Going Green ‘ Why and How

Copyright (c) 2008 Virginia Ginsburg

It seems as if everywhere you go someone is talking about being “green,” but what exactly does being green mean? And why should we do it? Most importantly, how far do we need to go to make an impact?

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
In its simplest definition, being green means taking into account the Earth’s health when making choices about how you live your life. This means considering the ecosystems that support all inhabitants of the planet. In the big picture, being green means making choices based on the impact they will have on our water, land and air resources.

Humans take a large toll on all three of these critical resources – every product that we purchase involves taking resources from the Earth. Take a look at a simple organic apple. Feels pretty virtuous, right? It absolutely is, but keep in mind the requirements of bringing that apple to your table:
1. Energy: the farmer relies on vehicles and machinery that run on electricity to grow and harvest the apple, and the apple must travel in a vehicle to reach your home
2. Water: the farmer must use water to irrigate his fields
3. Air: the farmer’s vehicles and all transport vehicles involved emit carbon dioxide

So you see, even for a very simple, good fruit, we rely on the Earth’s resources. Many more resources are required and drained when producing a non-organic apple, and even more when creating the thousands of products that we rely on each day.

THE GREEN SCALE
Going green can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be – it all depends on the depth of your commitment to the principles behind the movement. Regardless of where you fall on the “Green Scale” of commitment, you can still make an impact in an everyday way.

The Hard-Core Greenie
This type of person makes every decision based on having zero negative impact on the Earth. Additionally, they frequently seek to make decisions that have a positive impact on the Earth. This Greenie tends to make decisions that may have a negative impact on their lives in exchange for the positive impact he believes he is making on the World.

The Moderate Greenie
This person tries to make green decisions, but sometimes must sacrifice her goal to be green for comfort, convenience, cost or effectiveness. Comfortable in the middle-ground, this kind of greenie weighs the cost-benefit ratio of her own desires with environmentally-sound concepts.

The Light Greenie
This type of person means well, and is indeed making a positive impact on the Earth, but the fact is that there are a lot of other priorities in her life, and so she doesn’t always make decisions based solely on how green they are, and tends to forget that she even has green choices.

10 SIMPLE STEPS FOR ALL GREENIES
Which type of Greenie are you? Regardless of your level of involvement in the movement, it is important to remember that even the smallest steps make an impact on the green movement, and everyone can always add just one or two more things to his list of green choices and move up the spectrum depending on life circumstances at any moment in time.

Here are some simple steps that every Greenie can take to move up the spectrum and ultimately make a greater impact on the green movement:

1. Buy direct from farmers, co-ops and free-trade distributors
2. Eat minimally-processed food
3. Stick with organic and/or sustainably-grown foods and textiles whenever possible
4. Reuse any materials that you can before you buy new ones
5. Recycle paper, glass and plastics
6. Do not dispose of toxic waste (e.g. batteries, cell phones, computer electronics, light bulbs, paint, etc.) in the trash can
7. Take public transportation, carpool, walk, or ride your bike instead of driving alone in a car
8. Lower the heat in winter and raise the temperature in the summer; install fans to help better circulate the air rather than using energy to heat/cool it
9. Lower the temperature on your water heater
10. Buy only Energy Star appliances

No matter how hard-core you are, we still all make an impact on the Earth just by living in it. This is called our “Ecological Footprint.” If you are curious about the impact you make on the Earth, take the Ecological Footprint Quiz and compare yourself to others in the U.S. and worldwide. http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp