Celebrate Buy Nothing Day
Held each year in North America on November 28th and internationally on November 29th, Buy Nothing Day has exploded into a global movement to live more simply and buy a whole lot less. Started by the Canadian Media Foundation (Adbusters’ Magazine), Buy Nothing Day, held each year after American Thanksgiving, is a 24-hour moratorium on shopping.
Don’t Procreate
Children take up a lot of resources. Until the world is a bit more balanced, consider not having a biological child. If you would like to have a little one in your life (and they are simply delightful), consider adopting. We really don’t need any more people on the planet polluting – at least not until we have things sorted out a bit better. This is particularly true if you are from one of the top consuming nations in the world – the USA, Canada, China and Saudi Arabia.
Get An Energy Audit
An energy audit is the first step towards home or business energy efficiency. An auditor (often subsidized by government grants) will evaluate all aspects of energy use in the home or business and determine where the most energy is being utilized and how it can be reduced. Some energy audits report as much as 75% energy savings after the assessment. The USA Energy Information Administration reports that 50% of home energy use is for heating, 17% for water heating, 6% to cool rooms, 5% for refrigeration and up to 25% of the energy used in homes is for lighting.
Install A Smart Meter
A Smart Meter is an important step to helping homeowners understand energy consumption. Smart Meters monitors the electrical energy used every minute of the day and night. Armed with their new electrical consumption knowledge, the homeowner can then choose to use power hungry electrical items in peak (expensive) periods or off-peak (cheaper) times. Generally, though not always, the peak times correspond to higher greenhouse gas emissions too.
Plant A Tree
Trees are an important tool in our arsenal against climate change. Tree Canada reports that each healthy tree can reduce air borne dust particles by as much as 7,000 particles per litre of air, making a healthy tree a natural (and energy efficient) air conditioner and purifier. It takes an estimated 500 full-sized trees to absorb the carbon dioxide produced by a typical car driven 20,000 km/year. City trees are extremely important as well. Tree Canada reports that an urban tree can save five to ten times more overall carbon than a rural tree.
Use A Green Condom
This one kind of relates to an earlier point – make sure you are using a condom when having sex – but try a biodegradable vegan condom. Regular condoms do not biodegrade and end up in landfills and water systems. Vegetarians and vegans also might not be aware that condoms and dental dams may contain milk protein casein. Biodegradable vegan condoms and dental dam suggestions are available at www.vegancondoms.com
Unplug Your Printer
No, this isn’t about eliminating vampire power, but more that you stop printing e-mail and documents. We have all seen those little messages on our e-mail – Save a tree and don’t print this e-mail. Great, right? Well, we found the simplest way to eliminate paper use is to unplug the printer. You will be amazed how much paper you save.
70 million tons of paper products are used each year in the world. Americans use 750lbs of paper per person yearly. If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the release of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases — the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road according to The State of the Paper Industry, published by American paper watchdog group The Environmental Paper Network.
Use Less Toilet Paper
Charmin reports that the average consumer uses 8-9 sheets of toilet paper per trip, a total of 57 sheets a day, which adds up to 20,805 sheets per year. Two sheets of toilet paper, per bathroom trip, are enough for even the largest of bottoms or the most demanding of bowel movement. Grabbing clumps of toilet paper is no longer fashionable.
Toilet Paper World reports that one-ton of 100% recycled paper saves 4,100 kwh of energy (enough to power the average home for six months) and 7,000 gallons of water. It also keeps more than 60 pounds of pollution out of the air and saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space, which is increasingly important as many local landfills near their capacity.
Watch The Story of Stuff Online
Frankly, our consumption is plain out of control. We need to want less, buy less, eat less, waste less and as daunting as they may seem for some, there is a handy, funky online tutorial to help you mitigate your patterns of consumption. The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard is an online consumption tutorial and internet sensation with over 4 million viewers. The Story of Stuff reports that in the USA more than 99% of stuff that people buy ends up in the garbage within 6 months of purchase: www.storyofstuff.com/
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