/minute. And, according to the EPA, more than 380 billion of those are discarded. Less than 1 percent of those are actually recycled. Instead, these bags will clog landfills, create litter, choke streams and harm marine wildlife, like whales, seals and sea turtles.

Buy local and organic: buying local food drastically reduces the energy spent on food shipping. Local goods also tend to use minimal packaging, are fresher and come in more varieties. Farmers who grow produce organically use less fossil fuel and release fewer greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

What are we cleaning with? If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 50-ounce ultra-petroleum-based liquid laundry detergent with a bottle of 50-ounce vegetable-based detergent, it could save 99,000 barrels of oil. That's enough to heat and cool 5,700 homes for a year. Think how you are affecting your youngones using those toxic chemicals.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: many communities, businesses, and individuals have found creative ways to reduce and better manage Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) - more commonly known as trash or garbage - through a coordinated mix of practices that includes source reduction, recycling (including composting), and disposal. The most environmentally sound management of MSW is achieved when these approaches are implemented according to EPA's preferred order: source reduction first, recycling and composting second, and disposal in landfills or waste combustors last.

Save Water: install efficient toilets, showerheads, faucets, gardening gadgets and keep in mind car washing and leak detection. A low-flow showerhead, which uses less hot water, can reduce carbon-dioxide emissions 376 pounds and lower your utility bill $20 to $40 annually. That's enough to recoup the cost of a new showerhead according to Energy Smarts by Suze Orman. Take shorter showers and use solar energy to heat the water and save up on electricity. 

Choose the right light for the right place: replace your old light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. About a quarter of the energy needed for our homes goes toward keeping on the lights. According to the Energy Star folks ( a joint project of the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy) , if every U.S. household replaced one traditional lightbulb with an energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), $600 million in utility bills is saved and there will be enough energy to light 3 million homes each year. CFLs cost more, but they use nearly 75% less energy and last about 10 times longer than incandescent lightbulbs. That adds up to about $30 of savings over the life of each bulb.

To learn more on How to Choose the Right Light  follow the following link: http://call2actjo.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=2028559%3ATopic%3A803

Disconnect Your Appliances: about 75% of the energy consumed by home appliances occurs while they're turned off but still plugged in. Unplug everything in your house that doesn't need to be connected full-time, or plug cords in to surge protectors, which can be flipped on as needed. The enery used to keep display clocks list and memory chips working accounts for 5% of total domestic energy consumption. As a rule of thumb, when buying electronic appliances always ask about energy conservation features.

Dodge Draft: closing off drafts and boosting insulation can help reduce your heating and cooling bills by up to 20%, according to Energy Star, a joint project of the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy. Dress warmly when it's cold, instead of turning on the heater. Close the blinds on a hot day if the sun is shining in and dress lightly instead of turning on the air cinditioning, or use a fan.

Give up one napkin a day: in Elizabeth Rogers's Green Book, a collection of 500 "little things that make a big difference" in changing the environment, Elizabeth says: "one of those simple things you can do is to reduce your use of paper napkins…by just one a day! "Napkins make a huge difference" . "We use 2,200 of them a year, per person on average. Six a day. So if we all gave up one napkin a day, we could save a billion pounds of paper waste … from going to landfills a year." 

Sorce: EPA, Energy Smarts, The Green book, "O" magazine