My top five things you can do to be more responsible with resources without drastically changing your life (my resource impact information is all from Ideal Bite):
1. No more bottled water! There are so many reasons for this one. Really, anything designed for single-use is generally wasteful – and plastic is among the more difficult things to recycle. In fact, many used bottles don't get recycled (this is an old article, but it still makes me shudder). Your tap water is just as good, and maybe even better than the water in the bottles (check this out). If you want “pure” water, go with a water filter on your tap or a filter pitcher. Certain plastics leach dangerous chemicals into their contents (yick) – watch out for #3, 6 & 7 plastics, PVC and bisphenol-A. Plus you can get such cute, practically indestructible, wonderfully-reusable aluminum bottles these days - and even if they are a little expensive, you'll make up for it in saved money from buying bottled water. My personal favorite is my SIGG bottle.
Resource impact: Ideal Bite says that if 10,000 people drink filtered tap water rather than bottled water for a year, we could save enough oil to fill 79 kitchen sinks.
2. Say no to paper and plastic grocery bags. It's so simple to bring your own bag to the grocery store. I keep a few in my car so I can just take them in with me when I make impromptu trips, as I so often do. Sometimes you get a couple of cents back when you use your own bag. My purple PCC bags get compliments all the time on how pretty they are (you can see the bag on the right side of this page - and the page says that PCC sells their bags at cost!). Most bags hold more than a paper or plastic bag, so you can carry fewer.
Resource impact: Ideal Bite says that if 10,000 people brought their own tote instead of using plastic grocery bags, we would avoid using 9 million plastic bags in a year.
3. Bring your own mug to the coffee place. I have a couple of Starbucks mugs (or "personal cups") that I leave in my car with my grocery bags. I have one grande cold-drink cup, one grande hot-drink cup, and one short hot-drink cup, so I can choose depending on what I'm in the mood for. Of course, if I want a venti, then I have to use their cups (and for some reason the cups that look like talls are actually shorts, don't know why that is). This tip has its issues for me, because my mugs are made of #7 plastics, which grosses me out a little bit, but until I can find suitable replacements, I'll keep using them. I also feel a little funny taking a Starbucks-brand mug into another coffee shop, so I usually don't. I'm on the lookout for brand-neutral, preferably aluminum, mugs that I like and will work instead, but I'm not there yet. Also, some Starbucks offer “for here” mugs – you just need to ask for them – which are great if you are planning on staying there for awhile. That way you also get to enjoy how pretty your drink is.
Resource impact: Ideal Bite says that if 10,000 people bring their own mugs for a year, we would avert the weight of 1,517 baristas in disposable-cup waste.
4. Think before you print. Not to be eco-pretentious, but this was actually something I was doing before I was an environmental nut. I keep a box under my desk with any paper that I’m done with that only has printing on one side. Then, any time I print a draft of something, a receipt, or really anything that isn't going to be seen by anyone else, I take pages from that box and print on the blank side. Other printing tips: print in draft mode when you can, print double-sided (on blank sheets of paper), and reduce your margins. There’s even a petition to have Microsoft change the default margins in Office. And of course, in general, don’t print if you don’t have to. This is actually kind of hard for me; I like to have hard copies of my documents. But I’m trying to adapt to keeping electronic copies of certain statements and similar paperwork.
Resource impact: Ideal Bite says if 10,000 people print most of their documents in draft mode, we would use 20,000 fewer ink cartridges per year.
Ideal Bite also says if 10,000 people change their margins to 0.5-in., in a year we would preserve more than an acre of trees.
5. Unplug your electronics. In the environmentalist world, they call these electronics “energy vampires” or “phantom loads” – probably because they are pretty scary. Most electronics continually pull electricity from the wall, even when they aren’t on and in use. For many items, getting rid of the vampires is pretty easy – i.e., don’t keep your cell phone or camera chargers plugged in at all times. For other electronics, like your computer or TV, most enviros will recommend plugging into a surge protector or power strip that you can turn off when your items aren’t being used. My computer and all of its accessories are on a surge protector that I turn off after I turn off my computer for the night.
Resource impact: Ideal Bite says if 10,000 people plug their cable boxes into power strips that automatically turn off when not in use, we would save a collective $300,000 per year.
Next time: Five more things you can do to reduce your impact; these ones are still easy but take a little more effort than the first five.
