My close, personal friend Greg of mine a while asked for baby steps that regular people could take toward greater environmental responsibility, ones that don’t complicate life too much.
For some people, any change that they can notice is too great a change. I’ll give my friend the benefit of the doubt and assume he was asking for achievable changes, as opposed to ways he could simply feel better about himself without doing anything. I’m going to honor his request and make a nonexhaustive list here. I’ve tried to void the baby steps that are so overdone, about light bulbs and dripping water faucets.
But if you want some practical ways to be more environmentally responsible, this list should give you a few ideas.
Don’t buy as much stuff. Seriously. Libraries lend books for free, and movies too; so do friends. Use the clothes you have until they’re worn out, and don’t feel you need to have as many outfits as you think you do, because you don’t. If they no longer fit, give them to someone else. Keep Christmas shopping in hand this year. Buy two presents for each kid, and nothing or one gift for each other.
I mean, seriously? Dude, I’m 40. If there’s something I need that badly, I can get it for myself. The same is true for most adults with children. For that matter, some of the best presents are the ones we make ourselves. I’m planning to make Alexandra a sock monkey for Christmas. With any luck, it will be a gift she will hold onto for years to come. Cost is old socks, thread, stuffing, buttons, time, and lots of love. Environmental impact of the manufacturing? Just whatever it took the make the stuffing, since everything else already was included in its original use. Can’t beat that with a Wii. Similar presents are in store for the older girls as well.
Cut down on your garbage. There’s no such thing as trash, just money and resources we’re throwing away. Don’t think of those Styrofoam plates as a convenience. Think of them as $4 you’re throwing in the trash, because that’s exactly what you’re doing. (You’re also making a mess that will never go away.) Any time you buy something you throw out after just one use (or a few uses), you essentially are shoveling money into your garbage can — and leaving a problem for your grandkids and their grandkids to deal with. So use a cloth or canvas grocery bag, take a children’s cup with you the next time you go out to eat after church.
Take this a step further, and if you look at what you throw into your trash, you can start seeing the materials you’re wasting. A lot of it is plastic that will never biodegrade, other is food you should have eaten before it went bad, packaging that you could have avoided by making your own meals … Environmental sensibility isn’t just good for the environment, it saves you money too.
Natasha and I have a family of five, and we throw out roughly one garbage can full of trash each month — and that’s still too much.
Drink water. It’s cheaper than Coke, healthier, and it gives you more energy than coffee. Don’t drink bottled water. Take an old Snapple bottle, clean it out, and fill it regularly with filtered or tap water. (It’s marketing that tells us that tap water isn’t as good — where do you think they get the bottled water from?) Plastic water bottles are a petroleum product, they don’t biodegrade, and as any walk down the street will tell you, plenty of them don’t get recycled. Save your money, and don’t buy bottled water, period. (Find out more.)
Recycle. Seems kind of obvious, really, but I still see a lot of people throwing away aluminum cans, plastic bottles and paper church bulletins.
Attend a local church, and not one you need to drive a long distance to. Make an effort to reduce your sphere of activity to a reasonable radius around your home. We live in Nova Bastille and used to attend a church here until it moved to Norde Bastille, but we also do our grocery shopping near our home, frequent a pediatrician’s office in Hoover Point rather than one farther away in Farkling or Est Bastille.
Also, unless you’re in traffic, you waste gas and pollute the air needlessly if you let your car idle for more than 10 seconds. Seriously. If I drop Natasha and the girls off in front of the church, I turn the car off while they get out.
Grow your own food, even if it’s just tomato plants around your patio. The average meal in America travels about 1,500 miles to reach the dinner plate. Eat food as local as you can manage.
Compost. No one will burn fuel hauling my leaves away, and I’ll get a free and natural fertilizer that helps to reduce flooding during heavy rains, and that helps my lawn, flowers and garden to survive in times of little rainfall.
Eat meat one time less a week. Aside from saving money and having a healthier diet, you reduce the environmental impact of your consumption by quite a bit. Cows consume much more food than they produce, so by eliminating the cow from your diet, you free up that much land for grain for people to eat, not to mention the water consumed by the cow and all the other environmental impact of factory farming.
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