Personal Green Choices
by Marilyn Flick
- Put on a sweater. It will keep you warm and conserve resources instead of using the fuel for your furnace.
- Put one foot in front of the other. One hundred years ago, 99.9% of people got by without cars. We can save even more fuel by simply driving less and walking more.
- Go for seconds. Recycling is more than a bin. It can also mean using things a second (or third) time. That nice padded envelope you got in the mail, for example. Instead of throwing it away, put a label over the address and use it again.
- Watch your waste. Lithium and rechargeable batteries, bulbs that contain mercury, and ink cartridges may be returned to the store where you bought them. Not in your trash.
- Paper nor plastic. Bring your reusable bags to the grocery store. You can cut down on the 350 bags the average American uses each year and reduce the needless deaths of marine life caused by plastic bags.
- BYOB. Fill up a reusable water bottle at home and bring it with you. Last year Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles. Don’t like the taste of your tap water? Buy a filter! (Much of the bottled water sold today is filtered tap water.)
- Flip ‘em off. In much of America we can’t even see the stars anymore due in part to all the electric lights. Only keep the light on in the room you’re in.
- Get in touch with your roots…Plant a tree. It’s good for the soil, good for the birds, good for reducing climate change—and good for the air you breath.
- Get off. Catalogs are great when they’re from companies you like to order from. But if you are getting catalogs from companies you don’t buy from, call them and get off their list. And that’s an order.
(This information is from the World Wildlife Fund.)
Do you have Personal Green Choices to share with all of us? I will collect them for future segments. Email Marilyn Flick at flick7956@msn.com.
