A lot of books, articles and web sites have already been published to bring information on eco friendly way of life. Albeit being a realtor in Toronto gives me plenty of opportunities to talk about the many ways of green living with my clients, my topic today will be a bit more specific. Most people have already come across the crucial eco-tips, so we are not going to try to summarize them here again. Today I would like to contemplate on the three very common topics which people from the industrialized countries usually take for granted: food, water and electricity.
Food
Since most people (I believe!) regularly recycle paper, glass and tins, most of your household garbage is probably composted of groceries. The bulk of this food would usually be in very good condition, sometimes not even out of its wrapper or container. We can find out that out of all the groceries that Canadian households pick out and pay for in shops, 20 to 30% eventually ends up in the dustbin. Adding shops and restaurants’ waste, that’s 7 to 14 billion tonnes of groceries per year. In Canadian dollars, that’s $3 to 5 billion per year.
These figures are quite shocking, aren’t they? The main paradox is that we throw away so much food every day and at the same time so many charity societies are working hard, trying to help people who don’t have enough to eat. But wait before you start packing the food you are not going to consume and sending it to places full of hungry people. There are some other things you might want to try instead of throwing the food away. 1. Try to utilize the residue food when preparing your next meal. If you cooked too much rice for supper yesterday, you might want to use it in stuffed peppers filling today. 2. In your food cabinet, always store food that’s closest to the expiration date in front of food that last longer. 3. It may happen that you know beforehand that there is some food you are not going to be able to use before its expiration date. Instead of throwing it away, try to find a local charity or soup kitchen and bring your food there when it’s still serviceable. Let some people eat it – hunger isn’t only to Africa. 4. If you have some leftovers anyway, try mulching it instead of just wasting it. Maybe you will contradict that you don’t own a garden. But your neighbour might own one and may be able to help you to get rid of your leftovers.
Water
There are a lot of tips and tricks how to save water in your household, and I suppose you know at least a few of them too. But now let’s focus on toilets, as they are an important part of our household and also may be critical in how much water is used in the household. Well, today we can hardly think of our life without a suitable lavatory, and we don’t even need to care about them at all, if they still work. But try to calculate the amount of water your family uses every month just for flushing the lavatory. Big number, isn’t it? Now suppose you could reduce that by simply decreasing the amount of water your lavatory needs every time you flush. You can try these two tips to using less water for flushing: 1. Replace your old lavatory by a new type that has been designed to use as little water as possible. Just visit your local shop – you might be surprised what choices regarding toilets there are today! 2. If you place a couple of plastic bottles full of water into the tank of your lavatory, it will help you to save some water for flushing as well. It may take some time to discover just how much is the minimum volume of water for your lavatory to keep functioning.
Electric current
Here the situation is similar to the one with water and wasting it – there are a lot of recommendations on how to save electric energy to be found in books, magazines and on the Internet. But one of the devices that needs great amounts of electricity is one that you might be using daily: a tumble dryer. In modern times, people are not used to waiting before they get something they want or need at the moment, and they sometimes consume too much energy getting it, just because it will be ready faster. Of course we no longer want or have the time to wash our clothing manually, and it is true that by using dishwashers we can waste less water. However, think about tumble dryers. Ask yourself – do you really need your laundry to be dry instantly, instead of waiting one or two days for it to dry by itself? For people who are trying hard to make their lives less of an ecological liability, using a tumble dryer is acceptable only in emergency cases. Even a better decision is to dispose of the dryer at all, or sell it. This will have two advantages – you will become even “greener” and you will be able to spend less money on your electricity bills too.
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