Using energy-efficient products is a good step up from simply switching off the lights in an empty room. The principle of energy efficiency is to use the minimum amount of electricity or fuel to derive maximum or satisfactory output. Examples of energy-efficient products include compact fluorescent light bulbs and washing machines with no standby power option, i.e., they switch directly to “off” mode. (Look for Energy Star appliances).

Ensuring that your car runs effectively is also energy efficiency in practice. Mileage can be improved by 3% or more if tires are correctly inflated (the opposite is probably true as well), and keeps about 20 lbs. of carbon out of the atmosphere for each gallon of gas saved.

Another way to reduce your personal impact on the environment is by driving less frequently. The price of fuel never seems to come down, so rather than silently fume though, it would be a better idea to drive less altogether.

Walking or cycling emits no exhaust, and most cities have a decent mass transport system. Alternatively, carpooling reduces the amount of personal driving, which also reduces reliance on fossil fuels, as well as the anxiety regarding the world’s dwindling oil supply.

Similarly, it’s possible to reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by consuming less meat. Livestock cultivation is less energy efficient compared to farming in terms of resources and time required to produce a “crop.” In turn, the consumer pays more for meat than for vegetables to obtain what are essentially recycled plant nutrients.

The savings gained from buying less meat in general can be used to buy free-range and/or organic meat, which contains fewer additives, but it does cost more. If anything, the profit margin might encourage livestock farmers to adopt environmentally friendly practices.

Another thing to buy is locally produced food. It’s one thing to adopt vegetarianism, but you have to consider the environmental impact of having your vegetables transported from halfway across the world.

Rather than stocking single-use water bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET/PETE) and fretting about the impact it will have on you, the landfills, and the environment, try doing without them altogether. It’s easier to fill up reusable water bottles from the tap rather than running to the store each time you need water.

In the workplace, replacing bottled water stock with a water dispenser is actually more cost-effective and generates less trash. To put things into perspective, more than a billion plastic bottles a year can be kept out of a city landfill if all of the city’s residents turned away from plastic, disposable water bottles.

Contrary to popular belief, there is very little difference between tap and bottled water. Water from the tap is treated and filtered so that it is safe for consumption, and if you read the labels closely, a lot of bottled water is sourced from municipalities, which effectively makes it higher-priced tap water. If the idea of tap water makes you squirm, home water filters are excellent for filtering out possible particulates and odors, providing “spring-fresh” water.

While you might be hesitant about reusing PET bottles due to health concerns, you don’t have to think only of water when it comes to reusing plastic water bottles. Oddly enough, the very items that are so easily disposed of, paper products and tin cans, are actually some of the best base materials for repurposing projects.

A simple example of plastic water bottle reuse would be to cut off the top of a bottle, and use it as a container for non-food items. These include: money, stationery, utensils, paint, and even plants.

Other uses for plastic bottles that I wouldn’t have thought of immediately include candle holders (the candle is held in place by the bottle neck), an emergency funnel, and drip irrigators.

Of course, bottles can always be sent to recycling centers, presumably to manufacture more bottles. On the other hand, recycled plastic bottles may take new forms – fabric, apparel, handbags, and office furniture.

The problem is, the personal automobile is one of the biggest enemies of the Earth and of our future. Personal automobiles, particularly in North America, are a major cause of global warming, toxic air, water pollution, and unsustainable land use. Yet, even with the threat of massive ecological disarray on the horizon, private car use continues to rise throughout the world.

The good news is you can easily take a big chunk out of your ecological footprint by taking a few steps to reduce your personal automobile usage. With fuel prices continually on the rise, you will save money at the same time.

Live where you work. Commutes to work account for a large percentage of many people’s car usage. This isn’t always doable for people, but if you are moving anytime soon, or changing jobs, put an effort into having both your work and home as close as possible. Even better, consider working from home.

Sell your family’s second (or third) car. Not only will this step save you money on insurance and maintenance, it will also push you into a more conscious mind-set in regards to driving. With only one car, trips will have to be planned well, and car usage will be limited much of the time.

Buy a bike, moped, skateboard, or just use your feet. This can be a challenge in many cities, but it is still worthy of consideration. You’d be surprised how quickly you can get to your destination on a moped or even a bicycle. Think about how fit you may get in the process.

Hitch a ride. Whether you decide to use public transportation or to carpool, sharing a single automobile with others is a pretty painless way to reduce your ecological footprint. Take time to see what kind of public transportation is available in your area, and if you can use it at least part time. Talk with friends, neighbors, and co-workers about the possibility of carpooling. You can also search online for carpooling directories and hook up with those already taking this step.

Cremations are usually non-denominational, and they are the quickest possible means to decompose the departed.They also ensure that embalming fluids, which can be toxic, do not leak into the soil, as they would if a body was buried in the ground.

While cremation is a cost and space conservative, one cremation releases up to 160 kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Additionally, it can free toxic fumes; however, these drawbacks can be overcome by carrying out batch cremations (not so ideal for the mourners), increasing the heat-retaining capacity and efficiency of the system, or utilizing fuel sources other than propane, diesel, or natural gas.

Another possible alternative is “cryomation,” where the body is freeze-dried by liquid nitrogen at -195°C and subsequently powdered. It is claimed cryomation reduces carbon emissions by 75% and releases “zero” mercury.

Alkaline hydrolysis is also touted as a viable alternative to cremation and burial, reducing carbon emission by almost 50%, but to be dissolved in a silk bag sounds gruesome, to say the least. Moreover, the remnants – “greenish-brown broth made up of amino acids, peptides, sugars and salts, plus some bone remains that are turned soft and porous” sound like clues in a murder.That is not how I’d want to remember a loved one.

What if burial is compulsory? Funeral arrangements are moving away from heavy, sealed caskets towards lighter, biodegradable alternatives. In view of such preferences, there are sturdy cardboard coffins, which certainly “return to the earth” more quickly than hardwood coffins do. Other alternative coffin materials include bamboo, woven cane, or papier-mâché.

Not opting for a vault is another example of an environmentally friendly burial, as is the eschewing of grave markers. Instead of a headstone, a native plant is planted over the grave to mark the spot. Not embalming the body is another way a burial is made “greener.”

The decision on green funeral arrangements is generally a toss up between a space-saving, but air-polluting cremation and being buried sans embalming fluid in a bamboo coffin. Either way, it’s important to opt for an authentic solution, and not “value-added” extras designed to line the pockets of businesses.

What is one way to help? Planting trees. True, planting a normal tree will help, but there are trees that are more effective than others. Oaks, rewoods, cedars, and sequoias are some of the biggest trees in this world. They tower and stand majestically, except there is not an abundance of them. These trees only grow in specific areas of the world, like the redwoods of California’s northern coast or the cedars of Lebanon. These planet savers help preserve the ecosystem diversity. They also soak up toxins from the atmosphere as well as the ground and provide us with ingredients for medicine. The trees cleanse the environment, but most importantly, they store carbon dioxide and give us the gift of oxygen. The fact that they can store so much carbon dioxide is extremely important to us because it is the greenhouse gas that is attributed to global warming. So, how do you plant one of these trees? Depending on where you live, you can, you just have to get a hold of a cloned tree.

David Milarch, Elk Rapids businesswoman Leslie Lee, and researchers have come together  to establish Archangel Archive. Achangel Archive currently has a staff of 17 and their facilities include an indoor tree research and production complex.  Their goal is to clone the oldest and largest of the ecologically valuable tree species, such as the redwoods. The redwoods are actually the for collecting carbon because of their size, rapid growth and durability. The longer a tree lives, the longer its carbon will remain in the tree and not in the atmosphere.

Archangel Archive‘s goal is to get people to buy and plant millions of copies of the trees. They want to be able to clone 200 different varieties of trees that will help save our planet. Even planting one tree can help buy us more time to help patch up what we have done. Redwoods grow fast; you can contact Archangel Archive and find out how you can plant one.

However, it is important to note that with the decrease in number of landfills, the size of the remaining landfills have increased. Did you know that there is a landfill in New York that you can see from space? Americans are consuming more in today’s world than they ever had in the past! Did you know that the average American contributes to nearly 4.5 pounds of garbage every day? If you do the math out, that’s 56 tons of trash every year!  Hopefully you are composting when you can and recycling/reusing as much as possible, but everything else goes somewhere and that somewhere are the landfills.

Landfills are very harmful to the environment. When garbage and trash decomposes, toxic chemicals such as methane and carbon creeps into the ecosystem. Once harmful chemicals are in the ecosystem, they travel and affect the water supply, the air, the ground, and more. Carbon emissions are also terrible; these emissions have been scientifically linked to the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming– and nobody wants that now, do they?

To avoid dumping your trash into landfills, try to be really aware of what you are throwing away. Compost what can be composted, recycle newspapers or papers and plastics. Donate unwanted items to charity and remember that many electronics and motor oil are recyclable. Even if something is not necessarily reusable, recyclable,  etc, there are certain ways that you should dispose of the item to help save the planet, like batteries. If things are disposed of in the right manner, that will help us to stop the excessive use of landfills.

Not only is it a waste in terms of the volume of trays that are thrown out, but the fact that these trays are made of Styrofoam makes it much worse. Styrofoam is terrible for our environment. Not only this, but there is also some concern that toxins can leach from Styrofoam when it comes into contact with hot food. There is no “good” way to recycle Styrofoam. If they are thrown out, then they will most likely go to a landfill. Once they have reached their resting point at the dump, it will take over one millions years to decompose. Yes, one million. So not only will it take a very long time to “decompose”, but the trays also just sit there, taking up space, in our already overfilled landfills.  Also, when expanded polystyrene enters aquatic environments, creatures could ingest it; this causes intestinal blockage that will ultimately lead to death.

So, why not recycle the trays? Some schools do try to have a separate spot to throw away trays so that they can be recycled, but even when the trays are recycled, not much good becomes of them. Also, trays are not often recycled because it costs a lot to do so and the facilities for doing so are few and far between. Some burn the Styrofoam, but because they are based on crude oil, and chemicals such as benzene and styrene, the burning of Styrofoam produces toxic gases.

These are all things that school districts are well aware of. The thing is, it costs close to nothing per tray (about 3 cents) — it is hard to convince a school district to pay more for trays when they are struggling with other costs. There are many other options out there, but costs are what are holding the schools back.

I honestly do not see why people think that wind turbines are ugly. I think that it will look kind of cool to have rows of wind turbines stretching across the water, but I can see how there could be opposition and how it would make the Sound less natural. They received state and local permitting in 2009 and federal permitting through April 2010. From when they start construction, it should take them less than 2 years to build the wind turbines that should last 20 years or more. Once the wind turbines are at the end of their economic life, the Cape Wind team will provide a decommissioning financial instrument that will fund the removal of the wind turbines down to the seabed.

In this project, they will place 130 wind turbines that will harness the wind to produce up to 420 megawatts of renewable energy. The 130 wind turbines will be spaced six to nine football fields apart so that shallow draft  boats can pass through or fish. It has even been endorsed by the Maritime Trades council and the Seafarers International Union.

It has been calculated that the turbines would provide about three quarters of the Cape and Islands electricity needs. It will also reduce global warming green house gas emissions by 734,000 tons per year and will provide enough clean, renewable energy that should replace about 113 million gallons of oil per year.

With numbers like that and events such as the major oil spill this year, who would not be in favor of this project in the Nantucket Sound? It is definitely time to start using more forms of renewable energy and to start using resources like the wind– which I don’t think we will be running out of any time soon.

For more information check out Cape Wind’s website.

Wait! Rewind. Instead of buying the first pretty bucket of paint that you see, consider the fact that there are many paint options that are much m0re environmentally-friendly than typical paints. Just how bad is the environmental impact of regular paint? The EPA discovered that VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) levels were 1,000 times larger than the standard outdoors amount in a room that was painted recently. They also were able to conclude that the VOCs (including benzene, formaldehyde, kerosene, ammonia, and other carcinogens and neurotoxins) are released at a higher rate from regular paint that is being applied than from any other indoor product. Furthermore, in that aforementioned sunlight that we love, many paints react with nitrous oxides in the atmosphere, a process which contributes to the formation of smog.

Not surprisingly, several companies have come up with paints that have no or a low level of VOCs. The Green Guide offers a comparison of the different brands that are available. You’ll find the type of paint (water-based acrylic, latex, milk paint, clay paint, natural paint, or recycled paint), level of VOC, area of use (interior or exterior or both), and the typical price per gallon. According to the Green Guide, the paint that is the best value is the Innovative Formulations Company Ecological Paint, which is a water-based acrylic, with no VOCs, for interior and exterior use, and just $20 per gallon. The greenest product is the BioShield Casein Milk Paint, while the Green Guide overall recommendation is the Bioshield Clay Paint, though its cost is $34 per gallon.

So, if you have that urge to repaint the walls, consider making the switch to eco-friendlier paint. Green paints come in a variety of different colors!

Ironically, wastewater treatment plants are some of the major users of energy. In the U.S. alone, they consume about 21 billion kilowatt hours per year. Think about it, wastewater treatment plants can use their waste directly in wastewater treatment. This would reduce the facility’s overall need for conventional electricity. Turning sludge into energy is beneficial to the environment as well. Most methods of sewage sludge disposal are harmful to the environment. Some of these methods are land filing, ocean dumping, compost, and incineration. These methods contaminate the underground water reservoirs and ocean waters.

There are different methods of turning sludge into energy. One way would be to use a low temperature thermochemical conversion from sludge to oil. In this process the sludge is dried to evaporate any unwanted water and useful materials are conserved and extracted. These useful materials are substances, such as gas, oils, and chemicals. However, companies, such as Energy Answers International, have developed technology that will co-combust the different types of sludges with municipal solid waste to form energy in combustion facilities.

There are many different groups of people all working to find new sources of energy with the focus on renewable energy. Using sludge may be one of the cheaper ways to form energy, but it is still technology that needs to be developed. Seeing that the idea of using sludge is not that new, I am curious to see if this field really will ever expand into something big, or if fuel cells and other ideas will overpower the interest in sludge.