You have to believe in “Green”

On 09.19.09, In Green Issues, Green Living, Green Tech, by Wes Chyrchel

Los Angeles Smog Saying that you want to “go green” is a lot easier than doing it. You have to make new choices every day. There is a big learning curve, what is green, what isn’t green and so on. It could get so frustrating that you may just want to walk away from it all together. Don’t. Let me show you the right way to go green.

Why would you want to go green?

First you have to go green in ways that it makes sense for you and your family. For me I started to realize how much we were throwing away and it just blew my mind. Also, I wanted to save money and eat better. We have achieved those goals and now I am onto new goals. Earlier this year the water company literally doubled our rates. There really was nothing we could do. You end up just paying the extra charges. Our bill went from $75 to $150 per month. That’s a pretty big jump! It forced me to look at our biggest water wasters. Here is what the biggest water wasters our and what I have started to do to save money,

Garden – Uses up to 50% of a households water – I now water every other day. I am adding more rain barrels around my house to catch rain water and I am in the process of changing all the planters around my house to drip systems.
Showers – After laundry, the biggest water user inside the home – Most fairly new and 10 year old homes have shower heads that put out about 3.5 to 2.5 gallons per minute. That’s a lot of water. I am in the process of switching all of my shower heads out to .5 gallons per minute, to possibly the Bricor B100 Ultra Max .55GPM Showerhead
Removing parts of my lawn – Lawns use 30% of the 50% of garden water usage – I live in California and lets face it, we may have a lot of sun to enable things to grow, but we are a desert and lawns just don’t make it out here without an incredible amount of water. There is a great book that I am reading titled, “food not lawns,” that talks about replacing much of your yard plants with edibles and stop wasting water on your lawn.

I am pretty confident that with some changes and a small investment, I can reduce my water bill back to where it was and recoup my investment, within 6 months. Saving water is being green and if you can save yourself some money in the process, then why not?

Soon you will realize there are other areas where you can save money. Your gas bill, electric bill, food bill, transportation, entertainment, etc. The trick is to not just go out and buy a bunch of trendy green gadgets. You hear this often, but there is a reason, first reduce your consumption or use then implement a solution. The reason you do this first is to figure out how much you really use. For example, the biggest waste of money right now is people putting in massive solar systems on their house. The reason is that until the price comes down, it just isn’t a good investment. People are thinking they are saving the environment by adding these systems to their homes, but they are not reducing the amount of energy they use. So they are buying larger solar systems than they actually need and that is waste. If they just conserved, changed out lighting, turned off electricity when not in use, etc., they would find that their electricity demand was not that high. That saving right there, might just be enough to wait out the purchase of a solar system altogether.

At the very least “green” is about conserving and that translates into cash. It’s inevitable, when you take less from the planet, you put out less too.

How to understand your environmental impact: take a breath

When I was young growing up in Southern California we would have days that you couldn’t play outside. I didn’t understand. The problem was that when you looked out the window, it looked fine. It wasn’t raining. The sun was shining. It wasn’t windy. It wasn’t too hot. What was it? Those days were called “Smog Alert” days. The air quality was so poor from the pollution that we generated, that it was dangerous to breath.

Schools kept students inside, sports activities were suspended and the elderly were to be watched. It was crazy. As I got older, it didn’t get much better. When I taught swimming lessons, we had to keep children out of the pool. Can you imagine dozens of children show up for a swimming lesson, suits and goggles in hand, only to be told to turnaround and go home, because the air has been poisoned? Wikipedia has this to say about smog alerts in Los Angeles, “The number of Stage 1 smog alerts has declined from over 100 per year in the 1970s to almost zero in the new millennium.” Much of this “improvement” has only occurred within the last 10 years or so and we have only begun to understand the impact of those years on the population.

Believing in “green” is not siding politically with one group or another. You don’t have to change what you wear, what you eat or who you are. What it means is understanding that everything you do has an impact and every little bit makes a difference. Down the road it will become essential that every person and every business implement green practices. At first these will start out as recommendations. Currently they are being drafted into more strict laws. Then the penalties and fines will start for those that don’t conform. You can start now by just thinking about what you do every day and making a choice to conserve. Please don’t wait until the last possible minute.