by Allison G. S. Knox

Making significant changes to our daily lives can be difficult, especially when the results don’t appear immediately.  In thinking of the state of the environment, I believe that most of us want to help, but aren’t sure how to do so.  Often, it may seem like a daunting task and we perhaps feel that our small changes can’t possibly make enough of a difference to make the effort worthwhile.  It is important to realize, however, that even the smallest changes to our daily activities, can make such a difference to the overall health of the environment. 
 
It is no secret that our environment is polluted.  You drive down the highway and notice garbage all over the side of the road.  You see the garbage truck leave your driveway filled to the brim with endless trash bags, only to meet other garbage trucks also filled with trash bags at a landfill.  We also receive endless amounts of junk mail advertising something that we throw out almost immediately after classifying it as junk mail.  The environment is greatly impacted by the choices we make in our daily lives.

 
It is understandable that we don’t want to make life altering choices about the way in which we live.  It is difficult to do so.  However, making small changes can lower our impact on the environment – and we may not even realize how much these small changes are actually impacting the world.  However, we will notice how much money it actually saves us.

Many of the most significant changes are actually quite small – and environmental advocate, Al Gore identifies many of these changes on his website Climate Crisis. 
His ideas include:
1) Change the type of light bulb you use to an energy efficient light bulb
2) Check the pressure in your tires because it can improve your gas mileage
3) Drive less – carpool and use mass transit
4) Use less hot water
5) Avoid products with a lot of packaging
6) Adjust your thermostat
7) Plant a tree
8) Turn off electronic devices
9) Try Meatless Mondays
10) Unplug appliances you are not using.

Al Gore’s ideas are very small changes, but are not life altering changes that make it difficult to abide by them.  Personally,  I have implemented several about 11 of these ideas – and I can attest that it didn’t significantly change my life.  In fact, I found that my electric bill was significantly reduced, as was the amount of money I spent on gas for my car to get to and from places.  I appreciated the financial savings and was able to put more money into a savings account just from doing Al Gore’s ideas.   Such a small change saved me money, and changed my impact on the environment.

Yes, huge life altering changes are difficult to do – and most of us actually don’t really like doing it unless we see immediate results.  However, making small changes will actually make more of a significant impact on the environment than we realize, and are changes we can actually handle.

Tags: Al Gore, Climate Crisis

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 11:14 am and is filed under Sustainability General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.