” Only after the last tree has been cut off,
And the last river poisoned,
Will we realize that we can’t eat money.”
Tips for an environment-friendly living:
Shopping:
- Buy locally made food and goods (opting against imported stuff & malls), to avert the hefty greenhouse emissions due to transportation.
- Exception: The locally sold stuff that ain’t energy-efficient
- Avoid packaged items wherever possible and save on the industrial pollution caused while manufacturing packaging materials.
Food habits:
- Refrain from non-veg whenever feasible [Why]. Limiting the meat intake also helps fight other increasingly menacing issues such as the food/water crisis & heart diseases [More].
Plastic:
- Reduce and reuse. Replace multiple plastic bags by one cloth/jute bag.
- Stay off disposable/use-and-throw cups, (water) bottles, and so on.
Electricity: 
- Disable the screen saver. It saves nothing and burns energy.
- Switch off the monitor every time you step away (for 2+ minutes), & the whole computer for 20+ minutes.
- Take into account power consumption while picking a fridge, washing machine, etc. [Similarly, battery quality/charging frequency for a mobile].
- Replace all yellow bulbs by the immensely power-saving CFLs.
- Avoid bathing with hot water whenever possible or use a solar heater.
- Curtail the AC usage – in the home/car (Better: Curtail the car usage!).
- Ask your office to turn down the AC level at least by 1 or 2 degrees.
- Prefer stairs to elevators whenever possible (e.g., while coming down).
- Do away with decorative lighting, done as a show of prosperity or joy.
- Check the data explosion onto the web. Delete old emails, and unwanted history while replying. Avoid unneeded up/down-loads & creation of accounts.
- Get rid of energy leaks. Two instances: A) Close the TV using the switch, not just the remote. B) Unplug mobile chargers even though not in use.
Water:
- Always use the water tap with minimally needed flow [E.g., don't let it run wastefully while brushing your teeth].
- Get leaking taps/toilets fixed immediately.
- The toilet flush is one of the biggest in-door consumers of water – up to 16 liters per push. Get a low-flush (e.g., dual) toilet that lets you regulate the outflow of water (by controlling how long you hold the flush knob on for).
- Clean your vehicles, floor, etc. with a wet cloth, NOT by pouring water.
- Choose a bucket bath instead of a shower bath.
- Give up fizzy cold drinks (e.g., Coke, Pepsi, Fanta, Limca, 7up). Their plants extract outrageous quantities of ground water from our villages, creating intense water shortages.
- Invest in a rain water harvesting system, if possible.
Transportation:
- Prefer mass transport (buses, trains)/bicycles/vehicle pooling, avoiding autos/individual vehicles, whenever possible.
- Choose vehicles based on mileage more than looks/comfort.
- Long walks are as pleasurable as long drives.
- Cars contribute more to congestion and climate change, than one’s coolness/status! [A witty cartoon with compelling facts].
- Turn off your vehicle’s engine at signals, keep the tyres fully filled and minimize speed changes/breaks for improved mileage.
Trees:
- Do not print – even ATM receipts – in a carefree way.
- Utilize the blank sides of one-sided print-outs for rough work.
- Avoid paper tissues [use handkerchiefs instead].
- Avoid paper/plastic cups for coffee/water [use mugs/reusable bottles].
- Set the printer default to two-sided.
- Use notebooks thriftily. Utilize all the space available, including margins..
- Help plant trees around your home/college [Cliched, but crucial].
- Gardening – including home composting – is a lovely hobby!
- Mark/celebrate special days by getting trees planted in 500 Rs each.
Fire crackers: 
- Give them up. Apart from eliminating poisonous emissions, you will help prevent small kids from working in extremely unhealthy and unsafe surroundings [Poster].
“ We don’t appreciate the worth of water until the well is dry.”
PS: A student from NGO Prerna got me to do this. I’ve tried to underscore things that are high in impact and easy to implement. Have I missed any crucial ones?
Filed under: climate change | Tagged: atm receipts, bicycle, bus, can't eat money, car pooling, carbon footprint, CFL, climate change, coke, cold drinks, composting, cycling, decorative lighting, don't print unless necessary, elevator, energy efficient, energy leak, environment, fire crackers, global warming, hibernate, last tree, leaking taps, long drives, mass transport, memory forest, paper cups, paper tissues, pepsi, pollution, public transport, save plastic, solar water heater, status symbol, switch off monitor, water conservation, water scarcity, worth of water, yellow bulb
Car (and even auto-rickshaw) pool-in could be a nice way to reduce pollution and traffic problems. A nice effort: http://commuteeasy.com/
@Anonymous: Thanks for sharing this site. Two-wheeler pooling should also be looked at. This includes hitchhiking which I have benefited from, on several occasions :).
Very good post, a couple of points to add.
1) Minimize the use of Air Conditioner in the vehicles – it boosts the consumtion of gas by a significant margin.
2) Make a practice of switching off lights wherever we see it left turned on without being used – we find this a lot in corporate offices. While you are leaving for the day, look around your cubicles, conference rooms, offices wherever you see lights/projectors left turned on and noone is using it then go ahead and turn them off.
This doesn’t apply just to offices but wherever we go, we should make an attempt to stop wastage of energy.
really a very good post.
if we ppl understand and start putting every instruction mentioned in the post than lot of problem can be solved.
I agree with the car pulling and less use of ACs….
Not just the Tata Nano, Center for Science & Environment disapproves of all cars: http://ngopost.org/story.php?title=Not_just_the_Nano_—. It’s high time we embrace BCW [Bus, Cycle, Walk] – the green modes of transport, and resort to auto rickshaws & private vehicles as rarely as possible!
One way of conserving water by flushing: Fill a huge bottle (wider bottle than longer) with water and keep it in the flush tank. Since the tank collects water based on level, each flush will save that much water as the space occupied by the bottle. Maybe not save, since we are still using water, but definitely reduce water use by 2 – 4 liters each time.
hey
you forgot for environmental friendly living we need to stop eating non-veg.
@Chaitra: Interesting idea. It helps with the modern-type (for the want of a better descriptor) toilets (which you find in malls and corporate offices), where you can’t control the outflow of water much/at all. In our (rented) home, we have an old style flush mechanism where the water stops the moment you take your hand/push off the flush.
@Jaideep: Spot on. Thanks, will update right away.
“until the last fish has died” is what you missed from the native American wisdom you quoted.
I’m truly impressed by your thoughts and amount of work that you have already done. It is sad that blogs like http://fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com or Big B’s blog attract more visitors.
Keep up the good work, and let me know if you are interested in volunteering for http://www.saahas.org during the Sunfeast marathon on May 31.
@Kishan: Thanks. I am aware of saahas and its amazing work in waste management and other eco-friendly aspects. I have been meaning to ask you people about a domestic water recycling system. A simple instance is directing the water used to wash vessels/cloths to flush toilets, or even water your plans when it’s not chemical-mixed. Any leads?
[...] For example whenever I refuse plastic bags, I try make my reasons clear to the shop-keepers too . Here is a complete list of such tiny steps that can make a substantial [...]
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88gb3QWA7i0 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joVL70wtLAs are good videos to start with.
Also see question in http://www.indiawaterportal.org for domestic waste water recycling.
You need to separately process water from kitchen sink and washing machine.
You can also switch to ecofriendly detergents if you plan to water your plants, see http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/681-ecofriendly-alternatives-washing-laundry
Hope these were of some help.
Well said, add the burning slaves to the elephant in the room! Can I add some energy saving advice, particularly Solar Water heating. In the UK, solar Water heating requires lots of technology and a relatively high cost to get what heat is available from summer sunshine. You can see this in websites such as http://www.solaruk.net and my own http://www.solarkent.co.uk. However, the further south the greater the energy from the sun and the less technology needed.
When living in Pakistan, G-6-3 in Islamabad I set up my own simple solar water heating. A very long length of black plastic hose that I coiled on my roof. The length worked as a water store in itself. One end was connected to the mains (actually my roof mounted water tank) the other came to the kitchen to its own hot water tap. It works! Okay you can only use a pipe lengths worth of water but on a sunny day its sometimes less than an hour to heat up again! It doesn’t work in the winter nor at night. Also we only used it for washing. Had I stayed longer we would have used it for bathing.
The cost, well I think it was about 30 metres of pipe and a few fittings and a tap. A hole drilled through the wall and a join into the outlet from my roof tank. Certainly a tiny fraction of what I paid for my hot water panels in the UK!
Basically, don’t look at modern ‘technological’ solar water heating and say you can’t afford it. Go for the appropraite option.