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5 Little Things - To Help The Environment
Today is Earth Day! It seemed only fitting that today’s 5 Little Things should be ways to help the environment. Although it would be great if everyone could drive hybrid cars, have solar powered houses loaded with energy efficient appliances - if you are like me, you don’t have the resources to just go out and get all those things. But every little bit helps - and in some cases in very big ways. Try these 5 Little Things to do your part!
Turn off the water when brushing your teeth. A conventional bathroom faucet with an aerator uses between 3 and 6 gallons of water per minute. Shutting the tap off while brushing your teeth or shaving saves as much at 3,000 gallons of water per person per year.
Turn off ceiling fans when you leave the room. As a fan generates air movement downward across the skin, evaporation of body moisture takes place, causing a cooling effect. So, unless you are in the room to feel the air movement, that benefit is lost. According to Florida Power & Light, simple things like turning off ceiling fans when leaving a room can save $7.00 per month in energy costs. (multiply that by 340 million Americans - and you have some significant savings!)
Buy a water filter instead of bottled water. The average American drinks 22.6 gallons of bottled water a year. Making all that plastic releases over four pounds of carbon dioxide per person and consumes a surprising amount of petroleum (.005 barrels, or nearly a quart of oil per person).
Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.
Wash your clothes in cold water. About 90% of the energy used for washing clothes is for heating the water. There are two ways to reduce the amount of energy used for washing clothes—use less water and use cooler water. Unless you’re dealing with oily stains, the warm or cold water setting on your machine will generally do a good job of cleaning your clothes. Switching your temperature setting from hot to warm can cut a load’s energy use in half.
Recommended Viewing:
If you are one of those last people who really don’t think there is much to global warming or that you just don’t see why you should care, then I strongly suggest that you see the following two videos:
National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World
A Global Warning? (History Channel)
They have been running on the History Channel and on National Geographic - or you can purchase them from Amazon.
Join the movement and take the 5 Little Things Challenge!
And make sure you don’t miss any updates on The 5 Little Things Challenge by subscribing to Brucisms now!
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April 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
These are all great suggestions!
I would also include trying to be conscious of how much packaging things we buy has. Especially our food. The more we make thing from scratch, the less garbage we produce.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Wow! Small changes can make a big difference. Thanks for sharing some simple ideas.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Agreed with JM 100%. How the hell do we stop that?? My supermarket (Publix) hardly has any loose veg other than potatoes and onions anymore.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 am
Hi Bruce, I have to admit. I’m one of those who does not really care about the environment yet. I don’t even know that today is the earth day… no wonder so many bloggers writing on the environment. Thanks for the 5 little things, it’s very much do-able, a good start for me.
Thanks,
Robert
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:22 am
Thanks for the reminder that it is Earth Day!! I’m going to do my part by giving a long lecture to my kids about conserving energy and water….LOL!!!
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
@Jonathan & Tim - You are definitely right, not only the packaging of our food (which usually uses petroleum based packaging and preservatives) - but the transporting of food creates an extremely large carbon footprint! If possible, find and buy locally grown produce - it is typically more fresh and has a smaller carbon impact. The next best thing is to look for FDA Certified Organic produce that is packaged in recycled packaging.
@Kenneth - Thanks for the comment! That is definitely the point of the “5 Little Things” articles. Every little thing that we do makes a difference. The more “little things” we do, and the more people who do them - the larger the impact is on our world and society!
@Robert - Awareness is the first step toward positive change! Please view the videos that I referenced. We are fast approaching a tipping point - it is no longer possible for us to ignore the dramatic changes that we have caused to our environment.
@Evelyn - Get your kids involved! Help them pick out old toys or clothes that can be “recycled” by donating to a Goodwill rather than thrown away - or take them by a landfill so that they can see the impact our waste has on the environment. Our children will be impacted the most by the excesses of our generation - but they can also reverse the trend by being conscious of their impact on the world!
Thanks all for the great comments and for participating in the 5 Little Things Challenge!
- Bruce
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Hi Bruce, thanks for the video, I’ve watched the short clip from the video. I remembered seing the inconvenient truth movie, have you watched that movie? If I’m not wrong I’ve ever read that someone commented that the movie is too exaggerating. What do you think?
Robert
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Not only turning off the water is helpful while brushing your teeth but installing low flow faucet aerators is something everyone should do. You mention the amount of gallons one waists. There are special faucet aerators that lower the Gallons Per Minute (GPM) that are used. Low Flow is considered 2.2GPM’s or lower and there are even ultra low Flow aerators down to .5GPM’s. These are cheap and easy to install and you can find them at most of your hardware stores.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Great article!
A sixth thing, for people in cooler areas: turn your heating down and wear more layers of clothing. And a seventh: bank with a green bank, or at least find one that isn’t heavily investing in the destruction of the environment.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
As someone who sells light bulbs for a living, I am less enthusiastic than most about compact fluorescent bulbs. This is due to the fact that the ones currently available contain significant amounts of mercury. If one of these bulbs should break inside of a person’s home, it could cause a challenging disposal situation. It is my belief that the technology should progress to a point at which the mercury levels are low or nonexistent before people changeover their entire homes. Another consideration is that as these bulbs burn out, they will most likely be thrown away as though they are normal rubbish and landfills will have incredibly high levels of mercury in their soil as a result.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Good Blog
May 1st, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Excellent. One of my favorite little things is to carry your own coffee mug. The mountain of paper cups Americans use everyday is astonishing. Besides, coffee and teas taste better in stainless steel or ceramic.
May 25th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
These are all good, and of course the list could have included hundreds of little suggestions (except for the minor technicality that the post is called “5 Little Things - To Help The Environment”.
My favorite for years has been to bring our own bags when we go shopping. This has become very popular in our town now, which is great. But I recall a decade ago when people looked at me funny for doing this and some clerks even refused to pack my bags because the handles wouldn’t hang from the bag supports they had (no big deal, as I prefer to pack my own bags).