Earth Friendly Behavior: How to Help Save the Planet with Green Toast

I bet you never thought about the impact your morning toast and coffee has on the environment. It seems like such a small insignificant thing in the grand scheme of things. The fact is that every little thing we do has some kind of impact on the earth, good or bad. We consume so much energy on a daily basis, without thinking about it, that every little bit we can conserve will have a positive effect on the earth and our finances.

Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? This is where small changes we make today have a huge exponential impact at a later time. It's like, small positive things we do today snowball into large environmental impact in years to come as we influence others with our actions.

One way we can conserve energy on a daily basis is to start thinking in terms of energy usage per activity, and how we can replace the energy used with green energy. For instance, if you enjoy taking long hot baths, you may look into solar water heating and tankless water heaters to save on the energy it takes to heat the water. If you enjoy your morning Starbucks, think about getting a quality coffee brewing machine and all the fixin's to do it yourself in the morning. You will save a ton of cash because you will be making it for a fraction of the cost and you will be saving the energy it takes to drive to their store, the paper cup it comes in, etc.

A great way to save energy on our daily activities at home is to make the energy ourselves that it will take to do each activity, within reason of course. A good way to do that is with a bicycle generator. If you have ever seen the reality show "Living With Ed", you will know what I mean. Ed Bagley Jr. wakes up each morning and makes the energy it takes to make his toast before he makes it. Yes, earth friendly toast. He climbs on his old bicycle with a small generator rigged to the back wheel, it's not hard to make these by the way, every morning and rides for about 10 minutes or so until he has generated enough power to run his toaster. Then he goes in and makes his toast. Thinking such as this is what is going to help us save our planet and move more off the grid. His bicycle generator is linked to a battery system in his garage that plugs into his household energy management system.

There are other ways to do this if you do not already have a solar and battery system, you can now buy bicycle generators at a reasonable cost, that plug directly into a self contained small battery pack which, when charged by riding the bike, will power a computer for 10+ hours. Think of how many things around your home you could power with your new green energy on a daily basis, toaster, radio, computer, CFL lamps, electric razor, etc. all from the power of your legs, not burning coal. This is a great thing to take on camping trips too, all the power you need for lights, radios, TVs, air compressors, etc. right there for free. What better way to save the planet than by making our bodies healthy while generating green energy.

There was an argument by a top ivy league university that riding bicycles is actually bad for the environment. What?! Their reasoning was because people who ride bikes daily are generally more healthy than other people and therefore live longer, therefore consume more of the earths resources over the period of their life. I guess if you are thinking in terms like these we could say breathing is bad for the environment because people breathe out Co2 and add to global warming.

It is ludicrous to say that taking vehicles off the road, saving fuel and emissions, saving the energy it takes to make the cars, fix the roads, etc. is bad for the earth just because healthy people will eat a bit more food and use a bit more electricity over their lifetime, especially since those bike riding, green people are the ones that are producing green energy and doing what is necessary to reduce their carbon footprint and becoming less of a burden on the planet.

If we all start thinking in terms of "what can I do right now, in this moment, to help do my part", we will be doing the earth a big favor and ourselves and our children as well.