Monday, September 22, 2008

Go Green Gals and Guys!

Although i won't say that i really know a lot about saving mother nature, but i can say that i do try to do the least bit i can in going green. As you can see, i have a in my sidebar, i'm joining Jean to create awareness in GOING GREEN.

Below is some tips all quoted from her blog which some i did not know would help in saving the environment:

"Do you know that the world population is expanding at a mind-boggling rate? Yes, it is. It is estimated that the population will go up to 9 billions by 2050. That's mean if the world's natural resources were evenly distributed, our children or/ and grandchildren will only have 25% of the resources per capita that people in 1950 had.

If we intend to leave our children and grandchildren with the same standard of living we have enjoyed, we must preserve the foundation of that standard of living. We save for college educations, orthodontia, and weddings, but what about saving clean air, water, fuel sources and soil for future generations?"

-source taken from http://www.gogreeninitiative.org/content/WhyGoGreen/

We do not need be a soldier, aggresively marching down the battle field, to help our Mother Nature. Just be yourself and go green in your daily activities. Here are 10 ways how we can go green:

1. Crank the knob
According to the National Environment Agency in Singapore, air-conditioned buildings need only to set their thermostat between 23°C and 25°C. Anything lower is a waste as you simply won't feel a difference in temperature. For every degree you adjust, you spare the air 500 pounds of carbon dioxide.

2. Sweat the small stuff
According to http://ecofabulous.blogs.com, if every worker used one less staple, we'd save up to 330,000 tons of steel a day. That's some heavy metal! Switch to a staple-less stapler, available at stationery shops, which folds paper to bind it.

3. Clean green
Household cleaning products give off chemical emissions that aren't only harmful to the planet, but to you too. Swap yours for the eco-friendly and completely non-toxic Shaklee Get Clean products.

4. Age your driving style
Don't speed: going 90km/h instead of 110km/h slashes fuel consumption by up to 25 per cent. If your car is fitted with a cruise control option, use it when you're driving on teh highway to maintain a steady speed and save on fuel.

5. Eat closer to home
Transporting produce across oceans or by air is amajor contributor to pollution. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation reported in 2006 that 18 per cen of the world's greenhouse gas emissions were due to the international meat industry. Choose locally farmed produce and the demand for imported stuff will fall, along with CO2 levels.

6. Stash your trashRecycle
Yes, it's an obvious one and you would think that after hearing it so many times, we'd be non-stop recycling machines by now, but there are still so may of us who aren't doing it! We chuck 19,000 tons of waste everyday, enough to fill 36 Petronas Twin Towers in a year! About 95 per cent of the waste ends up in landfills, which we're quickly running out of, and who knows how much of it could have been recycled?

7. Be a cone head
The next time you feel like eating ice-cream, ask for a cone, not cup. That way, you can eat the whole 'packaging' and there's no paper cup or plastic spoon to toss out.

8. Say no to the machine
Don't ask for ATM receipts. If every one in the USA refused theirs, it would save a roll of paper more than two billion feet long, or enough to circle the equator 15 times. Malaysians would create a roll more than 330 million feet long, going round the equator two and a half times.

9. Think natural and cool
Using cold water to do the laundry saves 50 per cent more energy than using hot water. To dry, hang them out in the sun - the heat is a natural disinfectant - and you'll again be saving energy, as an automatic dryer uses an average of six per cent of the household electricity.

10. Make sure your fashion is green
We're not going to say stop dry cleaning your clothes, because that's just an impossible request. The next time you do, however, tell the cleaners to skip the plastic. Also, find a greener cleaner - Pressto dry cleaners use biodegradeable stain removers and detergents, and theor machines are eco-friendly too, designed by an in-house team of engineers and technicians. There are outlets in Sri Hartamas (opposite Cat's Whiskers boutique) and Bangsar (Jalan Maarof).

-taken from FEMALE magazine JUNE issue.
So what have i been doing that's green, you ask. Well for a start, i try to recycle as much paper as possible at work and at home - i use both sides of paper and often place papers that has been used both sides in our recycle box (i say often coz sometimes i'm lazy to walk to the box, so i just throw away the papers, sorry!); at home, we recycle newspapers, and we have another box for miscellanous paper items like envelopes, cardboards, magazines, etc.

Then, when i buy lunch back to office to eat, i bring my own container instead of using styrofoam. I force my colleague to do the same too, so now both of us hold a container and pack our food in them, which is good. I always skip those small small plastic bags they give when you buy drinks or sweets or whatever it is because those small bags are useless! You won't reuse them because the material is so thin and the size is too small anyway.. so i'm asking you to say no you don't need the bag too next time!

I still need to do a lot to really help in going green, so let's do as much as we can. It's easy!!

1 comment:

Jean Chia aka Ms.Yummy~licious said...

hi sheri! it's really great to know you! let's go green!! :))