The Guardian recently had a whole section on being green – on inspection it turned out to be an ad for Total Oil, disguised as a section on being green. Inside there was an article by a famous “green/veggie” actress suggesting her top green tips – most of which seemed to involve buying something. In case you haven’t noticed, the whole thing got me a bit annoyed 
So, here are some of my green tips which shouldn’t involve you buying anything….. in fact, most of them will save you money:
1. Put a lid on it… or even better get a pressure cooker. This is so simple, just make sure you put a lid on those potatoes as they boil. Most of you probably do this already (if for nothing else but to stop the kitchen steaming up) but this is a great way to save energy (along with putting pans on the right ring of the hob(ring size should fit pan size)). If you’re a soup maker it’s also worth investing in a pressure cooker, but I said this wasn’t about buying stuff, so I won’t suggest it here.
2. Register with the postal service for no flyers. You can register at the Mailing Preference Service to not get mailed flyers through the door. If you also put a notice on your mail box then hopefully you won’t get all the stuff through the door that you don’t want. (This is in the UK, but there may be something similar in the States)
3. Buy stuff from your local thrift shop/charity shop – ooops that’s buying stuff, but it’s not new stuff. Blimey have we had some bargains!!
4. Take stuff to your local charity shop…. we have on the odd occasion combined 3. and 4. when I’ve taken stuff to the village charity shop, then gone shopping on a Saturday morning with the kids and they’ve insisted on buying stuff back.
5. Use your leftovers. If you can’t use them immediately freeze them (so long as they haven’t been made out of stuff out of the freezer in the first place).
6. Eat less meat. Did you know that producing the meat you eat (if you’re a standard meat eater) creates more carbon emissions than driving your car?
7. Join your local library and use it. Also join Book Crossing and leave books for others to read.
Plastic, not so Fantastic
8. Give up bottled water for good. Get yourself a stainless steel bottle and never buy another plastic bottle again. The water in the UK and the States is amongst the safest in the world and much of the water in plastic bottles is just tap water….. indeed it sometimes contains more bacteria than tap water; Then there’s the waste issue. I could go on for ever on this one, suffice it to say, do yourself and the environment a favour, use your tap.
9. Walk or take the train or bus. Leave your car at home. Petrol here is now nearly £1.40 per litre, that’s over $11 per gallon (my calculation may be dodgy, let me know if you work it out different). If that’s not incentive to use your car less, I don’t know what is…. what I do know though is that the price of petrol is only likely to go up.
10. Wear a jumper/open the windows. Turn the heating/air con down. Both heating and air-con use masses of oil. Plus, both are unhealthy and lead to colds and stuffy noses.
That’s my top Being Green Tips for now. Sustainability shouldn’t cost a fortune, indeed, you should end up spending much less.
I’ll be posting more on the bottled water thing, since our local community is hoping to get the shops in our village to agree not to sell the stuff, so watch this space for details of our campaign.
Have a fabulous Sunday.
Fiona
If you like this post you might also like this one (part II of this list) and this one about National Vegetarian Week.
NB this post has been copied across from my old blog. Any comments are over there since I couldn’t work out how to bring them across.
