Each new year, we all make our resolutions. What’s yours? My goal is to clean up a little bit of Virginia every day. Pick up trash. Recycle more. Sweep up public areas when I can, etc. How are you going to help?
How will you give Mother Nature a little love in 2011? The time is now. How can you help?
Estimates suggest that up to 90% of the contents of our bins could actually be reused or recycled. What could you reuse? What could you recycle? On average, American’s throw away about 3.5 pounds of trash each day! Yikes.
According to The Daily Green Americans generate 30 billion foam cups, 220 million tires, and 1.8 billion disposable diapers every year. Did you really need to save 50 cents by buying the Styrofoam cups instead of the paper cups?
Over the course of a year, we waste 4 gallons of water just by running the water while we brush our teeth! Some experts estimate that more than 50 percent of landscape water use goes to waste because of evaporation or runoff caused by over-watering.
Refrigerators account for about 20 percent of household electricity use. If you set it on 37 degrees and your freezer as close to 3 degrees and you’ll cut that figure drastically. Another simple step…set your dishwasher to air dry rather than heat and you’ll save 20 percent of your dishwasher’s total electricity use.
If every American household recycled just one out of every ten HDPE bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours. (EPA, 2008)
How many brown paper lunch bags do you and your kids use every year? And what about all of those little plastic sandwich and snack bags? How about replacing those with a one time purchase that will not end up in a landfill? Check out these Eco-Friendly Insulated Lunch Bags from GreenSmart. Or these super fun designs for your kids that have individual containers inside the lunch box from Obentec.
It may seem like a no-brainer to many of you, but it’s easy to forget that shopping local, can benefit your impact on Mother Nature in numerous ways. Shopping locally will stimulate your local economy, however it also eliminates the need for fuel-guzzling transportation. An average fresh food item on our dinner table travels 1,500 miles to get there. Buying locally produced food eliminates the need for all that travel.
Local farmers are often less dependent on pesticides and insecticides and less likely to use nitrogen-based fertilizers in the overwhelming quantities that mass producers use. In other words, the environmental impacts of shopping locally will most definitely effect Mother Nature in the near and long-term.
We make choices everyday that can help reduce air pollution. Walk to work or drive? Paint with water-based paints verses oil or varnishes. Use a solid deodorant rather than an aerosol. I bet you can think of a few too….
Share what you learn along the path of living a greener life. Instill these values in your children, friends, family and colleagues.
Sources:
One of our favorite partners, Keep America Beautiful, has a great guide for preventing litter in the workplace. The original page is here, but these are the takeaways:
File this post under “Inspiration for a Fresh Start in 2011” (if you had such a folder somewhere) – this isn’t filmed in VA but makes me long for the Blue Ridge Parkway and open windows, or top-down cruising in an old convertible. Maybe a leisurely winding road on a Harley or a longboard. Regardless, this is breathtaking and beautiful…what inspires YOU?
Check this out.
It was a pleasure to be invited by Mike Baum, KVB’s Director, to the annual meeting for Keep Virginia Beautiful, held this year at the Rice Center, VCU’s research facility on the James River. I’d never been to the center before, but was amazed as I drove up…first of all, for the scenic beauty of the site, but also because of the architecture of the building. The first building to earn Virginia’s highest sustainability/green endorsement, this place is amazing!
Between the solar-powered building to its water reclamation system, this place is a model by which all other public buildings in the state will be judged. And rightly so! It was great seeing everyone there, and look forward to a rewarding 2011. The new site launch is on track for the first quarter…stay tuned, many things in the works!
Here’s a quick panorama I shot with my iPhone (Lisa Clary and Mike Baum in the foreground):
If you haven’t been there yet, Keep Virginia Beautiful has a pretty connected Facebook page, with lots of opportunity to get involved, and a great stream of information about our mission in Virginia. Check out the page here!
The green sustainability report cards are out and VCU has scored extremely well. If you’re not familiar, here’s the excerpt from their site and a link to the VCU report! Congrats to the Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University for setting the example for sustainability in the Commonwealth.
From The College Sustainability Report Card site:
The College Sustainability Report Card is the only independent evaluation of campus and endowment sustainability activities at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. In contrast to the academic focus on sustainability in research and teaching, the Report Card examines colleges and universities, as institutions, through the lens of sustainability.
Sustainability signifies meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Are these considerations guiding how resources are managed in campus operations and endowment practices? TheReport Card is designed to identify colleges and universities that are leading by example on sustainability. The aim is to provide accessible information for schools to learn from each other’s experiences and establish more effective sustainability policies.
Just as the grading system serves as an incentive in the classroom, the Report Card’s grading system seeks to encourage sustainability as a priority in college operations and endowment investment practices by offering independent yearly assessments of progress.
Read more here.