Ten Easy Ways to Save the World
Hmmm, saving the world eh? Sounds like a big job, but fear not! It's easy to start doing a few little things towards keeping this lovely planet of ours from become an uninhabitable cesspit of filth. Read on to find out ten(ish) ways you can make a difference...
- Use a Wormery
- Recycle as much as you can
- Carbon offsetting
- Energy saving light bulbs
- Home insulation
- Ethical banking
- Sell your car
- Flick some money to a charity
- Generate your own power
- Vote Green
- Inseminate pandas in your spare time
Recycling doesn't have to be left to the big boys; you can do it yourself at home. A home wormery can use the power of nature's humble wriggly recycling experts to turn your food scraps into a highly nutritious liquid food for your house plants. Basically self maintaining, they cost sod all and it all happens out of sight (and smell) within a large colourful plastic bucket. Something you normally chuck away can be turned into free stuff. Winner!
It's the 21 st century, you have no excuse. Just do it.
Depending on how shit your local authorities are, you might have to sort your rubbish before it's collected. You can make this easy by getting special bins. If your local government isn't collecting recycling from your door, then go and write to them until they do. Personally I think any local authority that isn't recycling should be paraded through the streets while we throw dung at them, but I'm aware that the real world and my internal fantasies don't necessarily intersect.
Currently an option only favoured by hardcore greenies, carbon offsetting is a new service where you voluntarily donate money to an environmental project to offset the damage caused by your lifestyle. For example, you could offset the carbon emissions of a long-distance flight by giving to a project planting trees. In the long run political pressure will probably force airlines to start investing heavily in carbon offsetting anyway, and I'm sure they'll pass the costs on to us, so you'd better get used to the idea now.
This list of offsetting schemes is a good place to start.
Traditional light bulbs are rubbish. Most of the electricity they use (which you pay for) is wasted as heat. Then they burn out and you have to buy more. What a hassle.
Modern energy efficient light bulbs are florescent and use about a fifth as much electricity. Not only that, but they last eight times as long. You save money on the bulbs, save on your electricity bills and save the planet all at the same time.
According to one energy savings calculator, if you replaced your half dozen or so old-fashioned bulbs with modern energy saving ones you could save yourself £70 a year. Bonus!
So anyone still using old-fashioned bulbs is a mug, really.
Boring, but important. Most of your home energy use goes into heating. So having bad insulation on your home heating is literally burning money.
There's lots of things you can do, and they're not all difficult or expensive. Swapping your expensive (ie: wasteful) windows for some double-glazing is a good idea, and insulating your hot water tank and piping is a doddle. Have a look at the Energy Saving Trust's website for more ideas.
The banks have all your money and they're busy spending it. Normally we don't have much say on what they do with it. It's quite possible that your bank is lending some of your hard-earned to an oil company or a landmine manufacturer right now.
If (like any sensible person) that pisses you off a little bit then you do have options.
Smile are a UK online bank that have an ethical policy for all their investments. Their rates are the same or better than other top banks, and I'm told their customer service is excellent. Or you could go with an ethical investment specialist like Triodos. Check around, there's plenty of options.
Yes, really. While cars may not be the earth-devouring harbingers of evil that some greenies make them out to be, they are undoubtedly becoming more and more of a liability for modern city-dwellers.
save you a fat wedge
The cost of fuel and other expenses continues to climb. Our cars are turning into fat greedy pigs, slurping noisily at the trough of our wallets. In fact, viewed through the cold eyes of basic economics a car is a huge financial burden. Unless your car actually helps you bring in cash to offset it's considerable running costs then you're helping both yourself and the planet by ditching it.
The RAC in the UK estimate that the annual cost of car ownership is £5000, more than the average mortgage. Realistically, those costs are only going to rise.
If you really want to fiddle with the figures, check out this interesting American calculator of car ownership costs. While the site behind it clearly has an agenda, it does do some interesting calculations about how much better off your future would be if you found a way to do without a car. The idea that cars devour more of our resources than essentials like food is plainly bonkers.
Add to that the environmental damage caused by our cars, and you can see that we're backing a loser. Best bet is to lose the car if you can, and if you can't, get a fuel efficient car like one of the new hybrids.
While we all feel like we don't have enough money, the fact is that if you own the computer you're reading this on then you are among the richest people on earth. So why not use your privileged position to do something nice?
Instead of waiting for a chugger to stop you in the street and remind you of what you should be doing anyway, why not take charge? Think about the things you think are important in life, look up some charities that help out in those areas, and start giving a few groats a month. If you're a UK taxpayer, don't forget to use Gift Aid, which forces the government to open its fat coffers and top up whatever you contribute. It's about the only chance you'll ever get to dictate to them about how you want your tax money spent.
For real. The technology has now got to the point where installing solar panels or a small wind turbine on your roof is a practical and economical step. It's an option which involves a certain amount of cash up front, but it's best viewed as a long term investment. The price is coming down though, B&Q have a 1kW turbine for £1,500 including installation. Even using a more expensive system it could be possible to generate your own power for as little as 8.4p/kWh, which is lower than what your electricity company probably charge you. Plus you have your own backup power supply in case of outages.
Or there's solar panels, which come in either electricity-generating flavour, or water heating flavour.
All up, I think we're going to see a lot more micro power generation in the future.
The Greens have been one of the most influential political movements of the modern age. Despite only achieving limited successes themselves, they've forced all other politicians to don the green suit. To be seen as being anti-environment would be political suicide for a 21 st century politician.
European and many local government elections use a system of proportional representation for counting votes, so that none are wasted, and the Greens are strong in the European Parliament. A green vote in these elections is never wasted, and let's face it, most of the other parties are prats anyway.
Ah pandas, the cuddly symbols of doomed nature and man's attempts to reverse the damage. We love the panda, not just for its outrageously oversized head, but for its heartbreaking tragedy. The panda is an animal that seems so totally unable to cope with the world that only frantic efforts from conservationists have prevented it from already sliding off the end of the endangered species list in an apathetic heap.
Yet could the panda be more cunning than we think? It's only hope for survival is its cuteness, so if it does make it, then you could say that we (as the agents by proxy of natural selection) are specifically selecting and preserving its "cutesy genes". Could this be the panda's Darwinian secret weapon? After all, do we try as hard to save the prickly-knee nightmare beetle of Indonesia ? I think not. By saving the panda we lay the groundwork for a much cuter global gene pool.
The obvious pitfall of this approach is that in millions of years the Earth may look as if it were designed by a Japanese schoolgirl. Welcome, interstellar tourists, to the Hello Kitty planet. Yikes.
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