Earth Day – 10 Simple things that can make a difference

Today was Earth Day, and if you live in Silicon Valley you just can't miss it. Every offline and online property was mentioning earth day, and if Northern California is a reflection of the entire earth, Al Gore can probably calm down.

The reality of course is quite different. Most people still don't care, and do very little for the environment. Doing something is important, but a lot of environmental activists are pushing ideas and action that are just too much (I am not going to do-my-own-recycling any time soon). What am I trying to say? Here is a list of 10 SIMPLE things that can easily be implemented, and can make a difference. All of these are things that we have implemented in our own household:

1. Drive a hybrid (I have a Camry hybrid).
2. Walk to school (Easy to do for us. We are 5 minutes away).
3. Recycle (Easy in Northern California. Hard in Israel).
4. Dispose Batteries in designated areas (I keep them at home. I have a huge pile by now. My wife claims that one day they will blow up and I will become the Incredible Hulk).
5. Buy Organic food (Healthier) and locally grown (Takes less transportation to deliver them to the store, decreasing pollution).
6. Reuse shopping bags (The green kind) or use paper bags and not plastic.
7. Shut down the automatic watering system once it rains (Saves money too).
8. Use Environment friendly Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. They are quite ugly, but save energy.
9. Talk with the kids about the environment (Next generation needs to better than us, and way better than our parents).
10. Think of other things that can be done to make this list longer (Needed one more thing to make it to 10…)

There are still many things we can improve on: We create too much garbage, we don't save water, we still have one non-hybrid car, we use non-environment friendly diapers, and we still LOVE our fireplace. But at least we are improving.

Happy Earth day.

Comments

[Aner]

yeah yeah yeah....:-)

I can't stand the "save the world" chant coming from the 4x4 packed interstate highways. The US economy needs to decrease consumption. Period. Families with 2 cars, 4 TV sets and 5 ACs are what got us here. Industrializing one pound of beef takes up the energy required to drive 200 miles with an average family car.

Then again, two wrongs don't make it right. We should all do what we can.

[Rudy]

As someone who sells light bulbs for a living, I am less enthusiastic than most about compact fluorescent bulbs. This is due to the fact that the ones currently available contain significant amounts of mercury. If one of these bulbs should break inside of a person’s home, it could cause a challenging disposal situation. It is my belief that the technology should progress to a point at which the mercury levels are low or nonexistent before people changeover their entire homes. Another consideration is that as these bulbs burn out, they will most likely be thrown away as though they are normal rubbish and landfills will have incredibly high levels of mercury in their soil as a result.

[Amir]

The truth is that there's a collision between consumerism and saving the environment. If you really wanna help, consume less. Take what you really need and not what you can. Modesty (if not taken too far) is a quality that helps improve one's happiness.

[Kristina Richardson]

Most CFLs today on the market contain less than 5mgs of mercury and there are CFL options out there that contain as little as 1.5mgs of mercury- which can hardly be called a “significant amounts of mercury” considering that many item in your home contain 100s of times more of mercury including your computer. Mercury levels in CFLs can never be “nonexistent” since mercury is a necessary component of a CFL and there is no other known element that is capable of replacing it. But CFLs actually prevent more mercury from entering the environment. According to the Union of Concerned Scientist, “a coal-fired power plant will emit about four times more mercury to keep an incandescent bulb glowing, compared with a CFL of the same light output”.