10 Easy Ways to Be Green You Never Thought Of

We all know how to live green, right? Wrong!

Most of us understand the basics, like turning off light switches and recycling our waste, but there are still many environmentally-unfriendly things we do or use every day, without thinking.   I write about that in more detail in my article Green Living.  Here are a few more oddball ideas which may surprise you!

As you read these ideas, you may be forgiven for thinking they're just too small to matter - but that's precisely why they're worth doing. Because they're so small, it should be fairly painless to make the changes - and the payoff could be surprisingly large.

The statistics I've given come from Australia. Even though our population is quite small, the savings still add up to a lot - if Americans or Europeans adopted these ideas, just think what we could achieve.

1. Put down that stapler! If every office worker in Australia used one less staple a day, it would save about 3 tonnes of steel every year. Just think what we'd save if the whole world did it!
2. Don't buy cleansers and soaps with "exfoliating beads". The beads are plastic and are small enough to wash straight through the sewerage system and into the mouths of sea creatures.
   
3. Get yourself a charger and buy rechargeable batteries instead of disposables BUT...
   
4. Don't charge your batteries - or your cellphone - overnight. Most mobile phones only need about two hours to fully charge. It's been estimated that in the UK, about $50 million is wasted every year, just by leaving chargers on all night. That's a lot of wasted energy!
5. Recycle your old glasses the best way possible - by giving them away for re-use. About 200 million people in the world need spectacles and can't afford them. In Australia, you can hand your old specs into any OPSM optometrist, or to your local Lions club.
6. Recycle your old wine corks. Any branch of the Body Shop accepts them in Australia, and gives them to the Girl Guides who recycle them to raise funds.
7. Park your car instead of going through the drive-thru. Ever thought how much petrol you use idling in the queue? I find I get served faster, too, so it doesn't cost me any extra time.
8. Pee in the shower. Yes, I didn't believe this one either - but read this Hub on peeing in the shower by Barry Rutherford, before you dismiss it!
9. Log out and switch off your computer every night. If your company policy prevents that, at least switch off your monitor. The cost of running a PC overnight isn't much - but computers generate a lot of heat. That heat builds up in an enclosed office building, so the air conditioning has to run extra hard next morning to bring the temperature back down - and that can cost thousands.
10. Turn your heating thermostats down 1 degree. Yes, 1 degree. Doesn't sound like much? It will save about 10% on your heating bill. For hot water, think about turning it down more - a lot more. Why waste energy heating water to scalding point, only to add cold water when you use it? If you have instantaneous hot water, it should be heated to less than 60 degrees Centigrade.

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Jewellery photo by Urbanwoodswalker on Flickr.