The basics of green living

Green living is defined by The Twin Cities Green Guide as:

'A lifestyle intended to ensure that one's impact on the environment is as minimal (or as positive) as possible'

Well apart from the fact that I don't go in for the whole royal-family-speak - 'One must always brush one's teeth...etc,' I think that it pretty much sums up green living. Basically, you follow a lifestyle that respects the planet around you, and does not harm the environment. Simple, you say. Err...no.

You see that there is no way on earth of living on earth that doesn't have some sort of impact on the planet. Without going into too much about the whole inter-being idea that we're taught in RS at our school, it is safe to say that pretty much every little thing we do will affect the environment in some way or another. Whether we build a house (which could destroy wildlife habitats); go for a drive in the car (pollution, greenhouse gases etc etc); or even throw a scrabble piece into a distant privet bush (it could startle a rabbit, which jumps out the bush, is eaten by a fox, which then chokes on a bone and dies - it's body then pollutes a small pond which a Golgafrinchan personnel officer drinks from and dies... - if you still haven't read THGTTG you should crawl off somewhere and die...).

If you managed to discern anything meaningful from the above paragraph, then I'm surprised because there wasn't meant to be any. But anyway, leaving the Glogafrinchans behind us - there is still the issue that there is no way that we can adapt our lives so much so that they don't damage the environment at all - firstly because it's impossible, and secondly because if we did, the whole world's economy would collapse and there'd be no point in having a life anyway. The solution? Instead of adapting our lives so they become green, we have to make the green ideas fit into our present lifestyles.

How? What? When?

Basically instead of following a green life, we have to integrate green aspects into our lives. There's no need to go all hippie - just a change at a time:

First week - you could replace all your light bulbs with energy efficient ones
Second week - you could consider installing a water butt
Third week - how about a compost heap?

By 2008 you could find that all your gas/electricity bills are down, your car runs on toothpaste, and fridge is generating electricity for you...