Bring Your Lunch

Not only are pre-packaged lunches a good example of over-packaging, but the quality of the food inside is highly debatable. Bringing your own lunch is good for you and for the environment.

Dry Cleaning

The dry cleaning process uses many chemicals, such as tetrachloroethylene. If this word is unfamiliar, tetrachloroethylene is a chemical that is associated with possible cancers, that can aggravate asthma and allergies, and obviously, is no friend of the environment. A solution is to buy clothes that don’t require dry cleaning. If you must dry clean or have a number of non-replaceable ‘dry clean only’ items in your wardrobe, try removing stains with cold water or by spot cleaning. When selecting a dry cleaning shop, choose one with green policies—reusing hangers and garment bags, for example.
Eat at Green Restaurants

It’s a common practice in the business world to take important customers out to dinner. If this is something you do, support restaurants with green policies. Choose restaurants that incorporate green practices into their day to day activities, such as by installing low water consumption toilets or featuring organic food on their menus. Other good practices for restaurants are composting, and recycling bottles and plastic.

Doggy Bags

It’s very common in the United States for restaurants to prepare take-home leftover bags for people who don’t finish their entire meal. Most of the time, these leftovers are packaged in Styrofoam because it’s cheap, sturdy, and well-insulated. Next time you go to your favourite restaurant, why not bring along your own carry-out container made of plastic?

Thawing Meat

In this fast-paced world, it’s now common to decide what to cook at the last minute and thaw frozen food on the counter or in the microwave. Using the microwave or stove obviously means using power, which we don’t want. Even thawing food on the counter needs heat, often generated by your house’s heating system. On top of this, meat is not something you want to leave at room temperature too long as bacteria may develop. The best way to thaw food is to place it in the refrigerator the day before you intend to cook it. This way you reduce the power needed by your refrigerator, since the meal acts like an ice pack in a cooler. Also, as mentioned above, it’s better to thaw meat in a cold place to avoid bacterial proliferation.

Food Waste

Let’s face it, we have more than what we can eat in North America. When planning meals, start with the ingredients in your refrigerator, not with what you’d like to eat. Also, use leftovers for lunch at school or work. Eating only what you need to and not wasting the rest can help feed the rest of the world.

Storage Containers

When storing leftovers, try to use glass or even porcelain containers instead of plastic. This avoids possible chemical transfer from plastic containers, such as phthalates.

Bring Your Bags

Bring your own bags when grocery shopping. If the product is small enough, decline a bag. Plastic bags take forever to disappear from landfills and the environment. They also cause damage to wildlife. For example, sea turtles in the ocean often die when they mistake these bags for jellyfish and eat them.

Eco-tourism

Have you ever tried eco-tourism? This type of travel will bring you to places less crowded with tourists and where you can actually see and learn how people live in a given region or country. As an added benefit, you’ll also encourage more regional tourism.

Pack Light

Not only will packing light help you when you travel and need to carry your things up the stairs or on the street, but you’ll also save the transportation fuel (plane, train and automobile) needed to transport the weight of your belongings.

ATM Receipts

When going to the ATM, ask yourself why you request a receipt. When ATM banking first began, there was an understandable culture change away from going to the bank and speaking to a person to retrieve money from your bank account. People were worried that the ‘machine’ would make errors, or they wanted to be able to validate that, at the end of the month, everything was OK. But now, who does that sort of reconciliation? ATMs are now integrated into our lives and requesting a receipt is a waste of paper and time.

Paperless Bank Statements

Ask to receive your monthly bank statements electronically and save them on your computer. You’ll save paper and space. Don’t forget to make back-up copies of your hard drive every six months.

Electronic Tax Refunds

If you’re expecting an income tax refund, request that your refund be direct-deposited into your bank account. This option will save paper, money, and time.

Make Donations

If you really don’t need certain things such as clothes or furniture, see if you can’t donate these items to a local community organization rather than taking the easy route and throwing them into the trash.

Hemp Clothing

Hemp is a plant that doesn’t require pesticides to be grown productively, and its fibre is a very good material for making clothing. While hemp is more famous for its smoking-related properties, clothing-use hemp does not contain the THC that causes hallucinogenic effects.

Recycle All the Way

There are three important steps to recycling. First, you need to identify recyclable materials and store them for recycling. Think beyond what you’d usually recycle and go out of your way to gather materials that normally wouldn’t be recycled, for example, pick up things left on the street and recycle obsolete clothing or furniture. Second, you have to get your recyclables out to the street for the weekly collection, where available, or take them to your local recycling center, especially if they’re over-sized, like pots and pans, or mattresses, etc. The third step is that you have to encourage the recycling industry by buying recycled materials

Become a Vegetarian

You probably know that meat requires more energy to make it to your plate, more square footage to produce, and consumes more resources. Sure, changing to a 100% meat-free diet is probably going to be hard for you if you’re used to eating meat at every meal, but it’s taking the small steps that make a big difference, especially if you’re making changes as a family. Try replacing only one meal per week. See how your family adapts, then try to decrease the quantity of meat you buy every week. By taking this slow approach and sticking to it, you will adapt more easily.

Rent Movies at Home

Instead of going out to see a movie or renting one, download one from home. Cable companies offer this service now, just ask for it. Not only will this save you gas, but you’ll be sure that the movie you want is available, which is not the case when you go to your local rental store.

Plant a Small Garden

Planting a vegetable garden brings lots of benefits. First, you grow (organic) plants helpful to the overall ecosystem. Second, you eat good, healthy food that didn’t need fuel to transport. Third, you spend time outside caring for your garden instead of staying inside. The physical activity and fresh air are good for you.

Give Products a Second Life

When building an outside shed for storing your lawnmower and patio furniture, why not put in a used door or used window? When you need furniture or lamps, why not look for antiques and check yard sales? You’ll sometimes be surprised to find these items in good shape at bargain prices. Giving discarded products a second life is an application of one of the big three “R”`s of green living: Reusing.

Build and Own Smaller Houses

Small is beautiful, as they say. Over the past two decades, the size of the average house has grown more than 20 %. This extra square footage is unnecessary in terms of excess energy consumption, furniture, gadgets, and gizmos. Make sure you build the right size home and if, eventually, you think you’ll need more rooms, renovate when you really need to. You can plan accordingly and design your house with these new needs in mind in order to save costs when you actually add a room or section. Also think of later years when the kids leave the house. Do you want to continue living in that house, and if so, think about all these empty rooms and the energy needed to maintain and keep those rooms clean. You may want to move to a smaller house at that point, too, closer to your children and grandchildren.

Avoid Using Pesticides

Pesticides are made from chemicals, and while effective at eliminating pests, they’re also destructive to other natural elements surrounding the sprayed area. If fact, it’s alarming to know that the long-term impact of some of these pesticides are still unknown.

Don’t Buy DVDs

Some people like to buy copies of their favourite movies on DVD, but when you think about these purchases realistically, how many times do you really think you’ll watch those DVDs? In most cases, DVDs are watched two to three times, at maximum. If you buy several DVDs, you’ll generate waste when you eventually get rid of them. Instead, try just renting your favourite movie, and if you really want to watch it twice, rent it a second time. With the comparative cost of new and rental DVDs, you’ll need to rent a movie three times before covering the price of a new one.

City Parks

Take advantage of your city parks. Going to the park is a great way to get away from cars and buildings and to feel the grass. Municipal parks are maintained by your tax dollars, so get involved and make your voice heard if you’d like to have playgrounds, soccer fields, or other amenities installed. Let the authorities know, and get your neighbours involved too, if need be.

Shorter Showers

Get in the habit of reducing your shower time. Every minute you cut can save up to five gallons of water. Over one year, this will add up to 2000 gallons of water saved per person. You can see that if you’re a part of a family of five and you all make this change, this will result in a huge difference. If you have children, think about this: Do they really need to take a bath every day? You don’t want to neglect hygiene, but too frequent washing causes the skin to lose its natural oils which protect against bacteria.