Still easy - just a little more effort

Well, finally, I am updating (after about a six-month interruption). My buddy Justin linked to my blog from his, Critically Acclaimed, and I am rewarding his faith in me! :)

As promised, here are five more easy steps to being nicer to the earth - they take a little more effort than the first five, but they still won't shake up your life too much.

6. Recycle whenever you can. There are so many things that can be recycled these days. We usually think of paper and bottles and cans, and that is a great place to start. Those can be broken down and turned into new versions of their old selves - new glass bottles, new aluminum cans, new paper. Plastics are a little trickier, but there are some really neat things people have been creating using recycled plastic (for example, yarn made in part from recycled bottles - more on that in a future post). Then, of course, we can look to other items that can be recycled, often by taking pieces of them and refurbishing them or breaking down the items to the core elements and recycling the parts individually. I've posted some examples before. Check out this cool site to see what else can be recycled and if there is a recycling center near you.

7. Get rid of the junk mail. Not only is this nice for the environment (less paper), it's nice for you (less annoyance!). Get yourself removed from credit card offer lists, unwanted catalogs, and other junk mail lists. When it comes to catalogs, I don't know of a single site where you can be removed from catalog lists, but what I do is visit the Web site for the store itself. There is usually a place to unsubscribe from its mailing list, or else you can find a customer service e-mail address and send them an e-mail with the request. Edit (9/21/09): I forgot about Catalog Choice. I haven't actually used this site, but it might be easier to get yourself removed from catalog lists - since it is all in one place. I've also recently started asking charities to stop sending me snail mail - I send them a polite e-mail, telling them that I support their cause but would like them to remove me from their mailing lists. I also tell them they can add me to an e-mail list if they'd like. And besides being nice for the environment and for you (see above), it's also nice for the charity because they can save some money on marketing costs.

8. Replace your bulbs. Yes, CFL bulbs contain a little bit of mercury. But almost everything I've read indicates that the energy savings outweigh the slight danger. If a CFL does break, follow the EPA's instructions for clean-up. CFL's last about 15 times longer than an incandescent bulb, which means you won't have to replace bulbs as often. I suggest replacing your old bulbs with CFLs as the old ones burn out, rather than immediately replacing all your bulbs (since that seems kind of wasteful to me, plus could get pretty expensive). CFLs can and should be recycled (The Home Depot is a good option). And hey, switching your bulbs can make you feel more European, since the EU has banned incandescent bulbs.

9. Be thoughtful about what you buy. This is one of the areas where I struggle the most, and I'm trying to be more and more mindful about my purchases. But I like my stuff! So I'm striving to...
...buy less. Do I really need all those new clothes? Or here's a big one: just because it's on sale, does that mean I should buy it? If I don't need it, I need to not buy it.
...buy used. Thrift stores and antiques are our friends. I'm a bibliophile, and I absolutely love Half Price Books - not just used, but half price! So great.
...buy recycled. If you decide that you do need an item, and you can't find a good used option, try to buy things made with recycled content. Pretty much any office supply or personal care item (toilet paper, paper towels, etc.) can be made with recycled material. Look for the percentage of recycled content on the packaging and strive for a high percentage of post-consumer content. (Post-consumer comes from a completed product that was used by consumers; pre-consumer materials are things like scraps from the manufacturing process. It's good to recycle those as well, but using post-consumer material helps keep virgin materials from being used as well as provides a use for materials collected for recycling.)
...buy recyclable/renewable. Think about what is going to happen to your item when you are finished with it. Take for example a beverage you buy at the grocery store. I try to only buy drinks that come in glass or aluminum containers, because those materials are much easier to recycle than plastic. Or look for clothing or wood items made with bamboo, which is a highly-renewable material that doesn't require pesticides to grow. There are some issues with the amount of processing bamboo has to go through to become an end product, but it is still often a good alternative to cotton and polyester fabrics or other types of wood.

10. Go for organic and/or local. I'm talking about at the grocery store here. This is particularly important for non-processed foods. (I support buying organic processed foods as well, but the processing counteracts some of the environmental benefits.) Local AND organic is the ideal, but if you have to make a choice, consider these factors. Local is probably more important for the environment - less fuel is used to get the food to you. Organic has less of an environmental impact in the area where it was grown, and since it is grown without chemicals or pesticides, those chemicals don't end up in your body. There is debate about whether organic food is actually more nutritious than conventionally-grown food (see this article from the Seattle Times), but that's not really the point. As long as they are equally nutritious, then I think organic is the better option, because I'd rather keep the chemicals out of me whenever possible.

The pretty easy changes...

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.