Businesses ‘Going Green’

With the preservation of our planet’s natural beauty on everyone’s mind today, ‘Going Green’ not only helps the environment and protects our natural resources, but involves only minor lifestyle changes and minimal expense for individuals searching for ways to contribute to the ‘Green Earth’ preservation effort. When shopping for your favorite signature B&B recipe ingredients, bring along your own reusable bags. Green reusable bags reduce the amount of paper and plastic bags that are typically discarded after a single shopping trip. Plastic bags take thousands of years to decompose at local landfills, and if disposed of in our oceans, are often confused by sea creatures as food such as jellyfish, and they can be killed upon consuming them. There are many ways to save on electricity usage as well, therefore reducing power demands on local coal and nuclear power plants. Wash your clothes in cold water, open windows for natural lighting, turn off unneeded lights and appliances, and unplug or shutdown unused electronics such as computers and laptops. Automobiles are one of the largest contributors to global pollution, as every gallon of gasoline produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, so keep your vehicle tuned-up and tires properly inflated to conserve fuel. Going the speed limit and avoiding rapid acceleration also will save on gas costs.

Shop and support your local farmers markets. You can cook fresh, organic meals impressing your bed and breakfast guests while assisting a local farmer who uses less or perhaps no pesticides that contaminate soil and can seep into your water supply. Buy a reusable water bottle to take with you on the go and re clean with soap and water after each use. This will eliminate the buying of bottled water at the store, and save you money as most bottled water costs are comparable to soda or juice prices. And, below 20% of all water bottles purchased today are actually recycled, and they are quickly becoming the main trash item in most of our countries landfills. Also, most plastic water bottles are made with petroleum, and when the bottle warms, can leach dangerous chemicals into your water. As you can see, ‘Going Green’ does not require paradigm shifts in your current lifestyle, and with minor changes you can help preserve our planet’s beauty for generations to come. And don’t forget, be sure to share with your guests the various ‘Green’ environmental techniques your bed and breakfast inn has implemented, because we all care about the future of this beautiful planet and the preservation of it’s illustrious future.

Tagged as: Businesses, Going, Green