Eco-Tip 35

Every week we'll post another easy tip to help you be environmentally friendly.

Eco-Tip 35

Follow magazines and newspapers on the internet rather than with a paper subscription. A big crisis of the newspaper and magazine industry is the increasing proliferation of publications on the internet, and it may be for the greater good: reading articles on the internet, obviously, creates no paper waste. (Yes, it does naturally create waste through energy used, but it is comparable to the energy wasted in delivering the paper or magazine). You may feel guilty about not giving any money to the publication that you so enjoy, but many offer online subscriptions that have more benefits (the New York Times, for example, has an online subscription option that lets you view older articles rather than just recent ones -- that'd be pretty tough with a stack of newspapers!)

Eco-Tip 34

Every week we'll post another easy tip to help you be environmentally friendly.

Eco-Tip 34

There are two bits of advice to follow regarding batteries: firstly, avoid them, and secondly, when you can't avoid them, recycle them. Batteries contain heavy metals that are very toxic to the environment, and although many battery-making companies are cutting down on the amount of heavy metals in them (especially mercury), they are still not safe to dispose of in an ordinary trash can. If you need to dispose of batteries, you need to recycle them -- no NOT in your recycling bin! There are a number of stores around the country that will collect and properly dispose of your batteries without harming the earth (and you don't even need to travel far!) Just look here: http://www.call2recycle.org/home.php?c=1&w=1&r=Y (upper-right corner, enter your zip code). Never toss out a battery!

Why cars may be greener than buses!

BBC's "Ethical Man" makes an interesting case as to why cars may be more efficient than buses and trains. It's very interesting, so I wanted to share it. Don't be so eager to start driving though! Towards the conclusion he writes:

"Even though travelling by car can be less polluting than public transport you should always take the public transport option.

That's because buses and trains are running anyway. They will be out there generating CO2 whether you ride them or not. So when you choose to take your car, the pollution you create will be on top of whatever the public transport option is producing."

Here's the full article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/11/why_cars_are_greener_than_buses.html

Eco-Tip 33

Every week we'll post another easy tip to help you be environmentally friendly.

Eco-Tip 33

Quality or quantity? Here's another aspect to look for before making a purchase: durability. Now the durability of a product should be important to anybody, environmentally conscious or not, but it should be especially important to you just because you are environmentally conscious. If you buy something and it breaks, there are two paths: it gets recycled or otherwise dismantled so that the parts can be pieced together into something else (good) or it's simply thrown out to sit in a land fill for a couple thousand years (bad). Now although the former option is good, it still requires energy that would otherwise be unnecessary. The best thing to do is to plan ahead and make sure a product is durable enough to be worth the money and the environmental burden inherent in the materials and production.

Eco-Tip 32

Every week we'll post another easy tip to help you be environmentally friendly.

Eco-Tip 32

Now that it's getting cold, you should know about one thing you should NOT do to keep your house warm: do not use the fireplace. Unless your fireplace is EPA-certified, and it's probably not, you can lose somewhere between 70% and 90% of the fire's heat through the chimney. The EPA also estimates that some 75% of fireplaces release a lot of unnecessary pollution. On the other hand, if you do modernize your fireplace to meet EPA guidelines, you will not only keep your house warmer with it but will also receive a tax credit for it. Until that day, just watch that burning Yuletide log channel on TV.

For more information from the New York Times article that inspired this post, click here.