Simple Steps to Helping the Environment and Saving Money!

The planet is our only home, a lonely orb of life floating in an otherwise lifeless galaxy. When photographs came back from the early space orbital missions, this loneliness hit home for the people of Planet Earth. Despite this, we humans are severely detrimental to our environment. Our actions harm the precious, fragile ecology that allows us to live and breathe and protects us from the dangerous radiation of the barren universe.

Our fate is not sealed, however. The focus of saving the environment, thus far, has been on major political changes. While these have the ability to induce great revolutions in the unsustainable way we live, laws are not the only way to help the environment. As individuals, we can elect to alter our daily routines and take measures to rejuvenate the environment. When we each act locally and individually, we synergize together to create one massive force of environmentally-conscious global citizens.

The drama of planetary climate change and environmental responsibility can be intimidating, but all one has to do is make simple changes. These simple changes will not only save the planet, but save you money! By reducing your demand on utilities (without compromising your livelihood one bit), you lower your bills at the end of the month!

Want to start saving money and the environment? Here's how:

Energy Usage
Citizens in developed countries, which most of this article's audience are, have an infamously high amount of energy consumption. While, in theory, there is infinite flowing energy in the universe, humans are preoccupied with the energy on Earth that is nonrenewable (meaning that once we use up these energy sources, they do not come back for several million years.) Using nonrenewable resources is a dangerous practice. For example, take our dependence on fossil fuels. When we run out of gas, we will have nothing to power our cars or produce plastics with. An industrialized world without automation or plastic use is unfathomable. Look around, I bet the crucial items in your home or office are plastic--computers, containers, medical devices, etc. Instead, we should lower our energy demands, since most electrical and automotive power comes from fossil fuels. Besides being non-renewable, fossil fuel emissions are detrimental to the environment, causing global warming and thinning ozone layers.

Save money on petroleum
To lower your gas usage and save hard-earned money at the pump, there are simple measures. Whenever possible, elect to walk or ride a bicycle. Every little bit counts and every little bit saves cash. When traveling, carpool. Find a co-worker or fellow student who travels to work or school at the same time and merely ride together. You've just cut your commuter gas bills in half or more! Also, do not place yourself above public transportation. For a few cents, you can venture all over town and reduce fossil fuel usage since public transportation is essentially a massive carpool system. To save the environment, eliminating fossil fuel dependence is crucial.

Save money on home electric bills
Did you know that those worthless incandescent bulbs in our light fixtures are only 5% efficient? That means of every watt of power that goes into the bulb (that you pay the full price of), only 5% of the energy is actually used to light your home. The rest is waste, which you are paying for. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, lighting accounts for 10-15% of the energy used in the typical American home. You cannot blame the electric utility for the poor efficiency, you choose your bulbs. But you can get back at the power company and save green. All you have to do is purchase Compact Fluorescent Lamps, available at any hardware store for very little more than the regular incandescent bulb, yet use 66% less energy and provide the exact same lighting capability as the standard incandescent, according to the EPA. Further, they last 10 times longer! You easily save money over the regular bulbs we've used since childhood, while helping the environment.

Conditioning our homes and offices to the proper temperature is an energy drain, which also means it is quite costly. Any structure is imperfect at retaining the proper temperature because, inevitably, outside air gets inside. The culprit, responsible for this mingling of our buildings and the environment, is windows. Older windows are inefficient at heat-retention or -exlusion (depending on the season, of course). Modern window systems are available that provide a much better bulwark against outside air, keeping your home regulated and saving you money. How? You must pay the extra electric demand required by your heating and A/C unit to cool or warm your leaky home. Think of modern windows as an investment, much like modern bulbs. Initially, one must pay the cost of installation; in the long run, one harvests the profit of not paying high electric bills.

Much of the electrical grid in the United States is fueled by coal-burning, which reduces available fossil fuels and spews harmful particulate matter, smog, and carbon-dioxide (the culprit behind global warming). By reducing electric use, you save money, save the environment, and act as a proper planetary steward.

Water Usage
Our planetary composition is ironic. 70% of the globe's surface is water. Yet only 3% of that water is fresh water and humans cannot drink or utilize the other 97% of salt water. Even more unfortunate for us humans, only around 1% of the Earth's fresh water is available for easy human harvest. Most of the fresh water is stored in the polar ice caps or deep within the ground, just out of our grasp. It makes sense then, until an effective desalinization method is invented, that we should reduce our wasteful usage of water. This will both help the environment and again save you money.

Alleviating our demands on the water supply is fairly straightforward. Think about flushing the toilet. Each time you do this, you have just drained the water grid of a gallon or more that must be reprocessed before it can be used again. When we shower, we waste gallons per minute! All one must do to lower the water bill and help the environment is take shorter showers. Each time we brush our teeth, most of us have an ignorant habit of leaving the water running in the sink while we brush our teeth, which is nearly as detrimental as the flow of a shower head. All you have to do is get in the habit of turning off the water until it is time to rinse out your mouth. While these seem obvious, most people do not realize the harmful and costly nature of their ways. Also, water-saving fixtures fit on faucets and shower heads that will lessen the flow of water.

Please do not wash your car in your driveway. Unfortunately, though quite enjoyable in the summertime, this is quite harmful to the environment and rather costly. The industrial cleaners we use to remove dirt and grime merely flow into the ground or the sewers, which both dump into rivers and oceans. The lengthy amount that the hose runs to wash the car is costly. Instead, just venture up to the local car wash. These establishments exist due to their priority on water efficiency and are fairly responsible with containing the cleaners within the wash, instead of allowing them to seep into the adjacent earth. The cost will probably be less and your will get a higher level of cleanliness in a shorter span of time.

Helping the planet is simpler than it seems. The environment is a fragile creation and our actions are more hostile towards it than we realize. The simple steps provided in this article will reform unsustainable mannerisms while saving plenty of money. Do not hesitate, only you can save your cash and your world.