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21 Ways to be Green

Tips for Eco-Friendly Living

21 Ways to be Green

Tips for Eco-Friendly Living

    Being a good environmentalist is easy, right? Drive less, put on an extra sweater, recycle. It doesn’t sound so hard. And sure enough, it’s not. Making small changes to the way we live can make a big difference, especially when compounded by your friends and their friends’ friends. Not only will you be helping the planet, of course, you’ll also be saving money. From conserving energy to using less water and natural gas, all the resources you save will affect your bill. Think of it this way: Every change you make to help Mother Earth gives you, in consumer terms, an instant rebate. So put on that sweater, recyle that can, turn down the thermostat and go buy yourself something nice. You’ve earned it.

Consume Less Stuff

1.  Consume fewer  plastic bags. 
     Free  

   If you think three days is a long time for your parents to stay with you, think about 10,000 years. That’s how long it takes for the first bits of plastic to start to decompose. Not one single bit of plastic we have ever produced has ever broken down, period. Instead, it enmeshes, entangles and encumbers sea life from the bottom of the food chain (where plastic sand fills their bellies) to the top. Americans use 12 million barrels of oil every year to make 30 billion plastic bags in this country, and a million produce bags are used every minute. A minute. Bring cloth bags to the store instead of using plastic grocery bags. Recycle what you do use—major supermarkets usually have a bag-recycling bin. When you don’t need a bag, tell the checker to save it. You’ll never miss it.

2.  Consume fewer electronic gizmos.
     Free

    This is a biggie. The fastest-growing kind of trash in the world is just the kind of toxic, non-recyclable, battery-operated nuisance every kid loves for the five seconds before he starts playing with the box. Say no to battery-operated stuffed animals, toothbrushes, razors, kitchen timers and—no kidding—pregnancy tests. You’ll learn a valuable lesson in how we survived as a society until about two years ago, when this stuff started appearing on the market, while sparing your ears from another tinny jingle from the kid’s new toy.

3. Reuse what you can. 
    Free

    The great thing about living in a disposable society is there’s so much cool stuff that people just throw away. But why go rooting around in someone’s trash when you can shop at one of the many places that specialize in reuse? Patrick Hayes, a construction and demolition recycling specialist with the city of Oakland, counts Urban Ore among his favorites. “Contractors drop off new, used and salvaged materials from all kinds of projects with these companies. One can save 75 percent on new door hardware or find a 125-year-old door for their house remodel.” Check out Urban Ore, Habitat for Humanity’s Re-Store, Ohmega Salvage and the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. If you want your stuff to go into the rotation instead of the landfill, contact EcoHaul at 800-ECOHAUL or visit www.ecohaul.com. The company separates out recyclables and reusables before they get dumped.

4.  Ban bottled water. 
     $

      We know that Dasani is just filtered Philadelphia tap water and that Aquafina comes from Queens, but, boy, do we love the stuff. It’s three times more expensive than gas, it’s consistently indistinguishable from tap water in blind taste tests and a third of it was found polluted by the National Resources Defense council in a recent test. And yet its very virtue is its colorlessness and tastelessness. One might even call it the vodka of thirst quenchers. Americans each drank nearly 30 gallons of the life-giving elixir last year, contributing 179 bottles to the waste stream. Break the cycle. Buy a Brita filter and a Nalgene bottle. And make your own destiny.

5. Curb retail urges.
    $

    You know the smell of new leather. And the sound the molded Styrofoam makes when you pull the flat-screen LCD TV from the box. And the crinkle of shopping bags set on the table. That blissful, gossamer, new-thing feeling that tastes so sweet but unfortunately goes as fast as it comes. And all we’re left with is a payment plan and tilting piles of stuff that would make Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout finally make that trip to Goodwill. In an age where accumulation-creep happens so subtly that GMC is running ads for trucks in Real Simple, you can be forgiven for falling to its insidious progression. But there are enormous environmental benefits to foregoing stuff, from the toxics in electronics, to the resources that go into maintaining livestock, to the plastic that goes into packaging and ends up in a Texas-sized floating mass in the North Pacific nicknamed the Eastern Garbage Patch (Google it), just to illustrate the above examples. The solution, besides finding happiness in less tangible ways? Buy only what you need, scour garage sales and craigslist and check out freecycle.org for giveaways. And if you still feel like you need to treat yourself, there’s always Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream.

6.  Use less water.
     $$$

    We Alameda Countians have been doing a pretty good job with water conservation over the last 35 years, keeping water use relatively flat even as our population and lawn acreage has increased. But we have to stay vigilant, and aside from fluorescent bulbs, nothing pays for itself faster around the house than new water-saving gizmos. Low-flow showerheads can save you $250 a year if you have four people in the house (or two and one of them is my wife). Super-futuristic tankless water heaters, which heat water on the fly—no tank necessary—cost half as much to operate as regular heaters. New low-flow toilets use half the water of 1980-style ones, and you can even get them now with heated seats. PG&E offers an astonishing number of rebates on Energy Star washers and other appliances, as well as heating and cooling, insulating and more. Check out what’s available from the Flex Your Power Web site at www.fypower.org.

7. Use less electricity.
    $

    Cities like Oakland are moving over to fluorescent and LED lights all the time, but if you haven’t noticed, that’s just part of the plan. Called “user transparent,” these new energy-saving lights are even better than the old ones. Compact fluorescent lights no longer give off that funny blue glow and flicker, and they are made in a range of warmer and colder color temperatures, so you have a choice in your quality of light. Their impact on the grid is huge—they use up to 80 percent less energy than incandescents. That’s an epic savings, especially when multiplied by a large number of households. In fact, if every household in the United States swapped out a single bulb, it would save enough energy to power every home in Alameda County. And with power plants being one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses in the Bay Area, one bulb can go a long way.

Drive  Smarter

8.  Drive less.
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  The typical U.S. household spends almost a fifth of its budget on maintaining its cars. Between insurance, gas and maintenance, who needs ’em? Turns out, just about everybody. Since 1990, the population of Alameda County has gone up 13 percent, and the number of cars nearly 9 percent. This means more traffic, more idling, more stress. Make a pledge to ride your bike on short trips (on average, a third of trips are a mile or less), and rediscover the simple joys of riding the rails. Even better, ditch your car and sign up for car-sharing; there are several companies serving the East Bay, including City CarShare (www.citycarshare.org), Flexcar (www.flexcar.com) and Zipcar (www.zipcar.com). They typically charge by the hour to borrow cars, and gas and insurance are all included.

9.  Offset your emissions.
     $$$

    Menlo Park–based TerraPass is one of several companies offering a novel way to let drivers (and frequent flyers) offset the carbon dioxide they produce during their travels by investing in environmental projects. Sign up online at the level that fits your make, model and mileage, and the money you spend is used to invest in the development of wind farms and biomass methane capturing. TerraPass will even give you a sticker for your car that gives a better impression than “This SUV is exhausting.” Check out TerraPass at terrapass.org, Carbon Counter at www.carboncounter.org and Native Energy at www.nativeenergy.com.

10.  Use alternative fuels.
       $

    Like what, kitchen grease? You guessed it, big guy. Berkeley-based Biofuel Oasis dispenses and even delivers biofuel from its HQ on Fourth Street and Dwight Way. Biofuel is an almost magic substance that, through a top-secret transmogrification called transesterification that only every diesel engineer on the planet knows about, is created from regular vegetable oil. It runs just fine in any diesel engine—no modifications required. It’s also so clean, according to Biofuel Oasis, that it will dissolve fuel deposits left in your engine by regular diesel. Best of all, beginning this year, diesel cars can be sold again in California.  Drive on, French-fry guy!

11. Drive better.
      Free

    I can’t drive 55 either, and it’s a shame, because typical engines lose 2 percent fuel economy for every mile per hour above 55. Lead foots also lose out when they play fast and furious on the highway, since aggressive driving uses more gas. And while we’re on the driving tips, Maverick, remember to pump up those tires. As every bicyclist knows, flattish tires have more drag than carting around a few bricks in the backpack. Finally, clean out your car. Calling hauling around that case of water and box of files “disaster preparedness” isn’t fooling anyone.

12.  Dump your SUV.
       $$$

    “You should see the size of my insecurity complex.” “I’m changing the climate, ask me how.” Joining the effort to make increasingly complex ideas bite-size, bumper stickers are right there with political cartoons and infographics, but like the rest of their esteemed company, they often have a point. Too many of us own more rolling real estate than we’ll ever use, making our frequent we-use-it-to-go-skiing declarations sound a little thin. Ditch the rig and get yourself something a little zippier. Smaller cars get better mileage, usually last longer than their lumbering brothers, and are much less expensive to buy and maintain. Plus, you won’t believe how much you can get in the trunk of a Prius. No kidding. To begin your search for a cleaner, greener friend, start with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s annual list of Greenest Vehicles at www.greenercars.com. Topping and bottoming the best-of list this year isn’t a hybrid; it’s a Honda Civic.

Put Things In Their Place

 

13.  Recycle.      

        Free   

    Recycling plastic, aluminum, glass and paper is mandatory, of course, but it isn’t the holy tetrad of green living. It takes an enormous amount of energy to recycle these materials, especially when they are (often) being shipped overseas for processing. It is much better to buy in bulk or find alternatives: a Costco-sized bottle of shampoo and a kegerator will do nicely for starters. If you want to be an environmental hero, get your company to start recycling its paper. Check out the Alameda County Waste Management Authority’s StopWaste Partnership at www.stopwaste.org/partnership for help.

14.  Dispose of electronics the right way.
       Free

    See “Consume fewer electronic gizmos” above. It’s important, so we’re using it twice and just changing a few words around. Until extended producer responsibility becomes de rigeur, we must deal with disposing of electronics properly ourselves. iPod Minis and HP 50G Graphing Calculators can’t be thrown in the ’fill, or they’ll spend their final obsolete days leaking mercury all over our nice water table. They and the half-billion computers in the United States need to be recycled properly when they finally peter out. Check out www.erecycle.org or www.wastediversion.org/EwasteOptions.htm for a proper electronics-recycling facility near you, or donate computers and electronics for resuscitation to the nonprofit Alameda County Computer Resource Center in Berkeley (www.accrc.org).

15.  Don’t bury the batteries.
       $

    Single-use batteries are the blunt little sausages of the electronics world: They’re great while you have them, but you’re going to be paying for them for a long time, and you sure as heck don’t want to know what’s in them. But since you asked, they’ve been banned from the trash in California since February 2006, because they contain corrosive chemicals and heavy metals, which definitely do not rock when they make it to the landfill. Rediscover rechargeable batteries—you love them in your laptop and cell phone, and the old low-power, short-life rechargeables have been replaced by awesome nickel metal hydrides, or NiMHs, that can last three times as long as their anemic NiCd cousins, and they come with chargers at the supermarket. For sausages that get smuggled in, keep an empty can labeled “batteries” in the pantry, and once a year dump it at the Oakland Household Hazardous Waste facility at 2100 East 7th St., or take it to IKEA in Emeryville or the Berkeley Recycling Center at 669 Gilman St. (at 2nd Street; www.berkeleyrecycling.org).

Live Lighter

16.  Become a vegetarian.
       Free

    OK, so I know this one isn’t for everyone, especially since I saw half of us at Everett & Jones last weekend, but studies show that forsaking meat is one of the best environmental decisions we can make. Here’s why: A huge amount of fuel goes into raising crops to feed animals, transporting the animals around and “processing” them. They eat a lot of food that could be used to support people—if the United States reduced meat consumption by 10 percent, Americans would have more than 12 million tons of grain a year left over, enough to feed 60 million people. Animals take water, too. According to Time, many countries are depleting their natural aquifers and running freshwater deficits to support their livestock. But the biggest problem isn’t what goes in the front; it’s what comes out the back. Livestock emit 18 percent of global greenhouse gasses in the form of methane, doing three times more damage than American (automotive) tailpipes. Pass the beans, please.

17.  Move downtown.
       $$$

    Urban living is much easier on the land than suburban living. Why? If you live in an apartment or condo, three of your walls are insulated by your neighbors, cutting down on heat loss. If you live in an urban area, you are more likely to walk or ride a bike on short trips, and even if you drive, you aren’t driving far. Chances are you have a much shorter commute, because you already live near job centers, and you might even take BART. You aren’t living out in the hinterland, replacing prime agricultural land with houses in a subdevelopment that needed massive new infrastructure to get you your sweet, sweet Mokelumne River water and reruns of The Girls Next Door. And finally, with less living space you won’t be tempted to collect as many plastic gewgaws. Check out www.business2oakland.com/main/10kdowntownhousinginitiative.htm to browse for a new pad.

18.  Get in shape.
       $

    Psshaw, bro, how can exercising help the planet? Turns out, in lots of ways. Nearly a third of us are overweight, and that’s just middle- to high-income Americans. For lower-income people, the rate is even higher, closer to 35 percent. It is taking a lot more fuel to cart around our wide loads than ever before. According to a study by researchers at Cornell University, airlines have to use 350 million more gallons of fuel a year than a decade ago because planes are heavier with people. In cars, the effect is even more dramatic, every 50 pounds you lose results in another percent of fuel efficiency in your car. The average American walks about 300 yards per day, but because it’s in short “bursts” (the walk from the elevator to your desk, for instance), the benefit of even this small amount of exercise is mitigated. Start taking lunchtime walks, and use the stairs at work. You’ll feel the difference right away and stop feeling like the Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man.

19.  Tighten your belt—and love it.
       $

    We Americans are ardent consumers. We unabashedly buy the newest and the best, and we don’t like being told that we can’t have something. Since Jimmy Carter put on a sweater, told the nation to turn down the thermostat and then got pounded in the next election, belt-tightening has never played well. But living a more eco-friendly life will require us to make small but frequent sacrifices for a greater good we may never personally notice. It might take us a few extra minutes to get somewhere because we’re taking transit, or we might need to remember to bring a Nalgene bottle, or we might vote to pay a few extra dollars a year in taxes to support transit or alternative-energy projects, but it’s worth it. Take responsibility for accepting externalized costs: Don’t complain about higher gas prices when it leads to fewer Hummers and more people taking transit. Vote for instituting economic signals—penalizing things we want to discourage (like giving away plastic bags instead of charging for them) and offering incentives for what we want to encourage (like offering rebates on solar projects). Living lighter can be freeing, for you and the planet, but it often means putting your own immediate needs second. That is, until you’re feeling better than ever, and have a few extra bucks to toss around. Now who’s making sacrifices?

20.  Buy locally grown and made products.
       $$

    Almost every state in the United States buys the majority of its food from someplace else, even when the states grow it themselves. The environmental costs of transporting all this stuff is huge—over a quarter of all transportation on roads and freeways is dedicated to hauling food long distances. Not to mention, when you buy food from big supermarkets, little of the money you spend trickles down. According to the Oakland Food System Assessment report, “In the U.S., on average, 75 cents of every dollar spent on food goes to processors, packagers, shippers, advertisers and retailers,” not the growers. So by buying from local farmers at farmers markets, or by buying a share in a community farm (like Live Power Farm in Mendocino or Full Belly Farm north of Sacramento), you not only keep the money in the community, you keep the vegetables from being FedExed to colder climes, racking up more travel miles. Find a farmers market near you at www.urbanvillageonline.com.

21.  Lighten your wallet.
       $$$

      Americans take a bad rap for being stingy with donations to nonprofits, but it’s mostly undeserved. We gave nearly $2 billion after the Southeast Asian tsunami, and set the all-time single-disaster record of $3.12 billion after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The only trouble is, we tend to blow our charity wad on high-profile disasters, and so other day-to-day organizations suffer. Make it part of your plan to donate regularly to environmental organizations, which are busy curbing polluters, protecting open space from overdevelopment, stopping logging in the dwindling rainforest, promoting alternative energy sources and defending lower-income neighborhoods from their polluting neighbors. The Bay Area, as you might imagine, is home to many of these organizations, including Earthjustice (an environmental law firm, www.earthjustice.org); Greenbelt Alliance (which promotes Bay Area land conservation, www.greenbelt.org); Rainforest Action Network (a rainforest protection organization, www.ran.org); Save the Bay (which protects San Francisco Bay, www.savesfbay.org); and the granddaddy of them all, the Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org).

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Consumer Key

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$$$   Expensive