Environmental

Ok, the Environment. We all live in it. We all have to breath the same air and drink the same water. We have to walk the same streets and go to the same beaches. Why then do some people have such a blatant disregard for the environment, both locally and globally.

There are some incredibly easy steps you can take to making your life more environmentally friendly. If we could just get more people to do them truly vast amounts of energy could be saved and truly vast amounts of litter, garbage and destruction could be cut.

Here are my five TOP TIPS TO SAVE THE WORLD!

1) get your office to switch over to recycled paper. Only buy recycled paper for your own use. Greater demand for recycled paper will mean more companies selling it, more paper saved from landfills, cheaper prices due to competition and less trees hacked down. Modern recycled paper is good quality and you really won't notice the difference from normal paper.

2) leave the car at home. For short journeys walk. For longer journeys see if there is a public transport route you can take. I'm not saying no one should drive, many people don't live/work in suitable locations. But if you live innercity and you work innercity, its probably as cheap and as quick for you to take public transport. Doing so cuts down on fuel use and wear and tear on your car which is a) cheaper for you and, b) better for the environment. Where public transport isn't an option see if there is anyone you can share a car with, carpooling is easy and cheaper for all involved. Plus it beats trying to find and pay for parking in town. As an added bonus, less vehicles on the road means less pollution, especially innercity which means health benefits for all.

3) turn the heating off. Some people leave their heating on all the time or turn in on when they get home and then leave it. Try running your heater for 1 hour and then turning it off. Put on a jumper or hoody, find the draughty areas in your house and plug them with draught excluders and curtains. Your energy bills will plummet i promise. And as a bonus, you help the environment by less burning of fossil fuels and less heat wastage.

4) Recycle. Google recycling find out where your local recycling bins are and what services there are. Where i live they will give you a free wheely bin for paper and glass. all you have to do is fill them up. Its such a little thing that can really help. Ask your office manager to get a recycling service set up. Don't skip old electronics, send them to a recycler, it'll cost the price of a stamp. Recycling means less strip mining for ores to make the metals/plastics/whatever in your goods, less energy to refine them and less waste when they are thrown away.

5) Conserve. Reduce your actual consumption. Buy music online where you can (no CD's, no cases, no transport costs, etc), check out charity shops every now and then (some good bargains and everything in them is basically recycled), buy food in bulk to reduce packaging (say 20 frozen chicken breasts rather than 10 lots of 2 spread out over the weeks). little things like this make a huge difference.

In fact that last sentence should be the catch-phrase of the environmental movement.

"little things can make a huge difference"

As an example. Lets say my house hold (3 guys) chucks away 2 beer bottles each a week (a figure i plucked out the air). Thats 6 bottles a week. Or 312 bottles a year. Now lets assume that (another random figure) there are 10,000 households like ours throughout the UK. Its most likely way, way more than that. But even with that low figure, we are now looking at 3,120,000 bottles a year. Thats a lot of bottles, from only 2 a week from a light drinker. Now how much do we get if we add in the bottles from families that have a bottle of wine once a week? Or where real boozers live?

If we re-cycled ONLY glass, its obvious from my uberfuzzy study that we would be saving ourselves enormous amounts of landfill, enormous amounts of energy (its easier to recycle than make bottles) and enormous amounts of money (cheaper too).

Now add in the cardboard you food is packed in. The paper your newspaper is made of. You see where this is going. Yet on the individual scale its so very easy to do. You don't even have to be perfect about it. It doesn't matter if 1 beer bottle a week gets in the normal trash by accident, if the other 5 are in the recycled bin its going to make a difference.

So, faithful readers (all three of you), your mission should you choose to accept it. Put into operation at least 1 of the above. If you already do more than 3, give yourself a pat on the back for being cool.