What is Green Living? Green living in a nutshell is living in harmony with your surroundings. Living green can be as simple, or as complex as you make it to be. Living green does not have to be a major life commitment. There are many things in your day to day life that you can do to help live more green.
Remember the three R's; reduce, reuse and recycle. You can save and reuse plastic shopping bags, they have many uses, small garbage bags, storage bags, and reused at the store. Recycle cans, plastic bottles paper and cardboard. Reduce your waste by using common sense shopping, cut back on products you do not use or need, switch off lights when not in use and turn the heat and air conditioning to lower settings at night. Do not toss out grass clippings or leaves, they make great compost. Several commercial compost units are available.
Another little thing you can do is pay attention to ozone alerts and avoid driving and mowing during alert times. Carpool to work, or whenever possible use public transportation. Plant a tree in your yard. Trees are natures filters, and we could not live without them. They scrub the air we breathe of harmful carbon dioxide, and turn it into more breathable air.
More proactive approaches to living green could include seeking out renewable energy solutions to supplement electricity use such as installing solar panels and using solar heat and geothermal environmental systems. Grey water reclaiming is another possible method to look into. Grey water is any drain not connected to a toilet stool.
Composting can be done either in a commercially available compost device, or you can build your own compost pile with a few boards and some chicken wire. Compost is great for insulating tree beds during long winter months and has many properties and nutrients for gardening. You need only turn the compost pile once or twice a moth with a pitchfork to keep the composting process active.
You can go as far as you want with green living, however most people stop at composting, and do not recycle grey water. I have actually had the pleasure of seeing Biosphere in action on the local Elf Lore Nature preserve. Biosphere supplies all of it's own needs, recycles it's own waste water and collects energy from both wind and solar panels located on the roof.
The greenhouse loosely based on the idea of CELSS (Contained Ecological Life Support Systems) also scrubs the air of excess Carbons, recycles part of the compound's wastewater, and supplies fresh green vegetables and fruits to the inhabitants.
While the process is personally fascinating to my intellect, I do not think I could take green living to such great lengths as they have.
