Going green in your apartment, office or college

Green lifestyle saves environment and going green in your apartment, office or college help you reduce your carbon foot print. Following green tips help you to save energy, water and environment.

• Downloading your favorite music: CD cases are often made with polyvinyl chloride, which doesn’t recycle easily. By downloading new music you reduce production costs, packaging and CDs that eventually end up in the landfill.

• Watering lawn: Watering your lawn every day does more harm than good. By watering less, you can make your grass grow roots that are deeper and healthier. Daily watering produces shallow roots.

• Go Soy With Your Candles: Soy candles are free of petroleum, unlike conventional wax candles, and are nearly soot-free so they won’t pollute the air in your apartment or leave those nasty smoke marks on your walls. They burn up to 50% longer than wax candles and cost about the same.

• Go green at college: Sharing a textbook with someone else who is taking the class helps save paper and will contribute to your efforts to go green at college.

• Make it a habit to turn off the lights: Make it a habit to turn off the lights when you're leaving any room for 15 minutes or more and utilize natural light when you can.

• switch to LCD monitors and TVs: We must switch to LCD monitors and TVs at home and at work as these consume less energy and are far less harmful to human eyes and body by virtue of their reduced emissions. The costs have also come down these days.

Green Tips-Simple Things We Can Do

• If you are buying charcoal, make sure it's made from a sustainable source. Enormous areas of tropical rain forest are destroyed every year to produce the 400,000 tons of charcoal burned annually in the U.S.
  

• Create a workable system to always have your cloth bags with you for purchases. Re-use paper and plastic bags, and when they wear out, recycle them.

• Place your air conditioner or thermostat away from lamps, TVs, or any heat-generating appliance. Outdoors, if you shade your air conditioning unit, you could save 10%-15% a year on energy use and costs.

• Cover pans with lids to save 2/3 of the energy used in cooking. Use your microwave rather than the stove and save as much as $50 a year

• CD cases are often made with polyvinyl chloride, which doesn’t recycle easily. By downloading new music you reduce production costs, packaging and CDs that eventually end up in the landfill.

• By watering less, you can make your grass grow roots that are deeper and healthier.Daily watering produces shallow roots.

Reduce waste and Save environment

The majority of the waste ends up in landfill or as litter. Either way, household waste is an environmental problem. Here are tips for you to reduce waste and promote green living.

• Food scraps and garden waste can be composted:The easiest way to deal with food waste is to set up a worm farm and/or a compost heap at your home. And you don't necessarily need a big garden to do this. Apartment dwellers can set up small worm farms on a balcony or a communal compost heap on the ground somewhere.Most food scraps (but not meat or dairy) and garden waste can be composted.

• Reusable products or packaging: Try to only buy products that are reusable or come in reusable packaging - and actually reuse them. Take your own cup when buying a coffee or drink.The best solution to waste is to avoid it in the first place.Avoid altogether items that are designed to be used once only

• Avoid an air-based holiday: Aeroplanes are one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse pollution. In particular, they emit high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and water vapor. For your next vacation discover the secrets of your own state rather than taking an air-based holiday, or travel overland by train or bus.

• Think about what you need: Throwing food away costs more than just the money you paid for it, you're also wasting all the water, energy and other resources that went in to producing the food in the first place.Think about what you need and use what's in the fridge, freezer or pantry before you eat out or get take away.

• Switching to Green Power: Switching to Green Power is the best way to cut your greenhouse pollution in the home. When you switch, you'll see no change in the way electricity comes to your house and there is no supply disruption. The only difference is that for a small extra charge, some or all of the electricity that you use will come from a renewable energy source and directly reduce greenhouse pollution.