There is a lot of talk these days about going green and at the same time there’s been a lot of talk about "being green" as a privileged experience, a luxury purchase. But there are actually many things we can all do to help heal our planet, keep our carbon footprint down and work toward sustainability. Below are five things you can do that may even save you money.
(I thank the many people involved to help get this information.)
- Recycle EVERYTHING. Recycling can be time consuming, messy and inconvenient. You will need to clean out containers, separate different parts of packaging, and keep multiple receptacle cans. But you would be amazed at the amount of items you can recycle and the effects are huge and long term.
- Stop flushing your toilet. No I don’t mean forever, but have you ever considered the amount of water used to flush a toilet? There is a saying, “if it’s yellow it’s mellow if it’s brown flush it down.” Words to live by.
- Buy a metro card instead of a gas card. I’ve been living in NYC for a while and it never occurred to me that all kinda fools were driving cars around this fair city of ours. I mean hey, have any of you heard of the subway system? I know it’s not always as convenient or pleasant. I mean, seriously, where else can you blast your 70’s classics? But the carbon footprint you leave behind every time you drive that bad boy down the street, well let’s just say if every New Yorker flushed their car keys down with their brown, we’d be much closer to a sustainable society.
- Read a book. Our televisions use up so much electricity that keeping the boob-tube off an hour more every day can have a significant impact on the environment, your electricity bill, and though its not for me to say, but I will, on your brain.
- Reuse it until it refuses. Instead of throwing things out: put your trash in those plastic deli bags that are impossible not to amass; utilize scrap paper – do you really need a new piece of paper for the grocery list? and instead of buying plastic containers for storing food reuse that container that came free of charge with your Parmesan cheese.
- Can you come up with any others?