An Easy Start To Going Green

By and large, humans are a good-natured species. People try to help each other as they help themselves, and many are growing increasingly concerned about their impact on their environment. Humans can and have impacted their local environment, for good and for ill. Public information campaigns and class action lawsuits have raised awareness of the impact man-made pollutants can have on the environment and on human lives. And conservation projects have demonstrated that people can do wonderful things with their surroundings when given the chance. Even those who don't necessarily believe things are quite as bad as films like “An Inconvenient Truth” would suggest often find the time to drop their soda cans off at the recycling center on the way to work.

In fact, steps like that are exactly the key to going green. No one expects every person to be an Erin Brockovich, or every family to pull off an experiment like the New York family that didn't discard most of their waste but recycled literally everything except food. The key is rather that every person and every family can take small but worthwhile steps to reduce their impact on the environment, ; steps that fit right into their daily routine, rather than throwing it completely off kilter.

Passive Steps to Green

Not everyone has time to make an active effort in going green, and there's nothing wrong with that. No reasonable person will fault a doctor who spends seventy-five hours a week saving lives in the emergency room for squeezing every spare second he has into time with his family. For some busy people, the best way to start going green is with passive efforts, meaning those efforts that don't require constant attention or steps, but are rather set up once and continue to function over a long period of time.

For example, consider energy usage. Some of the most significant pollutants are emitted from power production plants. If the energy demand is reduced, then less pollution is emitted to meet requirements.

Here are two easy steps to reducing energy demands in a household. The first is to reduce computer monitor brightness. Nearly every monitor comes with adjustable settings, and very few people need the display turned up to full. Reducing the settings by even a quarter or a third significantly cuts down on the energy demands for the average user. Another step is to replace traditional light bulbs with compact, energy saving bulbs as they burn out. Studies suggest that energy savers use as much as a third less energy than incandescent bulbs. Neither of these steps requires an extra impact in the normal day.

The key to passive steps is that they are simple. They fit into the routine of peoples' lives with very little effort, and work toward the long-term goal. Things like using cloth napkins instead of paper ones, refilling a metal water bottle instead of throwing away a plastic one and bringing your own lunch to work in a reusable container are a few more simple ways to get started. Think about how you can add some passive green steps to your family’s life.

Active Habits

Other steps require a change of thinking and may require some extra time demands on the user, but are equally worthwhile for those who can take the time to work them into their lives.

The classic example is recycling. Aluminum cans, waste paper and plastic bottles can all be recycled in most cities, whether at municipal drop-off points (common for apartment communities) or as part of residential waste pickup. Recycled materials reduce the amount of energy required to produce all-new materials, as much as ninety percent in the case of aluminum cans.

Water usage also provides opportunities for green-minded individuals. Turning the faucet off while brushing teeth can save hundreds of gallons a year - if even two gallons goes down the drain in the two minutes for a proper brush, and someone brushes twice a day, that's over two hundred gallons of water saved over a year, per person. Families can wait to run the washing machine or dishwasher until they're full, reducing the amount of water and energy required for cleanup. In the warmer months, clothes can be dried out on a clothesline, meaning the dryer isn't hogging up all the energy and light switches can be flicked off whenever a room is left empty.

The key to these more active steps is the cultivation of habits. Taking the recycling down to the local drop-off point does add time and travel to someone's schedule. Rather than trying to squeeze it in as an extra nuisance, families should make it a scheduled event in the week, just like regular trash drop off. People don't leave the water running when they brush out of malice, they just forget. Little reminders and steady changes will make the efforts second nature, until they don't seem like 'extra' steps in the least and thinking green will become a habit.

A Final Green Thought

Time is one of the most valuable commodities today. People are rushed, cell phones and computers have society in almost constant contact, and free time to rest is treasured. When trying to convince people to go green, the trick is to respect their needs for their time, and their desire to do as they wish with it. The steps mentioned above keep those needs and considerations in mind - they respect that people have demands on their time, and want to take steps that can help them without requiring extra hours out of the day. When people see that going green can become part of their life, rather than taking it over, the efforts will come naturally and even happily.