Five More Things...
...that you can do to reduce your impact on the planet (and maybe save a bit of money too)
The previous list (Five Things) was chock full of useful tips for reducing your personal environmental impact, and we enjoyed writing it so much that we thought it was time for a sequel. A Five Things 2 - Electric Boogaloo. Slight different angle this one, or maybe a lot of the same angle. When it's for the good of the planet who cares. Actually it's not even for the good of the planet. It's for the good of all of us. Daddy can't bail us out of any mess we make of this one so let's stop fannying about.
- 1) Paperless Billing
- It's suprising considering the cost savings involved how slow many companies have been in adopting paperless billing. Imagine how much it must cost to send out a monthly bit of paper to every customer not to mention the cost of delivering all those letters. I mean we are all on direct debit anyway these days so it's just an extra bit of clutter for the identity thieves to use if you don't destroy it poperly so why not get in touch with your utility companies, credit card companies etc. (by e-mail or phone preferably, don't write a letter ;) ) and request that they switch you to paperless billing. Even if they don't offer it request it, if enough people do the same they'll soon get with the programme. Some companies even offer an incentive to go paperless - one of the first I became aware of to make the switch years ago was BT who offered a discount on your quaterly bill if they could give it to you online rather than in the post.
- 2) Postal Preference Services
- Kind of a follow on from the paperless billing thing - tell those bloody direct mail companies that you don't want their crap coming through your door. When we as a species are finally replaced on this earth the (probably silicon based) lifeforms that replace us will not use oil for fuel - no they'll probably burn fucking junkmail offering loans, life insurance, credit repair services and bnp membership which they'll extract from wells plugged into our landfills. If we all say "NO! Stop sending me this shit" maybe the amount of it being produced will reduce which will probably be the equivalent of taking 150 smelly old trucks off the road and planting an area the size of wales with trees. Possibly. Anyway this all sounds great but what are you meant to do? Get in touch with every direct mail marketing company and tell them to get you the fuck out of their database? Could be the cause of some fun ranting but ultimately tedious so why not try a mailing preference service instead? Get on a telephone preference service while you are at it too. Not so much for the impact on the planet but mostly because it's a shit practice that nobody who is good, decent and right thinking should have to endure.
- 3) Shopping Bags
- Back when I was a kid my mum had a shopping bag. She took it with her when she (walked usually) to the shop to buy our dinner. She didn't tend to bring half a dozen plastic bags back from the paper shop after popping in for a pint of milk. Shopping bags are like shitty javascript - neither degrade gracefully. If you must use them stuff your pockets with a load of them before you go to the supermarket (you'll be suprised how many bags you can fit in your pocket when they aren't full of Findus Crispy Pancakes) and if you go to Tesco (and you don't mind them spying on your shopping habits) you can ask for additional clubcard points for every bag that you've reused. Try taking 100 bags in and putting one item in each one then demand 100 extra points.
- 4) Saturday Night Primetime Extravaganza
- Imagine on a Saturday night you could only watch 60 minutes of television. Would you really, honestly choose to watch a bunch of z-listers in a dancing contest? Or tone deaf mutants auditioning for a panel of smarmy squareheads? No you probably wouldn't would you. Try turning that shit off and see what the broadcasters are forced to come up with to try and win you back when enough of you do the same. You'll probably have far more interesting conversations at work too than "did you see that Ant? He made funny that Dec was a bummer and then they covered Biggins in goo". Will this improve the world? Well it will for me.
- 5) Stick a wind turbine in your garden
- OK, so most of us can't really do that. We just aren't as lucky as smiley Dave the compassionate conservative but solar panels may be viable for some, and you may even be entitled to a grant to install them and can sell excess electricity back to the "grid". One thing that you absolutely mustn't do (if you live in the UK at least) is let your electricity supplier play to your conscience and offer you a "green tariff" in which you pay a few quid extra in order to get a percentage of your electricity supply from renewables such as wind,tidal and solar. What? Why shouldnt' we do this? Well the fact is electricity suppliers in the UK are obliged by law to invest more heavily in renewables and they are just being your typical profiteering big business wankers by trying to pass the cost of that legal obligation on to people like you or I who actually give a fuck about the world rather than how many cuban cigars the shareholders can shove up their arseholes.
So that was part 2. That's ten things now. How many more pieces of wise wisdom will spew forth from the Earth Dream? Why not bookmark this website and share it with others so that you and they may return and become enriched.
Pip pip tally hooo