Living Green

According to Wikipedia, “Sustainable Living is defined as a lifestyle that could, hypothetically, be sustained without exhausting any natural resources. The term can be applied to individuals or societies. Its adherents most often hold true sustainability as a goal or guide, and make lifestyle trade-offs favoring sustainability.”

This segment of the website is a collection of ideas and tools that the reader can choose to embody in daily life. With the embodiment of these suggestions, day-to-day life evolves into a greener lifestyle.

“Doing” life differently creates avenues for change to transpire. Many times individuals and families watch documentaries about global warming, sweatshop labor etc. then wonder, “What can I do to make a difference?” Actions create the momentum for change to occur on a global level.

The most important tip that can be suggested is to vote with your dollars. Consumer choices pave the way for the next wave of corporate decisions. Buying green is an investment in the green economy (the future), which will assist in pushing what matters into the market, thereby getting green consumer goods to the scale that leads to cost reduction and other breakthroughs. Purchase with a purpose!

“How you spend your money is how you vote on what exists in the world.”

Vicki Robin—author of Your Money Or Your Life

Tips for Living the Green Lifestyle:

Shopping Green:

Buy organic. The chemicals used in agriculture pollute the water and use energy to produce. Primary organic fabrics that are used for sustainable clothing are hemp & organic cotton.
STOP Sweatshop labor. Learn the facts regarding the manufacturing practices of the apparel items that are sold in conventional stores. According to Co-op America, “Surveys tell us that the average consumer is willing to pay up to 28% more for an item if they knew that item wasn’t made in a sweatshop”. Read the entire coopamerica.org article on sweatshops.
Purchase clothing that is fair trade in order to end sweatshops. Fair trade is an economic system that supports fair wages for the workers, a healthy work environment and doesn’t employ children.
Connect the dots… trace the clothing back to the source. Choose again. Care what you wear!
Use cloth bags (hemp or organic cotton etc.) when shopping. Decrease & then give up plastic, especially in single-use containers. There is 6 times more plastic in the Pacific Ocean then zooplankton by weight. The floating plastic does more than choke and starve the animals to death…” View the Pet Plastic Problem photographs by Chris Jordan.

Practical Application:

Make a list of items purchased or view the household budget to determine money spent on clothing, accessories, shoes etc.
Set a goal to spend a % of the budgeted amount on sweatshop-free, fair trade, organic, sustainable fiber clothing.
Repeat the process for the food budget. Determine a portion of dollars budgeted to vote organic.
Educate others.
Have fun making a difference.

Green Tips for around the Home:

Take shorter showers. A shower (about 10 minutes) uses 2/3 the amount of water as a bath.
Install a low-flow showerhead. Less water means less energy to heat the water.
When buying a new shower curtain buy cloth instead of PVC plastic.
Run your dishwasher only with a full load.
Only do full loads of laundry.
A warm or cold wash works just as effectively. 90% of the energy in washers is used to heat the water.
Hang clothes to dry either outdoors or indoors. Dryers are energy users. When you use the dryer, clean the lint trap after each use to keep the air circulating efficiently.
Replace bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. (Make sure & recycle these bulbs when finished)
Adjust the thermostat down 2 degrees in the winter.
Use printer paper that is 100% post consumer recycled paper.
Traditional dry cleaning methods are laden with chemicals. Choose a dry cleaner that is green by using nontoxic cleaning alternatives. find out more

General Green Tips:

Reduce the impact on the environment by cutting down on animal products eaten each week.
Animal protein takes 15 times more water to produce than vegetable protein. According to John Robbins in the book The Food Revolution”, more water is saved by not eating a pound of meat than by not showering for a year. www.foodrevolution.org
In the Amazon, more than 2.9 million acres of rainforest were destroyed in the 2004-2005 growing season to raise crops that were used to feed animals in factory farms. Up to 220 square feet of rainforest are sacrificed to produce just one pound of hamburger.