Help me go green please!?

Question

Any ideas on how to go green would be appreciated!

Answer 1

check out this website:

http://www.treehugger.com/gogreen.php

Answer 2

Saving trees:

1. Buying recycled toilet paper

2. Starting a collection of paper that is used on only one side for things like shopping lists or whatever (i haven't bought a single pad of paper for over 10 years, never need to).

3. starting an reusable envelope collection

4. wrapping presents from colorful, pretty ads in magazines and newspapers rather than buying wrapping paper (or reusing the paper you've been given).

5. when you buy, say, a pie at a shop takeaway, something you are going to eat straight away, say 'i don't need a bag, i'll have it straight in my hand'. They will sometimes look at you all confused and say 'you'll burn yourself' but you don't, i never have and i do it all the time.

6. photocopy/print on both sides if you must photocopy or print and buy recycled printing paper.

7. buy recycled timber products (tables, floorboards etc)

8. get yourself off any stupid mailing lists where they send you stuff in the mail by calling the company and asking to be removed.

9. put a 'no advertising material' sticker or sign on your mail box.

10. be creative and make your own cards from reused paper when giving cards - so long as you put in a bit of effort they won't be offended, or send e-cards to people instead of on paper.

11. use hankerchiefs instead of tissues, they work really well!

Saving water:

1. You can fill up an old two litre coke bottle and place it inside the cistern of your toilet so that each time you flush it's two litres less.

2. you can have a 'if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down' policy in your house.

3. you can shower to the length of a song you like to shower to, or to an egg timer to keep showers short.

4. you can think about EMBODIED water ie the water used to make a product and avoid buying water costly products. MOST water used is actually outside the home. eg. to make one glass of beer it takes 15 gallons (70 litres) of water because you have to grow the hops, process it in a factory etc. One hamburger is around 527 gallons (2400 litres). Paper, meat, leather and cotton are very water intensive products. So not wasting food and drink and only buying stuff you need will help save more water than stuff you can do around the home, altho this helps too.

5. Place a bucket beneath the shower and in the kitchen to collect water you are waiting to warm up or that you're using to rinse vegies and use this to water the garden.

Saving energy:

1. Ride a bike, walk, take public transport, avoid cars

2. Switch off all appliances not in use at the wall, don't leave on standby.  Pass time in ways that don't require intensive energy use eg bushwalking, reading.

3. Buy locally produced products with no packaging eg organic fruit in a cloth bag you reuse so that it hasn't travelled half way round the earth, put in a tin that needed to be mined somewhere and shipped around, labled with a paper lable from a tree that had to be cut down somewhere...etc

Other miscellaneous:

1. Buy less of everything, stick to essentials or things you really want rather than just c**p for the sake of it.

Answer 3

Check out seventhgeneration.com

I started using all of the products on this website and they all work amazingly! It's a start!

Answer 4

1.  take your own bags to the grocery store - over 4 billion plastic bags go into landfills each year - and it kills hundreds of animals that mistake the plastic for food and eat them!

2.  Change all your lighbulbs to CFLs next time they burn out (spiral light bulbs from the store).

3.  Reduce energy use by unplugging items not in use:  cell phone and ipod chargers, computers, printers, TVs, DVD players, coffee makers, hair dryers, etc.

4.  Reduce water consumption:  don't let it run while doing dishes, only do full loads of laundry, collect the water when you are warming up your shower and use it to water your plants

5.  buy organic cotton

6. buy organic and local foods

7.  use natural cleaners rather than chemicals such as lemon juice, baking soda and vinegar

8.  Change to organic soaps and shampoos and stop using the store ones that contain petroleum byproducts and other chemicals

Great websites listed below to keep the momentum:

Congratulations:

Answer 5

everyone has made some exellent suggestions which I wont repeat

but the #1 thing you (or anyone can do) for going green is to have only 0-1 kids..

more people = more problems

more people = more demands for housing, food, toilet paper, space, clothing, knick knacks, diapers, medicine, newspapers, etc.. everything

1 kid IS population growth (unless you die in childbirth.. which a lot of women did in the old days)

people are living longer and demanding to live longer.. more kids means more people.. even 1 kid is growth...

people having 2 or more kids is why we have the population problems we now have (over 6.5 BILLION of us) we well exceed the United Nations sustainable number of 5 million - and can see the results - urban sprawl.... deforestation.. pollution.. stress.. and so on..

Answer 6

Try whenever possible to use reusable, instead of one-time use products.

Consider your lowly tampon or sanitary napkin.  Lovingly crafted from virgin wood fibers, rayon, and plastic, with oodles of chemicals used in production, laden with dioxins, wrapped in three layers of packaging, and thrown away after a mere hour or two of use.  What a waste of materials and production resources... especially when you could have something reusable and much less toxic (cloth pads, organic cotton reusuable tampons, sea sponges, the "Keeper", etc.).  (Not nearly as icky as you think, although if there's a man in your life, he's guaranteed to be horrified by the idea!)

Ditto for diapers.  Ditto for paper napkins.  Ditto for paper towels.  Technically, you don't NEED toilet paper, either, but good luck with that... (DH will usually use a rag instead of a paper towel these days, but he threatened to divorce me if I even THOUGHT about tampering with his toilet paper... :D )

Wash your clothes less.  Most of us, unless we're working in the food, farming, or construction industries, don't really get our clothes dirty.  Have a house dress (or house jeans, if that's your style).  When you get home, dust off and hang up your work clothes and put on the house clothes (and again, unless you're doing something gross, the house clothes will last for several wearings).  And make a couple of aprons or smocks for cooking and cleaning, to protect your clothes.  You'll end up washing everything less, save wear and tear and costly replacements on the work clothes, and save water and money.  (Don't re-wear underpants and socks, of course...).  

If you run the washer, make sure the water level is set for the size of the load.  If you run the dryer, make SURE you have a full load.  Hang things to dry if at all possible.

It might be more eco-friendly to use a dishwasher if you have a model with a good Energy Star rating, but you should still only run full loads.  For hand washing, instead of continually running the water, run one basin of soapy water and one basin of rinse water (if you don't have a two-basin sink, use dishpans or large cooking pots).  Wash, then swoosh in the rinse basin.  (I usually let the used water cool and dump it on my flower bed)

Simply reducing consumption is green, too, and can also be very helpful in reducing housework, simplifying your life and keeping your budget in line.  Marketers work very hard to convince us that we "need" a different product for every application, and we end up with a lot of c**p that we don't really use, that we have to store, organize, clean and insure, and that we probably couldn't afford anyway.  Like a specialized rag, scrubby, cleaning formula and disinfectant for every different surface in our house.  Or a pair of shoes and handbag for every outfit we own.  Or different china patterns, bedding, and house and yard decor for every holiday and every change of season.  It's not necessary to live like a Spartan, but buying all this redundant junk is a big waste of natural resources (and of YOUR personal resources).