AspectRain

Maybe you hate environmentalists. The very thought of tree-hugging militant vegans toting red paint and fabric shopping bags just sends a shiver of loathing down your spine, or, at least, exercises your eye-rolling muscles till they’re sore.

Or perhaps you just want to know the facts, without emotion being used as evidence.

I’ll try.

Here is a list 10 of the most basic things we should do, if nothing else, to help minimize the negative impact of 6.6 billion human beings of our planet Earth. Don’t worry, I won’t recommend meditation and power crystals, or even talk about going vegetarian. Not in this article, anyhow.

1. Buy USDA-certified organic, ideally from local growers (although very small growers do not have to comply with regulations). Yes, they cost a bit more, but on the upside, as organic produce and meat become mainstream, the prices are getting better, as are the selections. Focus your Organic shopping on meat, produce and cut flowers. If you can afford it, try slowly adding on the non-edible stuff like cleaning detergents, insect sprays, and fertilizers. If you’ve got a tight budget, here’s a list of the produce that has the least amount of pesticides.
   • Why? Let’s put aside the annoyance of smug 100% organic shoppers. Let’s even put aside the studies of what the added hormones and pesticides might do to our own bodies. The man-made compounds we use in pesticides (such as Dieldrin, 40 times more toxic than DDT) are unfortunately stable and will be around to pollute soil and water even long after humans disappear. Organic farms tend to be designed to be sustainable with better soil quality and less energy consumption than old-fashioned farms, though this is balanced a bit with the fact that organic farms are only able to yield about 60-90% of what traditional farms can. Hopefully this will improve as the technologies of Organic Agriculture develop.
2. Don’t be a lazy consumer. Buy what you need, use what you buy, recycle or reuse whenever possible, and try to avoid stuff that’s over-packaged for ‘convenience‘.
   • Why? While some companies use recycled or biodegradable materials, many of the most mainstream companies still produce packaging that just ends up taking space in landfills, those oh-so-magical oubliettes we like to put things to forget/procrastinate about. Our ability to consume is infinite, but unfortunately, our ability to remove the traces or store of our garbage is extremely finite.
3. Understand what evolution really is. Don’t get it confused with one of the Theories of Evolution (Darwin, for one). Evolution is the fact that, over time, species change, and given the right circumstances, can even change into new species completely separate from the original. Evolution as a fact of natural life has been accepted since before Darwin in the Victorian era.
   • Why? By understanding the mechanisms for evolutionary change, the importance of things like biodiversity and the biological limits of natural preserves becomes clear. In any case, we all sound a lot better when we know what we’re arguing about.
4. Give up mowing and forget about green lawns. You’re much better off changing it out for a landscaping of shrubbery and rock gardens. If you must have your green carpet, make sure to use local grass (call a nearby greenery or gardening source to ask), organic fertilizers, and electric or push lawn mowers.
   • Why? Grass is inefficient from an environmental and energy standpoint. It takes up more water, and the use of non-organic fertilizers has a severe affect on our groundwater. A standard gas mower uses more gasoline and emits more pollutants than a standard car. Many lawns are made from imported grasses, which can spread and wreck havoc on local fauna (in general, bringing in plants from other regions is always a bad idea with usually inestimable consequences).
5. Adopt. If you don’t want to hear about the Earth or animals, then at least consider how you can make a world of difference to a human child.
   • Why? There are over 110,000 children in the US alone waiting to be adopted, many of whom wait around 3.65 years before finding a home. The best way to make the world a better place is to put better people in it - and whether or not you are concerned about overpopulation, there are a lot of deserving children out there who just want a family.
6. Go paperless, whenever possible, reclaim wood, avoid rare woods. This is pretty basic, but very true. Individuals go through a lot of paper every year, businesses even more. Buy recycled printer paper for when you must print, and use digital copies for everything else. Reclaimed wood (and other architectural salvage) for furniture, crafts, building and flooring is becoming popular, so it’s becoming easier to find. Avoid rare, endangered woods such as mahogany (sorry, musicians), rosewood, teak and ebony, which cut right into the already minimal remains of old growth rainforests.
   • Why? Because even though it’s all biodegradable, trees don’t grow as fast as we can use them up. Trees glow slowly and have every intention of living for centuries, so long as we don’t bother them. When we cut down old-growth forests and rain forests, those are rare places that we will not get back without very drastic measures. Lets try not to have to go that far by being smart about it today. Fortunately, some big retailers like Home Depot have promised to buy wood only from sustainable managed forests.
7. Drive Less. Another obvious tip, and this time I won’t say why.
8. Stop being Materialistic. Most of us are, to some extent. We fawn over new clothes and fashion trends. We buy things for reasons other than function and efficiency. We collect… stuff. We want to own, not borrow or rent. If we lose one of these things, we get terribly upset.
   • Why? Oddly enough, somehow, when we stop being overly affected by inanimate stuff, we tend to be in much better moods most of the time. It’s less waste filling up our landfills, and it forces companies to really up the ante on efficient, truly useful, long-lasting merchandise instead of frilling up useless things for us to waste money and energy on.
9. Question branding. Many companies have great marketing departments that make their brand seem environmentally hip and awesome, when their practices are nothing of the kind. Marketing and indoctrination begin at birth, and the best kind succeeds at seeming like your very own conclusion. The better the federal certification and standards become for ‘green’ technologies, processes and products, the easier it will be to follow. Remember that if it doesn’t directly say it’s made entirely of all %100 ____, then it probably isn’t. It can say “Made with 100% ___” which only means that the ___ is really ____, but the product as a whole may only consist of 15% of it.
   • Why? I’m always a big supporter of people learning to question what’s given them, including their own accepted perceptions. Take anything that you believe, and think about where you got that ‘fact’, and research it. As I said before, we all sound a hell of a lot better when we know what we’re talking about. The more knowledge you have, the easier wisdom will come to you.
10. Encourage Fair Trade. This isn’t about buying imported trinkets with “Fair Trade” stamped on them. I mean consider the companies you deal with on a regular basis. The gas station franchise. The restaurants. The grocery stores. The big box stores. The clothing manufacturers. The coffee you buy. The company you work for, and all its partners. Fashion X might treat its people great, but where does it get its fabric, and who puts the clothes together? Child labor is a modern reality. Unsafe working conditions are a modern reality.
    • Why? It’s all part of that whole ‘making a better world by putting good people in it’ thing. It works in another way - discourage the people and practices that are hurtful to others. Unfortunately, the term ‘fair trade’ is relatively new and so there isn’t an official set of standards for it, although there are a few organizations that are starting this.

Part of being a citizen of Earth means becoming aware that the means don’t ever justify the ends. Nature needs balancing, and not all the debugging happens gradually.

If you don’t mind hearing it from TreeHuggers, here’s some more information on ‘going green’.