Environmentalism 101

One doesn’t need to be an activist to be an environmentalist. Just consider how everything you do impacts the environment and then ask yourself if you could slightly change the way you do things to reduce your impact on the environment. Enough small improvements, which really present no inconvenience at all, once you get in the habit, can greatly reduce your impact on the environment. In fact, some changes are downright liberating.

For example, I used to get practically buried under all the magazines I subscribed to. Usually I was simply unable to read them all. My dining table was buried under a foot-high stack of magazines, with a one-by-one foot area left open for my plate. Now I read all my newspapers and magazines online and not only is my dining table usable again, but I don’t feel enslaved by my magazines, and I discard hundreds of pounds less waste each year.

Every single day I employ most of the simple measures below. It really is no inconvenience and these measures save me a lot of money.

• Use cloth towels and napkins instead of paper towels and napkins. I think I bought the paper towel roll I have right now over a year ago.
• Use plastic containers, such as Tupperware, instead of plastic wrap, plastic bags, or aluminum foil. These containers are actually more convenient and are stackable in the fridge. Except for a roll of aluminum foil I purchased a couple of years ago, I have not purchased any sort of wrap for years.
• Better yet, reuse glass containers for food and beverage storage. It's not only the most efficient way to recycle glass containers, but it's probably safer to store food in glass containers than in plastic or aluminum containers or wrappers.
• If you’re boiling water on an electric stove, turn the stove off just before the water is boiling. The residual heat will finish the job.
• When you’re finished soaking a dish in the sink, instead of pouring the water down the drain, see if you can pour it into another dish that needs rinsing.
• Flush the toilet after at least three pees.
• BYO. Bring your own cloth grocery bags to the store instead of accepting “plastic or paper” bags from the store. Decline bags if they are not necessary. San Francisco is now adding a 17 cent surcharge on grocery bags. Expect other cities to follow suit.
• Take fewer baths. Bathe only when you feel you need to.
• Turn lights off in rooms that you’re not occupying. Turn off all appliances that you’re not using. Turn off all lights and appliances when leaving the house.
• Where appropriate, use fluorescent lightbulbs instead of incandescent. They’ve gotten quite inexpensive, and one fluorescent bulb lasts as long as five incandescent bulbs, all the while using about 1/3 the electricity.
• Turn your computer off when not using it instead of letting it run all day and night. Turn it off when leaving the house for more than an hour. Only turn it on if you intend to use it for at least an hour. These rules will also minimize the wear and tear on your computer.
• Drive your car less. Combine trips to several places into one outing instead of making a separate trip to each place. Ask yourself if a trip can’t wait until you need to go somewhere else too. Often, just by avoiding an impulsive trip, such as to the store, you will realize that you really don’t need the thing you thought you needed anyway. Walk and ride a bicycle more.
• Ask companies you do business with to provide you with electronic invoices and statements instead of mailing paper ones. There’s less risk of identity theft from people stealing your mail too.
• Pay bills online instead of mailing paper envelopes. It’s faster, safer (again, identity theft), saves fuel (for the Post Office), and saves you the cost of stamps. Plus, you can schedule recurring payments to be paid automatically, even while you’re traveling! I hardly ever think about paying my bills. I just make sure there is enough money in my account to cover the upcoming bills. Otherwise, I don’t think about it and I never worry about late payments.
• Order stuff online and have it delivered instead of driving your car to fetch it yourself. Not only is it more efficient to have a delivery truck bring your goods to you along with a hundred other people, but it’s more convenient for you, and often you will save money. Get used to deferred gratification.
• Read newspapers and magazines online instead of subscribing to print editions. You can enjoy more variety and you don’t have to suspend deliveries while you’re on vacation.
• Wear clothes longer before washing them. You will use less water and chemicals, and the clothes will last longer.
• Use fewer chemicals and more elbow grease when cleaning. If you must use chemicals, use stuff like Simple Green.
• Turn off, or at least down, the heat and air conditioning when you leave the house. It doesn’t take long to reheat or re-cool the house once you return.
• Use rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones.
• Don’t print stuff on the printer if it isn’t necessary. If you can view something on the computer screen just as well, then why waste the paper, toner, or ink? Besides, at the speed with which information changes today, the pages you print today will be obsolete in a week.
• Buy products in the largest possible containers. The amount of packaging is roughly proportional to the 2/3 root of the volume. So a package that’s twice the size of another requires only about 50% more packaging, whereas two of the smaller packages would require 100% more packaging than one.
• Eat less. Food takes resources to produce, transport, and package. Meat requires a great deal more resources to produce and generates a lot more pollution than fruit and vegetables, a good argument in favor of vegetarianism. Junk food uses an inordinate amount of packaging because it’s typically packaged into single servings. Think how much packaging there is around a minuscule 1.5-ounce serving of potato chips or a 12-ounce serving of soda. And you’ll lose weight by eating less, if that's a problem for you like it is for me.
• Use real dishes and utensils instead of disposable paper, plastic, and Styrofoam ones.
• Use cold water if you don’t need to use warm water. Consider that when you run the hot water tap for a while until hot water comes out, the water heater has to reheat not only the quantity of hot water that you use, but also the quantity of cold water you expelled from the pipes first.
• Sweep up debris on the driveway instead of using a leaf blower to blow it next door or using the hose to wash it down.
• Purchase computer software that can be downloaded from the Internet instead of buying software on CDs, with printed manuals, in fancy boxes. Not only will you enjoy instant gratification, but CDs and manuals will be obsolete by the time you get them home anyway.
• Use e-mail instead of FAXes. For communicating with people who still use FAX machines, you can use one of the many online services that will convert e-mails to FAXes and visa-versa. So you do not need to buy a FAX machine anymore.
• Use junk mail as scratch paper. I get lots of junk mail. A lot of it consists of pure white sheets of paper, printed on only one side. The blank side makes great scratch paper or paper for experimental print jobs.
• Avoid using the brakes in your car. Yes, really! Brakes are designed to waste energy. Every time you press the brake pedal you are throwing away kinetic energy, energy that you paid for with gasoline. Drive in a manner that doesn’t necessitate frequent application of the brakes. Don’t accelerate to a needlessly high speed, only to have to slam on the brakes. If you’re going up hill, anticipating a stop ahead, let gravity slow you down. If you anticipate having to slow down, as in rush hour traffic, take your foot off the gas sooner rather than later. You’ll save gas and your brakes.
• Instead of using the heating element in the dishwasher, turn it off and simply open the dishwasher after it's done cleaning. The residual heat in the dishes themselves will largely dry them.
• Put electronic devices, such as TVs, cable TV converter boxes, DVD players, CD players, and video game consoles, on switch boxes and turn off the switch when the devices are not in use. Most modern devices such as these consume electricity even when not "turned on," and the amount can be considerable, as much as 50 watts. Turning off the switch will also protect the devices from voltage aberrations.