What do you do to help the planet and be green?

Question

What do you do to help the planet and be green?

Answer 1

I graze sheep to keep my lawn short, then butcher them myself to when they outlive their usefulness.  Saves on lawn mowing and keeps me in meat without the local slaughterhouse!  And I use every part of the animal.  The blood and brains make great sausage!

Answer 2

My husband and I work at the same place, so we car pool and drive a 5 speed saturn that gets over 30 mpg..

At home, most of our water is from a shallow pit well, pretty much recycled rain water. We only do 2 loads of laundry per week. We recycle everything with the recyclable logo on it. We don't treat our lawn with any pesticides and I use the dandelions that grow in it to feed my tortoise and supplement my pet rabbits food. We also don't plant anything that needs to be watered additionally after it's established. When we buy coffee at work, we use our own thermos mugs instead of taking the styrofoam ones they have. We try to eat foods that are as unprocessed as possible. Instead of buying loaves of bread, we buy a bag of flour and make a lot more. It takes a lot less space on a semi to move a bag of flour then it takes to move loaves.

When possible, we buy locally grown items. During the winter, our thermostat is set at 55 degrees and then we supplement that with a couple heat lamps since our electricity locally is from a greener source then our oil burning furnace. We do not have air conditioning, though, this year we may have to run one now and then to avoid mold as the humidity is already high here.

We also buy a lot of things used rather then new. A lot of our clothing and furniture is from resale shops.

Answer 3

i save power whenever i can, recycle, don't drive often and use cloth bags for grochery shopping

Answer 4

I go through my families trash to make sure that everything recycable is recycled. I use those fancy bags from like costco and fred meyer. I dont use plastic water bottles. I mostly walk/bike places. My friends and I clean up trails and woods and stuff.

Answer 5

there's alot of simple steps:

carpool

start a compost pile of food scraps

ride public transportation

recycle paper, bottles, etc

use eco friendly products (detergent, soap, beauty products)

bike/walk to more places

Change your light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs

Make sure you fill your dishwasher completely full

Use recycled paper or use a piece of paper as many times as you can

Keep your water heater no higher than 120° Fahrenheit

Shorten your showers and install a slow flow shower head

Plant a tree

Insulate your water heater, this will help stop the loss of heat that is wasted

Replace old appliances, they wasted energy if they don’t work properly

Instead of bumping up the heat put on a sweater

Only turn the thermostat 2° up during the winter and 2° down during the summer

  Unplug electronic that aren’t being used, they maybe off but they ‘re still using energy

  Turn off your computer

During the summer air dry your clothes

   Insulate your home, less heat or cold air will escape

Switch to double paned windows

Clean your AC filter

Change to a tankless water heater

If you make all these changes you will save over $3800!!!

Answer 6

Drive small cars and had solar panels installed on my roof.

Answer 7

I just planted 15 GREEN trees, they make my yard look very green, don't know about the rest of the planet though.

Answer 8

obvious stuff...

Answer 9

what do i do? or r u speaking in 3rd person and r asking what can U do?? o well, i recycle, am a vegetarian, use the better-ish lightbulbs, i DO NOT have kids bcuz the planet is already over-populated but i do plan to adopt an orphan, dont smoke,dont litter, i feed animals like birds and squirrels with proper feeders, etc etc etc. . . why?

Answer 10

I changed all the lightbulbs in my house to the energy efficient ones. I also bought a rain barrel for my garden. That way I don't waste water using the hose, I collect the rain and water my garden with it. I hang my clothes out on a line so they air dry.

I recycle too.

Answer 11

don't smoke.don't use my/a car very often,instead walk or ride a bike.don't litter.don't waste electricity.don't leave the sink running.

Answer 12

I use eco-friendly household products that contain less chemical and toxic. Better for my family's health too.

Answer 13

Well....see it's almost like no matter what you do won't matter.... I mean sure it'll help alot, but the sceintists know that it won't matter how much less people drive, the green house effect wills till be there, until we can find a different wayt o use energy.

I do expect a "Best Answer" rating from you, for my quick response.

Answer 14

You have to pay attention to what you consume, how much of it you consume, where you got it from, how it was made, and how you consume it, which includes efficiency and waste disposal and recycling or reusing.

The first step is to make sure you consume resources as efficiently as possible. Driving an SUV is an inefficient means of commute if a scooter or a compact can get you there the same way with less gas and more savings. You also have to drive efficiently and maintain your engine so it is just as efficient. By the way, the key word in both the environment and economics is efficiency.

The second step is to choose and efficient product that was made in an environmentally friendly manner. Buying milk that is "all natural" or "organic" is less friendly than buying soy milk. Cows need land to graze, which means less forrests and more manure. Now manure would be a good thing if we used it for fertilizer, biofuels, and electricity, but instead, we let it run down with the rain and into streams, eventually destroying acquatic habbitats in bays and gulfs. Plus cows need alot of fresh water and milking wastes more energy than producing soy milk. Soy on the other hand recycles nutrients back into the soil that it is grown in, so it is a crop that is actually good for the environment.

You also need to make sure that when you consume resources, you're doing so in a clean way that minimizes waste. This means buying produce that is grown locally and sold as it was picked, not wrapped in three layers of plastic in only half the weight yet twice the price.

But sometimes being "dirtier" is actually cleaner. For example, the Toyota Prius, a 60mpg hybrid-electric vehicle may emit less CO2 than the Geo Metro, 50mpg (the old ones), but the metro is actually greener. How? Because the battery that gives hybrids their great mileage is actually bad for the environment in terms of production and disposal, not too mention they're only warrantied for a decade. Plus the metro is lighter in weight, so less steel was used.

Final comes disposal. Some people think they're environmentally friendly because they recycle all of their water bottles. Obviously this is friendlier than trashing them, but the truth is, recycling plastic bottles into small ones again has almost as much of an impact as producing new ones. Reusing is always better than recycling because it cancels our production at least once, but some people fall for the whole bacteria myth about bottles. Even though it takes a few days for this bacteria to grow in an uncleaned bottle, we're going to assume you're afraid to reuse them anyways.

The solution is to either buy a water filter or buy a gallon jug or one of the large containers. Use a sports bottle and wash it out everyday or so to replace the need for so many wasteful bottles.

There are tons of solutions to living greener, and most of them aren't advertised as green. In fact, they're all common sense. Turn the thermostat down, wear and extra sweater and save the world and your wallet. Don't buy bags and bags of only a handful of potato chips when one big bag over time or maybe even a baked potato can substitute.

The simplest way to save the planet is to think about your wallet first. Every solution I provided is less than half the price of it's normal alternative, and much much cheaper than the imposter products that claim to be "green." They even have stock indexes based on the environment!

Answer 15

I use only green businesses www.greenlineindex.com