I have been thinking about things that we can do to help make our footprint on the environment smaller. Little things, yes, but they add up. Or at least, I like to think so!
At Home
Only Wash When The Machine’s Full
This goes for the dishwasher – if you use one – as well as for clothes washing. Wait until the machine is completely full before you wash. Even though you can adjust the water level for a part-load in a washing machine, it still uses
the full quota of electricity, so waiting is always best.
Washing Machine Powders – Use Less
Most washing machine detergents are actually effective when you use only 1/2 or less of what the box recommends, and your clothes will be nearly identical at the end of the wash if you avoid things like pre-wash soakers, etc., altogether. If you have stained clothes, put some of the washing liquid or powder (mixed with a little water to make a paste) directly on the stain and let it sit for a little before you wash.
Re-Use Clothes
If you don’t want a piece of clothing anymore, but it’s still usable, then give it to your local second-hand shop. If it’s so old that it’s totally unwearable you could cut it up and use the cloths for cleaning – you can do this with old sheets and towels too – or give it to the second-hand shop anyway and they can sell it for rags themselves.
Use Cloth Nappies
100 percent cotton cloth nappies, dried in the sun, are undoubtedly the best for the environment. If you’re desperate, you can use a washing service instead of washing them yourself.
Avoid Cleaning Chemicals Altogether
You can clean in most household situations without needing to use expensive and toxic chemical cleaners at all. There is a website with a Mix It Yourself Cleaning Kit which gives an all-purpose cleaner, a glass cleaner, toilet cleaner, instructions for mopping, cleaning jewelery, and more. Many other similar websites exist – feel free to suggest your favourite to me.
Microfibre Cloths
The new-style "microfibre" cleaning cloths, even cheap ones from a $2 shop or similar, will do a great job in nearly every situation with minimal or no chemical detergent. This is because they work because of the way the fibres in the cloths are arranged, rather than through detergents and chemicals.
Shower With A Friendly Bucket!
This may sound strange, but if you shower with a bucket in the shower cubicle, you’ll collect a bucket of water that can later be used to water the garden, or any indoor plants you have. The water savings might sound small, but
they add up over the course of a year.
Use Biodegradable Detergents
Detergents – laundry detergents, dishwasher detergents, shampoos, washing up liquid – are often very nasty to the environment because of phosphates and other chemicals that get into the environment and won’t break down. Try to buy detergents marked as "Biodegradable" and "Phosphate-Free" and you should do less damage to the environment without costing yourself much extra.
Electricity
Low-Power Globes
Compact flourescents will bring your power bills down, and using less electricity means less greenhouse gasses are produced by our power plants.
Opt For Green Electricity
On your power bill – at least here in Australia – you can elect to pay a little bit more each week to receive "green" electricity. This means that for every watt of electricity your house uses, the power company
will put into the electricity grid the same amount of electricity generated by wind, solar, and other forms of "green" power. It’s probably a lot cheaper than you think – when I finally postered the power company about
it, it only cost $1 a week for my flat!
Turn Things Off
A lights or appliance that’s on in an empty room still uses the full amount of electricity, folks, so turn off those lights, televisions, VCR/DVDs, and all the rest. OK?
Really Turn Things Off!
You’ll often find that even when an appliance like a DVD is on, it will still be displaying things (often a clock, and almost always a ‘pilot light’-type globe) and even those use up a certain amount of power. It seems a lot to my mind, but I saw a statistic once claiming that up to 11% of all power is used by appliances on standby! So if you’re really interested in saving every watt of power, or every cent on your electricity bill, then for things with any type of stand-by activity – which includes anything you can turn on with a remote control, of course, because the detector must always be active – turn them off at the power point, instead of just at the appliance. Once it’s turned off at the power point, there’s no way it can use any electricity at all.
High-tech Can Help
High-tech things, in the right place, can be a great help in being gentle to the earth, and saving water, electricity, and so on. If you have an automatic watering system controlled by a timer to give the plants exactly the amount of water they need, exactly when they need it, you’ll never be wasting water. If you have a night-light in the hallway, replace it by a light that’s activated by motion only and it will only come on when somebody steps into the hallway, saving nearly the whole night’s worth of electricity. I’m sure there are many other situations where technology can helpfully help us be gentle to the earth, so use your lateral thinking and a healthy dose of common sense!
Use Rechargeable Batteries
Yes, it does cost more initially to buy rechargeable batteries and a recharger, but in the long run you’ll save money in almost all situations, not just where your equipment goes through a set of batteries every week. Also, the
savings to the environment for every battery you don’t buy … and then don’t throw away … is very large; batteries contain toxic heavy metals and aren’t even slightly biodegradable. They just sit there in landfill and contribute to leaching of toxic chemicals into the environment over time. A good argument for rechargeable.
In The Kitchen
Don’t Use Glad-wrap Or Foil
Cover open tins with those "can lids" you can buy at a $2 shop and re-use over and over. Cover bowls of leftovers with an upturned plate and plates with a large upturned bowl. You can keep glad-wrap/foil around if you like, but you’ll find it’s almost NEVER needed.
Use A Small Kitchen Bin
Obviously this will depend on the size of your family, but using a smaller bin in the kitchen has two good outcomes:
- You can use the plastic bags from the supermarket (offer to take them off your friends’ hands) as bin liners
- It reminds you that throwing out less is better for the environment.
Open Containers
Close open bags of food (eg flour, nuts, crisps) with a clothes peg instead of a rubber band – it’s much more reusable and will last far longer too.
Use Fully Biodegradable Plastic Bags
As a first choice, re-use a plastic bag you already have, but if you must buy plastic bags then try very hard to get ones that are fully biodegradable, for example the ones formed from Tapioca Starch are good. Or find other alternatives to throw-away plastics, such as tupperware, paper bags, etc.
Away From Home
If You Must Drive, Share The Driving
First, do you need to drive at all? Could you walk, bicycle, or take public transport? But if you need to drive, then car-pooling will halve the impact on the environment, and it’s undeniable that being a passenger is more relaxing than driving too – especially when the traffic is busy. You could share lifts to the shops with a friend, taking it week-about to drive there. You could share lifts to work with somebody you know who works near you, or with a work-mate who lives near you. There’s lots of ways to limit the number of times you get the car out of the garage, if only you
put your thinking cap on.
Don’t Accept Plastic Shopping Bags
Take your own re-usable bags to the supermarket, and anywhere else you shop. In a pinch, most supermarkets have these for sale but you can also make your own for a couple of cents worth of calico and a few minutes at a sewing machine. They’re also frequently sold as fund-raisers by all and sundry, I have found. Once you’ve unloaded them at home, either put them on a hook on the back of the door, or on the inside doorknob, or take them right out to the car and keep them in the boot. Whatever you do, they have to be easily available when you need to shop, or you’ll just use supermarket bags.
Outside
Set up a worm farm, or compost heap
A worm farm, or a compost heap, can be very low-maintenance (a few minutes a week, I’m talking) and will mean that that 16% of landfill that’s made up of organic waste won’t happen … or at least your part of it won’t happen. If we all did this, imagine how much less landfill space we’d use up!
Plant fruit trees
Fruit trees are usually fairly quick to grow, they are deciduous so you’ll get shade in summer and not in winter when you want the sun, and they’re a free source of fruit to boot! What else could anybody want?
Homegrown Herbs and Vegetables
These take a little time but herbs, especially, can pretty much be planted and then ignored until you want to wander out into the garden and pick them. And how wonderful to announce that the basil in the spaghetti sauce is home-grown! Start small and build up how much you grow yourself.
Chickens Are Easier Than You Think
Even in a regular suburban back-yard you can have 1 or 2 chickens, and they have so many uses! They can provide fertilizer for your gardens and fruit trees, they will eat food scraps from the kitchen, and of course
there are those eggs … but did you know they’re also wonderful pets? For more information about keeping chooks, especially in the UK, check out http://www.omlet.co.uk/ -
designer chicken coops, no less!
we should separate biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste and should have separate dustbins for that