How can a college student be "green"?

Question

I'm moving into a house after two years of dorm life and I want to know how I can be green and at the same time save money.

Answer 1

this link is brilliant

it is called

"Save the Planet, Save your Money"

http://www.gomestic.com/Personal-Finance...

read it and you will learn some great ideas!

Answer 2

For decorating and housewares setting up your new pad shop at thrift stores or take on hand me downs. Get as creative with this as you feel inspired to. You can make really unique artsy stuff by re-functioning found junk.  

Have a good setup for your recycling.

Use CFL bulbs, turn off lights and appliances, unplug things when not in use. Manage your heating and cooling.

Conserve water.

Grocery shop at your local farmers market.  Google Certified Farmers Market + your state to find a good list.  Avoid fast food and overly packaged items. Eat fresh fruits and veggies and shop from the bulk item bins. Take your own bag to the store.

Use non-toxic cleaners.

Reduce junk mail. Don't order magazines.

Answer 3

The simplist answer is buy less. This will likely be a temporary place to live and what you buy will need to be hauled away when you leave, so don't worry about buying things just to make it look nice. That goes for clothes and food as well, know yourself and buy what is needed, not what you think you should have. Go second hand on as much as possible, freecycle is a great website where people go to get rid of things they no longer need, thrift stores are also great.

Eat organic, local and in season. Basically reduce food miles. If you eat local food it will likely be fresher and more nutritious. If you eat take out on a regular basis consider getting a Tiffin tin or someother reusable container for your food. Avoiding a lot of prepared food also helps reduce packaging.

Buy recycled content items, as a student you probably use a lot of paper, notebooks, binders, copy paper as well as toilet paper and paper towels can all be found with recycled content.

Avoid all those expensive household cleaners and use a natural soap, baking soda and vinegar for your clean up.

Conserve energy, turn things off when not in use, unplug chargers when they aren't being used, take advantage of natural light and use CFL's in your lights.

Answer 4

If you are in a place that has a filling station nearby, buy a car that runs on natural gas (methane). It's cheap, clean, and domestically produced so your money stays in our own economy. Check out my sources and see if one would work for you. I have 2 of them and they're great! ($10 to fill up...)

Answer 5

Do something unique to go green.  Have a look at the following and make it a science research project at the college and make your college also green and light up the class rooms.  Adopt it at home and showcase it to your friends and lecturers, as I have done.

U-SEE – We can save the World

SOLAR ENERGY is green, clean and freely available infinite energy for about 200 days in a year.  But many of us misuse electricity for LIGHTING the interiors of homes/business places though  solar energy is available just across our windows and doors. Burning bulbs during day time is a criminal waste of costly electricity; bulbs also contribute CO2 and global warming.

Save energy- switch off bulbs, reduce CO2 - adopt World Bank honored  Project U-SEE (Unlimited Saving of Electrical Energy)

SAVINGS:-one bulb/tube light of 40 volts burning for 6 hours, consumes 8 units in a month. If 100,000 people can switch off, we can save 800,000 units of electricity in a month and in six months, we can save 4,800,000 units. and also thousands of tons of CO2 emission can be saved.

Do not live in darkness. U-SEE is a simple solution for a global problem of scarcity.  

IMPLEMENTATION:  locate a spot where maximum hours of sunshine will be available; keep a plastic chair, a pillow, a few pieces of waste thermostat or cardboard pieces and a mirror measuring 1' X 2' readu; open one window, keep the chair in the sun shining area, place pillow on it and the mirror on the pillow. Keep adjusting the angle of the mirror till such time that the deflected sun shine gets inside your home through the window and hits the white ceiling and fine tune the same. YOUR ROOM IS BEAUTIFULLY LIT UP WITH NATURAL LIGHT FROM THE CEILING.

BENEFITS:  savings in terms of investment to generate 800,000 units:  fossil fuel, coal or water, investment on machineries, transmission, labor and how much CO2 can be reduced.  These savings have Nth value.

Certificate of Honor awarded by World Bank to U-SEE (Unlimited Saving of Electrical Energy) # 585 of IDM 2007

http://dmblog.worldbank.org/mirrors-can-...

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