What do you do to make less of an environmental footprint where you live?

Question

For example, do you use a certain type of lighting, turn the water off when brushing your teeth, etc?

Answer 1

I changed my electric company to a wind-powered provider instead of the big provider here that is not so environmentally friendly.  I think they use nuclear power.  And I try to do multiple errands in one run instead of going back and forth several days of the week.

Answer 2

We have beautiful trees, really too large for our yard but we have an abundance of birds so they are staying put.

We turn things off that we aren't using.

I recycle washing water on the gardens

We have native gardens that require little water.

I clean with water, lemon and vinegar.

We have energy friendly light globes.

We are pretty conscious about doing what we can as a family.

Answer 3

I build and install at least one solar thermal panel for my house every year.  My plan is to keep doing this until my house is mostly or completely heated using solar.  I also like spreading the word, to get people to try it.  Let me tell you, it is an absolutely awesome feeling to feel the heat coming from solar panels and knowing it is absolutely free, and free forever.  I even get some free geothermal type cooling in the summer by reversing the flow on the solar panels.  Here's the most efficient blue print design available.

http://www.geocities.com/marketplacecity...

Answer 4

I do every little thing that I can.

Answer 5

not 1 thing. in fact i just leveled a 30x70 spot for my new garage!

can't wait to pour concrete!

Answer 6

None,  I use what ever I please.  I pay for it, its mine, I' ll do with it what I will.

Answer 7

I don't do a thing. I leave all of my lights, tv, radio, and computer on 24 hours a day. I litter. I never recycle. Also I drive a hummer.

Answer 8

How about turning the lights off when no using.  Use earth friendly chemicals on your lawn if you must has a picture perfect lawn like the "Jone's,"

We recycle everything there is to recycle.  We recycle other peoples recyclables.  We could have a business with just that alone.

When we rake leaves in the fall they go back into the woods to recycle back into the ground.  We don't bag them up and put them by the curb for someone else to use the fuel to pick them up and dump them somewhere else.  Besides leaves make good compost.  Yes we compost also.

By the way, we live in the north woods and that's one of the reasons we don't bag our leaves.   But there are those exceptions to the rules up here.

Our shoreline (small lake) stays natural.  People are always saying they want to do what they want to do with their shorelines, because they own the property.  I guess they just don't get it.  You mess with your shorelines and make that look picture perfect, well, there go the frogs and other small creatures.  You don't want to disturb their habitat.  

I don't plant flowers, because I'd rather look at the wildflowers while they last.  Natures beauty is always better.  

We've cut way down on the use of our dishwasher.  When I do use it it's full with dishes before I turn it on.  

Don't take water for granted.  It's becoming a high  priced commodity.  City's are already looking for new sources of water.  Vegas has been warned for years about the d**n that supports all the lighting.  So, what are they going to do?

People are already looking to the Great Lakes for their future use of water supply and that isn't going to come so easy.That process is already taking place.  We live in the Great Lakes Region and you read about water consumption and how everyone wants their share.

So, yes we should all do our share or the best we can with conservation.  It impacts all of us.

Answer 9

Where I live, people deep fry a lot. We use a product to reduce our oil consumption. It also cuts down the transfat that we have in our deep fried chicken. The food also comes out less oily

This way, we cut down on the usage of paper towels by at least 50% when we deep fry onion rings and Fries. The home frier variant is good for 3 Liter to 4 liter frying machine.

Other stuff we do is to cut down on lighting. Especially during the day, and we use recycled water to hose cars , flowers , wash concrete floors.

But I would think kitchen management really helped reduce cost significantly. Comparatively, using an oven to cook uses too much electricity. It is hard to maintain the temperature in an open environment like grilling or cooking over a stove. The usage of resources without a good heating medium is expensive and costly to the environment, Got the site for the product we are using.

Answer 10

As noted above there are clearly a number of people in our culture who feel that altruistically sacrificing freedoms for a, quite possibly, imaginary problem is ridiculous.

I dont blame them.  Our news is about as trustworthy as Kim Jong Il.

I suppose if you truely arent concerned about what life is like for your children, grand children, etc, then no there is no reason to.  

So I guess I took all this time to get to my answer.  To really make the biggest impact on your environment, influence other people to conserve by reminding them that it's not just tomorrow they are *really* worried about.