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Hot SustainabilityIf you're here to squeeze out as much as possible about living light, make some serious impacts, this list may be for you. Here are the more advanced ways in which we can think big while saving tons! All of these will require a store-trip or even special-ordering and some of these may even involve selling most everything you've got and starting a whole new life elsewhere! These are not new ideas as there are hundreds if not thousands that practice all that are listed here. Just click each 
tep to reveal an explanation. If you have any others, please email us we always welcome more suggestions!
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Green your house | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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We cover this area far more extensively in the "Build" area of this site but essentially, your place of living needs to be as light as possible on the environment. This includes solar panels for energy creation, high-efficiency water resource management, proper building materials, location and orientation if possible, low-e windows, and the list continues. Basically, when you do this fully and properly, your habitat will create such little environmental-impact, that you'll be hated by most utility and sanitation companies for not giving them insane amounts of money every month. In fact, many solar panels create more energy than they use so your meter will be running backwards - selling electricity back to the grid and you'll be receiving a check every month!
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Live in a Yurt! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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It's one thing to green your home, it's another to have your entire home be green from the start. A yurt is essentially a permanent tent. If you really like camping, you'll really like a yurt. The traditional Central Asian version is a circular structure built with a wooden frame carrying a felt cover made from the wool of sheep. The modern Western version is taking the original idea and making it with more permanent and high-tech materials but maintaining the original concept. The are engineered for strength and extreme weather conditions. They are built within just a few days and are not intended to be relocated (unlike the originals). In Europe they have different versions and in Canada even more different. Either way, these structures provide a fast, efficient in most respects, and sustainable habitat. Currently some state parks use them as classrooms and some campgrounds offer them for rent - so you could try before you buy. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ecotourism! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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If you've ever found yourself wanting to get more out of your travels, this is the type of vacation for you. Help people and your surroundings individually rather than through other people or networks. You will be making a direct one-on-one impact - not many people can claim that! The personal rewards you take home are breathtaking - no other vacation can impacted you as much. Rather than being an observer of your surroundings, you will now be part of it, interacting with it, assisting it for betterment. There are several avenues in which you can take this but a good place to start is www.ecotourism.org where it will tell you all you need to know to be part of the action. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Grow your own food! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The food we buy at the large supermarkets is very cheap in relation to our income compared to many other nations. Our farmers are heavily subsidized by our government to create an overabundance of food at a rate that far surpasses the need. The means by which they can achieve this costs more than what we realize when we pick up a head of lettuce and put it into our shopping cart. These costs are synthetic fertilization, antibiotics, excessive watering runoff from feedlots, and the transportation and machinery involved in getting all this to our grocery store. If you compare side by side say a tomato grown in a backyard under conditions you supervise versus an assembly line which you don't, you will most likely be able to tell a difference in quality. Since our society has become ever-so time demanding, we seem to have lost touch with what we consume because we don't have time to worry about how it was made so long it's made and we can eat it fast. Well, depending on what your living situation is and how you prioritize what you and your family eats, this may be a very good way to get back what most industrialized nations have lost, a sense of control over what we eat everyday - a connection with our food. "You are what you eat" will take on a whole new meaning! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Guerilla Gardeners | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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If you were a rebel when you were young and you had to become more "responsible" as an adult, this area may be able to get you back a little deviancy in your life while doing good at the same time. Guerilla Gardeners are exactly that, individuals who turn areas left for abandon into areas of green-use. This being food-gardens, plants, trees, grasses, and just anything to reclaim "man's-activity" back to "natural-beauty". The Guerilla part or deviancy connotation in this (as noble and beneficial as it is) is that all this is done without permission from any landowner or agency. Simply go there with trucks of supplies, a lot of people, and a lot of fast determination to create a very fast and plentiful garden for the community it serves. Slightly deviant but nobody could argue that it degrades the area any more than a vacant decayed lot does. These areas tend to bring a community together as it provides many people with their only source of green-area in their vicinity. Next time you walk by your handywork - you'll feel real good that you directly helped your community and brought a lot of smiling faces together in an otherwise stale street. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Veggie fuel conversion | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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If you have a diesel car, you can run your car on grease from your local fast-food chain restaurant (almost...)! Actually, the original diesel engine was designed by Dr. Rudolph Diesel in 1895 to run on peanut-oil! There are a few modifications you have to have done on your diesel-engine car but once those are in place, you're good to go to KFC to tank up! Three requirements for this to work:
You have options with diesel so it's no consequence the Europeans are experimenting with super high efficiency diesel engines versus the standard gasoline. You can use diesel, Biodiesel (no conversion necessary), straight veggie oil from the store, and waste veggie oil from any deepfryer. For more information, you can check out Go VeggieGo and you'll get a run-down on all things veggie-fuel! |
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Be a Green Advocate - Teach! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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You've done it! You've reached the point in all you're doing and researching where you see and feel the benefits of everything sustainable. You're crying out on the inside to be able to tell others about everything you're doing and everything that still needs to be done with everyone's help. This is where teaching effectively comes in. We put this in the "Hot Sustainability" area for several reasons even though it belongs everywhere... We put it here because we feel that one must understand the basics before trying to explain to others. When we say "teach", we mean in everyday life, on the street, at work, at home, at parties, everywhere where you're interacting with people.
Also, when we say teach, we don't mean "preach." Ask any school-professor and they'll tell you that the most effective tool to illustrate a potentially new concept to a student is to showcase it in a way that they can appreciate it. You're not selling it because it's not for sale - you're illustrating the concepts so they see its benefits in their own eyes. Of course, if you're reading this and need a way to do this easily, this website is a marvelous tool to do just that - pass it on! |
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Green clothing - and we don't necessarily mean the color... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Consumers spend over $1 Trillion per year on clothing and textiles. In England, 65 pounds of it gets tossed every year and only one eighth gets reused or donated because well, clothes are cheap! But like many things we are offered to buy at the store, there are hidden costs associated with standard clothing. T-shirts, for example, is usually made of cotton and cotton must be washed frequently in high temperatures with tumble drying and and ironing. According to a Cambridge study, sixty percent of the emissions generated by a cotton T-shirt comes from the 25 washes and tumble dryings it will require over its short lifetime. Ironically, a polyester blouse which uses more energy at the onset to manufacture is cheaper in the long-run since the synthetic fabric cleans easily and dries faster. Over its lifetime, a polyester blouse uses less energy than a cotton T-shirt! So, the moral of the story is that cotton is rotten and should be forgotten! There are plenty of alternatives for eco-friendly fabrics and retailers are listening more and more to the demand. In all, however, the true method to combat the surplus of clothing we have is to not have it at all - meaning not so much of it. Quality rather than quantity. They last longer, easier and cheaper to maintain, and when you're truly done with the piece, it will biodegrade back to the soil or recycling industry in style. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Invest directly! - time to hit the stock market! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Now you can be part of the action directly and indirectly. Put your money and trust into a company that delivers the promise! We've got a listing for you that you can check out on your own. Although the solar-stock sector has seen tremendous returns over the past few years due in part of the escalating oil prices, we don't do stock or investment recommendations - that's up to you and your financial advisor. But, we can show you some places to start looking if this peaks your interest.
Also, refer to the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes - Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide. |
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