Green Habits

We have been discussing green living for several pages now, now it's time for green habits.  Click back to review the many ways we can all change the way we do things and the way we think about different things.  If you try something new, and do it everyday for twenty one days, it then becomes a habit.  Go back through these pages and pick out some of these tips and ideas that would require making a change in your life, and then do them for twenty one days.  By doing this you will be creating lasting green habits.  The more of these you create the better off we all are.

So far we have discussed Tips For Living Green, Green Shopping, Green Home, Green Health, Green Sports, Green Fun, Green Beer, Green Buildings, Green Money, and Green Students.  Green habits will act to wrap up the green tips section of this site.  Here we will list tips and ideas that did not fit into, or were left out of, the other categories.  They fit nicely with Green Habits.

• Junk Mail : Do you receive your one and a half trees worth of junk mail a year?  Most Americans do.  The first step is to be sure you recycle all of your junk mail.  When you start paying your bills online, and receiving all your financial statements online, you will start to see a decrease.  Now that none of my bills come to me via the postal my junk mail accumulation is very low.


CFL Bulb and Money Saved

• Light Bulbs : Have you changed all of your bulbs yet?  That's OK, me either.  Just change them when the burn out and be sure to use compact fluorescent lights.  If every household in America changed just five bulbs to CFLs we would be keeping more than one trillion pounds of greenhouse gasses out of the air.  That would be six billion dollars in energy savings we could all share.


• Phone Books : Almost ten percent of the trash at dump sites is phone books.  People, why are your phone books ending up in the dump.  Recycle those things.  Work with your block, your neighborhood, your city or state but get it done.  Take a close look at those books and cancel all the ones you don't use.  Call them and tell them no more.  Use online directories and eliminate them altogether.


• Cameras : If you have not already, go digital.  The quality is better than ever before and the price is very affordable.  The beauty of digital cameras is you only print the pictures you really like.  The rest can be stored on your computer or your storage drives.  If you are like me, photos only get printed after they have been through photo shop to take care of any cropping and touching up.  Most of the time a photo can be made better before it is printed.  Avoid film and avoid disposable cameras.  They use dangerous chemicals and are not eco-green friendly.


• Cell Phones : Recycle when you are done with them.  They can be donated to companies that provide phones for charity causes and there are recyclers who will buy them.  They should not wind up in our landfills.  Use them as long as you can.  Do you really need the latest gizmo when your current one is working fine.  Think it through and make sure the change is really worth the cost.  The cost to you and the cost on the environment.  Unplug your chargers when not in use, not a big thing, but it is after all, all the little things that add up.


• Coffee : Do you drink coffee or tea?  Many of us do.  All used coffee and tea should go into the compost, not the trash or the disposal.  Use the same cup all day, or even for several days.  My coffee cup gets rinsed daily and washed weekly.  Do the same thing at work, avoid disposable drinking containers of any kind.  When buying coffee look for brands with Fair Trade, Bird Friendly or Rain Forrest alliance certification seals.  These coffees come from farms that practice sustainable agriculture and strive to protect the rainforest ecosystems. 


• Food : The healthiest green habit you can create has to do with your diet and the food you eat.  The food that is best for you is also the food that is best for our environment.  And you can save a lot of money also.  The less processing, traveling and packaging the better.  Fruits and vegetable are healthier when eaten raw, or slightly cooked.  They are best when picked or harvested from your backyard, your neighbors yard or the local farmers market, locally and organically grown.  Bread from a local bakery, or homemade, is better than the stuff you find at the grocery store.  Meat from the butcher, cut from locally grown cattle, is a good choice.  Buying some of your packaged food in bulk can save money and packaging.  Open a large can, use what you need, and store the rest in reusable containers.  Start using soy food products as they are one of the most energy efficient providers of protein on the market.  Replace a meat dish with a soy dish every week and get the feel for this stuff, it's a good green choice.  Search out organic sources for as much of your food intake as possible.


• Clothing : When you have the choice, and most of us do, choose natural organically grown 100% cotton fabrics.  Leave the synthetic oil based stuff for someone else, who wants that junk against your skin anyway.  Find a source for shoes that have soles made from recycled material.  Consider used clothing, this is a great money saver and a lot of fun.  Do you really need to wear fur?  There is just not a good choice here, kill an animal or wear synthetic petroleum based products.  It takes just a fraction of the energy used in the real fur to make the same thing in a synthetic fabric if that's any help.


Prescription Drugs

• Drugs : The manufacturing process used to make prescription drugs emits more than one hundred seventy seven million pounds of untreated pollutants into the air, water and soil resources on a yearly basis.  You will probably find that when you change your diet and your lifestyle your need for prescription drugs will lesson.  If your doctor says you need something from the pharmacy, you do have the right to question him or her.  I had to say "him or her" because my daughter is a doctor.  Take some responsibility for your health and do some of the research yourself.  You can even seek second and third opinions.  Your should be discussing your health with your doctor, not just taking what is said for granted.  You could be discussing reducing your intake of prescription drugs and you could be discussing the use of Homeopathic treatments.  Take control of your health in a green way.  Disposing of unused prescription drugs is worth a mention while we are on the subject.  Do not flush them down the toilet and do not put them into the trash.  Our local police department takes unused prescription drugs and disposes of them properly, doing so keeps the drugs out of the hands of kids and druggies.


• Computers : Learning to get the most out of your computer is a very green thing indeed.  My bills are paid online, my phone book is online, my letters and correspondence is all done online, most of my research is done online, my photos go to my hard drive, my computer sends and receives faxes, plays music and displays TV shows. Making use of your computer can help you go paperless.  If you are in the market for a new computer look for an Energy-Star qualified one.  These units adjust to a low power setting when not in use saving up to seventy percent of the energy used.  Another option for your next computer is a refurbished one.  When you do this you will be saving 139 pounds of waste, 7,300 gallons of water and 2,300 kilowatt hours of power.  When you are ready for new software try downloading from the web.  You save money and packaging.  Depending on what type of application you need many software programs can be downloaded free from places like tucows.com.

Enjoy the new enriched life you are creating by developing just a few green habits.