Breathe Easy – Going Green on a Budget

Who says eco-friendly and wallet-friendly can’t go hand in hand? Here are seven inexpensive and easy ways to live a more sustainable life for less.

Think about the past twenty-four hours of your life. How many plastic water bottles have you used? Maybe you plan on reusing them once or twice, maybe even recycling them. But, if you are like most people, those water bottles will, without doubt, end up in the garbage. The plastic water bottles we all throw away each day will sit in a landfill longer than we will be alive, and longer than our great-grandchildren will be alive. According to the Container Recycling Institute, eight out of ten water bottles will end up in a landfill. Refillnotlandfill.org has estimated that if everyone in New York City were to use a reusable water bottle for one year 1.328 billion bottles would be saved. A billion plastic water bottles. And that’s just one city.

SIGG offers a relatively inexpensive solution in the form of $20 reusable aluminum water bottles. These bottles are lightweight, durable and keep drinks spill-free. There is no concern for harmful chemicals as in their hard plastic cousins, and they come in great colors and patterns. Use the $20 you’d already be spending on plastic water bottles and take a simple step towards a sustainable lifestyle. The environment will thank you.

Also consider: Getting a Brita water filter to fill up your reusable bottle and doing away with those pesky plastic bottles entirely.

Conservation around your home is one of the best ways to decrease your carbon footprint — and your utility bills. Your mom may have always told you to turn off the lights when you left a room, and though she may be hundreds of miles away, she is still right. Most people don’t know that many electronics still pull a current while switched off. Devices in your home consume about seventy-five percent of the electricity while they are not in use. Make sure that when you’re out, your lights are too. Replace burned out light bulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs; they last much longer, and the extra few dollars you spend on them will come back in savings on your power bill. Connect devices to a power strip with a master switch so that you can turn the electricity off at the source and save all that normally wasted power. Set your thermostat at sixty-eight in the winter and seventy-eight in the summer, and turn it off when you sleep or leave the house.

Water is also an important, but often neglected, piece of the conservation puzzle. With ongoing droughts throughout the Southeast, we need to be more conscious of our H2O decisions, especially when these easy lifestyle changes involve no extra costs. When you walk away from a faucet, make sure it isn’t dripping and be sure to report or fix any leaks you might have. Shortening your showers by just a couple of minutes and turning off the sink while you brush your teeth or shave can save up to 700 gallons of water in a month.

Also consider: Encouraging USC to make environmentally conscious choices, and continue their pledge toward green construction.

As we begin to face the fact that expensive gas is here to stay, it’s time to make adjustments in what we look for in a car. It’s not just the price of the car itself, but also the price of getting where we need to go. Opting to buy a fuel-efficient car is a great way to save money and the environment. Toyota has developed the perfect blend of cost and fuel efficiency with their new Yaris. This eco-friendly car gets twenty-nine city and thirty-five highway mpg and starts at only $11,550.

If you aren’t in the market for a new car, you can still help the environment and your bank account. There are tons of ways to get your car to expend gas more efficiently, like changing your air and fuel filters, keeping your tires inflated to the proper pressure, and turning off the air conditioner. Ease on the gas after a stop sign or red light, don’t accelerate down hills, and go the speed limit. To save money on gas check www.columbiagasprices.com, which has lists and maps of stations with the cheapest gas in the area.

Also consider: Getting a bike or scooter to ride to and from campus to save yourself a little gas money, not to mention the big headache of parking on campus.

Think about your last trip to the grocery store. The clerk rings you up and bags your items: bread, a twelve-pack of beer, three boxes of pizza bites, a can of bug spray and a Hershey bar. Somehow, defying logic, you end up walking out with a grand total of seven plastic bags. Now think about how many times a year you go to the grocery store. The average person uses about 22,000 plastic bags in a lifetime. Our dependency on grocery bags even hits us hard at the pump. It takes twelve million barrels of oil to produce the one hundred billion plastic bags Americans use in a year.

Plastic bags are a huge problem for the environment. Luckily, this problem has an easy remedy. The eco-friendly, cost-efficient solution is the reusable shopping bag. These bags can be found in stores like Publix and Target for as low as $1. The average reusable bag holds two to three times what plastic bag would hold, which translates to fewer things to actually carry. Just keep them in your car and they will be there anytime you find yourself about to walk through your favorite store’s automatic doors.

Also consider: Returning any saved plastic bags to stores like Publix that will recycle those bags for you.

It takes a third of a pound of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce the average cotton t-shirt. Just think about the chemically infused cotton threads on your skin all day. Now think about where those harmful fertilizers and pesticides ultimately ended up: somewhere polluting our fresh water supply. There is an obvious alternative to this harmful practice in the form of organically grown cotton clothing. The biggest problem with this simple solution is price. To the relief of eco-conscious college students, Billabong has come up with an inexpensive line of clothing called Design for Humanity. You can find their organic cotton T’s on Evogear.com for just $8-$12. And Billabong isn’t alone. American Apparel sells its organic cotton basics for around $18. Not only are they inexpensive, they are guaranteed sweatshop-free.

Fabrics aren’t the only way to dye your wardrobe green. Shop consciously for pieces you know that you can hold onto. If you know you won’t wear something this time next year, why not just avoid it altogether? Take care of the clothes you do have by learning to repair tears and sew on buttons if needed. Hang things up if they’re not too dirty at the end of the day and wear them again to prevent excess wear on the fabric. When you do wash your clothes make sure that you have a full laundry load, wash with the coldest water possible and hang to dry to save money and energy.

Also consider: Buying vintage clothing and donating your old clothing to Goodwill or Columbia’s own His House so that your clothes can be reused.

The production of waste is becoming a bigger and bigger issue as the piles of trash in landfills continue to grow higher every day. Americans, who make up just five percent of the world’s population, produce thirty percent of the world’s waste. According to Thestoryofstuff.com “If everyone consumed at U.S. rates we would need five planets,” but we don’t have five planets and we can’t afford to destroy the one we have.

Simply changing our everyday habits can slow this wasteful cycle. Choosing recycled and recyclable products can keep trash out of landfills, and since the city of Columbia and the University both provide free recycling, there’s no reason not to do so. When you shop, be aware of the amount of packaging you buy. Next time opt for the packets of Jell-O rather than the little cups, or the big bag of chips rather than the small individual bags. Buying concentrated products and buying in bulk are also great ways to keep all of that plastic wrapping out of the garbage. Choose paper over plastic in things like disposable cups and plates (paper and cardboard are more biodegradable in landfills). Or better yet, don’t use disposables. If you’re eating at home, use glass or ceramic dishes and metal silverware. Buy rechargeable batteries and long-lasting light bulbs. Print and write on both sides of a piece of paper. Freecycle, eBay and Craigslist are great resources for selling and trading the things you might consider throwing away, and who doesn’t like a little extra cash in their pocket?

Also consider: Sending your old eyeglasses to charities that distribute them for use in third-world countries. Contact the Lions Club or LensCrafters to find out about their Gift of Sight program.

A healthy environment inside the home is as important as one in the outside environment. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the levels of some pollutants indoors can actually be one hundred times higher than the pollution outdoors. This makes it very important to keep houses and rooms well-ventilated while cleaning with the toxic chemicals we frequently use around our homes.

Companies are beginning to feel the demand for healthier homes. Clorox, for example, has come up with Green Works, a line of natural and biodegradable products. They are made with plant and mineral-based ingredients, work as well as chemical cleaners, come in recyclable packaging and have virtually no price difference. An even less-expensive way to green your clean routine is to take a more traditional approach. Natural cleaners can be made from substances you probably have lying around your house. You can use a mixture of vinegar and lemon juice to cut grease, use baking soda to clean sinks and showers and mix water with vinegar and baking soda for an all-purpose cleaner that is safe for you and the Earth. Out now along with green cleaners are paper towels, toilet paper and napkins made from recycled paper. To avoid trash while cleaning altogether, invest in a few washable cloths. They’ll just get tossed in the wash instead of the trash when you’re done cleaning.
Also consider: Filling the washing machine and dishwasher all the way before running them. They use the same amount of water and power no matter how full they are, so make the most of it.