It is one thing to talk about the environment and express concern about its degradation. Its quite another to actually get up and do something about it. Luckily for us, one does not need to hit the streets with protest banners against polluting effects of industry to make a difference...they can do things right in their homes to help the green cause. Here are ten simple things you can do to make the world a cleaner and greener place.
1. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Some estimates suggest that domestic power users can save up to 12% of their monthly power bills by remembering to flick the switch off.
2. Reuse and recycle paper. We often use just one side of a page for writing or taking a print, leaving the other side blank and unused. This can be used later for rough notes and miscellaneous writing. This way we can save a lot of pages, and thus a lot of precious trees.
3. Use cold water to wash clothes. Heating water consumes large amounts of energy, and just piles numbers onto your electricity bill. So use hot water only when unavoidable.
4. Turn off the geyser. Once we are done showering in the morning, we often let the geyser run, going on and off on auto-cut. This uselessly consumes electricity that we would be wise to save by switching the geyser off once we are done in the bathroom.
5. Buy a cloth bag. Far too many times we go shopping for stuff and end up returning with our groceries in plastic bags. If you buy a cloth bag and take it to the market everytime, you will effectively reduce the dependence on non-biodegradable plastics.
6. Go organic. The market place is nowadays full of organic produce that have been grown without the use of environment unfriendly chemical fertilizers. Your choices at the shop will determine the extent of use of such harmful chemicals on our farmlands.
7. Take the train. Whenever possible, take advantage of public transportation systems such as local trains, metros, buses etc. instead of using your own car. Not only will it help cut down on pollution, it will help you save a lot that you would otherwise would have spent on petrol.
8. Switch to CFLs. Traditional incandescent lamps consume far greater power than the new long lasting CFLs. Use these slightly more expensive lamps to realize long time savings on your electricity bill.
9. Throw the plastic stuff in the bin. When we carelessly litter our roads with plastic packets, wrappers and the like, we help choke our drains and sewers with these impervious pollutants. They can later lead to water logging in the monsoon season, polluting the ground water and posing health problems.
10. Turn off the tap. We often leave our taps running while we are brushing our teeth or shaving. This cumulatively leads to the wastage of huge quantities of potable water. So turn off the tap when not in use and fix the leaky pipes and fixtures to help conserve this precious life giving resource.
Hope you find these tips useful and not too inconvenient. Every step taken by us as a community will help make this planet a greener place for future generation. Onebluesphere invites more such tips from you the reader.
