When we are Shopping, we can; “buy what we need, not what we want”, think about renting and borrowing things that are infrequently needed, buy used items from garage sales and second-hand stores.
At home we are able to; replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, use aerators on faucets and shower heads, weather-strip windows and doors.
Since emission of gases has high percentage of contribution to this problem, it is time we thought alternatives for our transportation such as; walking, cycling, car pooling and using public transportation, when driving, reduce idling and maintaining correct tire pressure, considering car sharing programs or renting. In addition, to minimise long hours of travel we can choose places to spend our vacation, travel and work as close to our home as possible.
It is true that our busy lifestyle has changed our food patterns to a greater extent and takes away our health from us limiting our existence shorter than our ancestors. So, I think it is a good idea to have second thoughts about our food choices like; choosing local and organic foods that are in season, and supporting local food producers, eat less meat etc.
When washing and drying, you can wash full loads of clothes in cold water and hang to air dry. As we all know the methods that uses for heating and cooling of our houses also have a negative impact on this issue. Hence for summer air conditioning, we can set our thermostat to 24°C or 25°C and for winter heating, set our thermostat to 19°C or 20°C. Further, we can install ceiling fans and programmable thermostats.
Even though we did not notice, we waste lot of water unless we pay attention to our bathroom basics. To avoid such waste we can consider taking short showers instead of baths and close water taps while brushing our teeth. Besides, we can be more careful while cleaning our houses by choosing natural, non-toxic cleaning products as well as making simple, natural cleaners with ingredients like vinegar, baking soda and water.
As we are aware our disposals also make negative contribution to this issue, so if we can donate, reuse and recycle items before throwing them into the trash and taking the harmful materials like chemicals, batteries, electronics, etc. to local hazardous waste depots or recyclers we can minimise the environmental pollution as well as we are saving our scares resources.
It is true that we as individuals cannot make much difference to this effect since the large oil and manufacturing companies make it even harder, but if we neglect our role today in our capacity since the collectively it counts a lot, we all will have to regret in the very near future.
