There are many books & Internet sites with more than enough information on how to live green. Though being a realtor in Toronto gives me plenty of opportunities to talk about the many ways of eco-friendly living with my clients, my topic today will be a bit more specific. My aim today is not to cover the whole subject of environmentally conscious lifestyle, giving all the tips you’ve probably heard already. Our today’s topic will be the three everyday items that we usually don’t even consider to be an issue: food, water and electricity.
Food
As the majority of people (I hope!) regularly recycle paper, glass and tins, most of your common waste is probably composted of groceries. The majority of this food waste is often still in its original packaging and in a good state. We can find out that out of all the groceries that Canadian households pick out and pay for in stores, 20 to 30% eventually ends up in the dustbin. Together with the groceries thrown out in shops and restaurants, it makes between 7 and 14 billion tonnes of food dumped annually. That is worth $3 to 5 billion Canadian dollars every year.
Shocking, what we have just calculated, isn’t it? The main paradox is that we throw away so much food daily and at the same time so many charity organizations are working hard, trying to help people who don’t have enough to eat. While it wouldn’t be too smart to pack unused foods and send it to countries hit by famine, there are other ways to avoid food being thrown away in vain. 1. Try using leftovers. For example if you had some rice remaining from yesterday’s supper, you could have made stuffed peppers today. 2. In your larder or food cabinet, try to stick to a simple habit: the groceries closest to the expiration date is always stocked in front of the fresher ones. 3. Sometimes you know you have some groceries you are not going to consume before its expiry date and you would have to dump it. Try to take these to your local charity place or soup kitchen or any similar place where they can find some use for the food before it goes bad. As hungry people don’t live only in Africa, your food will serve a useful purpose even in your city. 4. Do not dump leftovers – mulch it. If you do not own a garden, find somebody who does. Food just doesn’t belong to dumping grounds.
Water
There are a lot of ways to avoid wasting water and you can probably name many of them yourself. But there is one interesting side of {home~household~family] water saving – toilets, as places we use to get rid of our faeces. We got used to using toilets so much that we no longer think of them – as long as they work the way the are supposed to. But do the calculations: find out how much water your family used in the last month through flushing. You might be surprised by the big number you get out of this. And has it ever occurred to you that this amount is not essential, that flushing your toilet can be done using less water? You can try these two tips to using less water for flushing: 1. Replace your old toilet by a new model that has been designed to use as little water as possible. Just stop by at your local store – you might be amazed what choices regarding lavatories there are today! 2. If you insert a couple of plastic bottles full of water into the tank of your toilet, it will help you to save some water for flushing as well. Keep experimenting to discover how little water is enough for the toilet to work properly.
Electric energy
Just like with water, many recommendations on electricity waste prevention are accessible only and elsewhere. But one of the devices that needs great amounts of energy is one that you might be using daily: a tumble dryer. The popularity of tumble dryers comes from the habit that modern people want everything to be done in the minimum time possible, regardless of the volume of resources that are wasted in the process of speeding things up. 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 clothing 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 burden, using a tumble dryer is acceptable only in urgent cases. Even a better solution is to dispose of the dryer at all, or sell it. Except for the environment, you will save some cash on your electricity bills as well.
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