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| Being Environmentally
Friendly It is not easy to suddenly change the way you lead your life but done gradually, step at a time, anyone can adapt to living in such a way to reduce your environmental impact. Rather than give specific examples of how to be greener, here we look at the basic principles of environmental impact. Once these basics are understood it is an easy step to see how your daily actions may affect your surroundings. Sustainable Simply, whatever you are using, is it sustainable. The current rate of use of coal and other fossil fuels are not sustainable. They take millions of years to create and sooner or later we will run out. We would need to cut our rate of use of any resource so that it may naturally reproduce. This would be the sustainable level we could use it up. Food on the other hand is generally sustainable. This is something we can create, use and grow again. There are concerns over some things such as fish stocks where in many parts of the world, nations are over fishing. This if not checked is going to end up creating shortages of fish not to mention the knock on effect of job losses. The ethics of how we produce food is getting more controversial as well but that is a another subject. So always give a thought to what you are using in can it be sustained. If not, use it less or not at all. Renewable In some ways, similar to sustainable in that can the item you use be renewed at the pace humans are using it. Fuels such as wind, solar and tides are naturally renewable. Current technology dictates we can not produce enough power to supply demand (though this is rapidly advancing). To combat this we do need to try and use less power to keep within our sustainable target. Recycling When a mineral such as steel is extracted from the ground, it is not replaced by the planet. But commodities such as steel can be recycled. Rather than throw them away in rubbish tips, they can be reprocessed and used to make something new. Many products being manufactured nowadays are given due consideration to their recyclable merits. Everything from packaging to vehicles should be recyclable which if carried out would have a great impact in slowing down the use of raw materials. Waste Waste can be applied to most things we humans do. We can all be guilty of the simple things like leaving the lights on unnecessarily or driving the car when the trip could have easily been walked or biked. Then there is the mass that we just throw away. Much of what we throw away can be reused. As mentioned above steel can be reprocessed but how about our food waste Rather than just binning it for landfill why not get it composted. The best way to reduce the amount you throw away is to examine what you are buying in the first place. Is it essential and if so, is their a recyclable option? Energy Use This is covered more on the page of reducing your electricity use so here it is enough to mention one should always consider ones energy use. Imagine if you had no access to electricity or fuels such as oil and gas. Could you survive? Probably yes but we have all come to take the easy option of life at the turn of a button. There is nothing wrong in making life easier and that is evolution but in that process we have often overlooked of the side effects this causes. Consider on cutting your side effects! Direct pollution An obvious one really but we still need to think about the things we use and what is the end result of such use. Burning fossil fuels is the obvious biggest culprit but waste as mentioned above is another. |
