Climate Change |

April 8, 2020

| by Chiwah

Top Climate Change Solutions List—38 Things To Do Immediately

A climate change solutions list with 38 things you can do that will help save the planet? If you’re concerned about the climate change news but have no idea what to do, this post is for you.

This list is hardly exhaustive. But there’s enough here to keep you busy for a while.

Do you need to implement all 38 items on this climate change solutions list? Well, that would be great! Start by looking over the list and checking off the ones you’ve already done. If you don’t find any, no worries—pick one or two things and do them. And then come back and pick a couple more.

Only a few, toward the top of the list, require major expenditures to implement. The rest you can do with little or no financial investment at all, and still make a big difference.

Can one person really make a big difference? Well, one plus one plus one … Steps you take will inspire others to take green action. That’s what “grassroots” is all about!

Here goes!

In Your Personal Life:

1. Switch your home energy source to renewables. The “EPA recommends shopping for green power to identify and compare options. EPA strongly recommends buying green power that has been third-party certified and verified to nationally-accepted standards for product quality and content.” It’s particularly important to find an alternative to natural gas, which is far more detrimental to the greenhouse layer for the first 20 years than CO2.

2. Install solar panels or a wind turbine on your home if you haven’t already done so.

3. Invest in energy-efficient appliances for your home.

4. Retire your gas guzzler in favor of an electric car. “The US federal electric vehicle tax credit “offers up to $7,500 to people who purchase an EV. In many areas, rebates, subsidies and discounts are available, especially to low-income families and individuals.” And lawmakers are pushing to expand those even further. HINT: There are used EVs for sale now, with batteries designed to last for many years.

5. Once you have an electric vehicle, install a small solar array on your home to power your electric car’s battery. And then use it to generate surplus power you can use to lower your home utility bill.

6. Embrace a minimalist lifestyle. Keeping this climate change solutions list in mind whenever you’re tempted to act like a consumer will motivate you to buy clothing, furniture and decor, cars, exercise equipment, and electronics used instead of new.

7. Recycle whenever possible. Find out what grades of plastic your community recycles, and be sure to clean those containers! And disassemble the cardboard boxes.

8. Compost food waste. It doesn’t take a lot of space, and you can purchase an indoor composting unit to help you start the process. If you need instructions for composting, you can easily find them online.

9. Start a community garden. Stop being a sitting duck for food shortages! If the land is available, get together with your neighbors and get a garden going. If you have a homeowners’ association, help them see how everyone would benefit and that community gardens do not lower property values.

10. Plant trees, especially the common horse-chestnut, black walnut, American sweetgum, ponderosa pine, red pine, white pine, London plane, Hispaniolan pine, Douglas fir, scarlet oak, red oak, Virginia live oak, and bald cypress.

11. Shop your local farmers’ market. The fruits and vegetables are fresher and you avoid the ecological cost of transport.

12. Drive less. Extend this positive behavior from our coronavirus experience into your ongoing life—do your level best not to sink back into old habits. Walk, bike or carpool when you can—good for your body and your spirit! Consider an electric bike if hills are a problem. And use public transportation when available.

13. Speak up at work. Take the initiative NOW to convince company management to continue with an offsite work force—it worked fine during coronavirus pandemic, didn’t it? This will save the company and you money, and fewer cars on the road is a great boon for the environment.

14. Switch to less energy-intensive outdoor activities. Choose hiking or skiing, sailing (not motor cruising), kayaking, dancing, tennis, or other activities that strengthen your body and don’t pollute.

15. Join an organization like Sierra Club, Greenpeace or Daily Kos and take part in the activities on their climate change solutions list: Sign petitions, make calls and/or write short letters to decision makers and influencers, etc.

16. Start a climate change news or awareness blog or vlog and publicize it on social media.

17. Write climate change songs, record them, and publish them over the Internet.

18. Inform yourself and VOTE in the next election (and every election). Being knowledgeable about local, state and national issues can make you a powerful force.

19. Cut down on single-use plastics. Instead of plastic wrap, buy or make beeswax food wraps and/or buy silicone food storage bags online. Take your own canvas bags to the grocery store, and bypass their plastic produce bags—I put my vegetables straight into my canvas bags, then take them out at the register. For small items, like strawberries and mushrooms, carry thin, lightweight cloth bags in the car.

20. Do what you can to reduce landfill. Reuse whenever you can, or give away things you don’t use anymore instead of tossing them. Repair what’s broken, or check to see if your community has a free fixit clinic.

21. Go green online. Believe it or not, the Internet is a huge source of CO2 emissions, with huge increases every year. Unsubscribing from all those emails you get that you never read will help a lot.

Minimize the time you spend playing games on your computer—if you must play them, switch to playing them on your phone. And start reading more and streaming video less.

And if you have a website, check its carbon footprint. If it’s high, download a website optimization plugin to optimize it. (I did this and it made a huge difference.)

Finally, look for green hosting for your website. Very common in other countries; here in the good ol’ USA, we’re just beginning to have green hosting available. Do check, as progress can occur in the blink of an eye.

22. Switch to LED lightbulbs and turn off lights when not using them.

23. Unplug electronics when not using them to minimize consumption of standby power.

24. Insulate your home.

25. Close curtains in summer to keep the heat out and in winter to help keep it in.

26. Install a programmable thermostat to keep the temperature just right—and see if you can’t adjust your “just right” to be just a speck more conservationist!

27. Wash your clothes in cold water and line-dry them! You’ll be amazed at how good they look and smell—I certainly was. If you’ve no room for a line, dry your clothes in the dryer for just a few minutes, long enough to get the wrinkles out, and then hang them indoors on a rack. (I started doing this years ago to save wear and tear on my clothes, and yes, it makes them last a lot longer. I use a rack originally designed for CDs!)

28. Stop eating beef, or at least cut down on it. Raising other animals doesn’t take nearly the resources of raising cattle, and cattle contribute enormously to methane production. A simple online search will show you the many benefits of a vegetarian diet.

29. Switch to a green bank—this is one of the most important items on this climate change solutions list. Because whether we like it or not, money talks. Almost anything is greener at this point than Chase or Bank of America. Local credit unions may be a good choice. Check out their investment portfolio!

30. Become a green investor. This is another HUGE one! Many green investments are returning handsome dividends now, and this will be even truer in the future.

In Community Politics:

31. Keep up to date on political action in your community. Attend and speak up at City Council or other meetings where serious issues are being decided, such as community energy coalitions, new housing or commercial development proposals, and questions pertaining to water and air quality, sewer, etc.

In my town, we just conducted a successful petition drive to force our aberrant City Council to let the people vote on a proposed new development they had approved. Yay!

32. Take part in organized marches and other activities designed to raise awareness of the climate crisis. Many of these are organized by groups such as Sierra Club and Greenpeace.

33. Join a neighborhood website and use it partially to inform readers about community awareness activities.

34. Get to know your neighbors by going door to door to engage them in discussions as to how they’d like to see the neighborhood develop, what they think about climate change, their views on a city ordinance or other new development, and so on. And encourage them to register to vote and then to VOTE.

On Vacation:

35. When you travel, go by train or bus instead of flying. If you must fly, choose an airline committed to maintaining a low carbon footprint: Korean Air, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, Air Europa Express and some others are top choices (see more) (and more) as of this writing.

36. Eliminate cruising! Cruise ships not only have a high carbon footprint, they are also detrimental to ocean life and contribute only minimally to the local ports of call that are left to deal with the waste the ships leave behind.

True, the problem of dumping sewage—perhaps in the face of an oncoming whale!—has lessened since the major lines were hit with huge fines for polluting US waters a few years ago. But it hasn’t disappeared.

Also, the number of whales and dolphins has declined in areas prone to ship noise and pollution. “In all about 55 marine species have been noted to have suffered due to exposure to sound of varying frequencies. These include sperm whale, grey whale, mink whale, pygmy sperm whale, killer whale, sea bass, pink snapper, goldfish, cod, haddock, bluefin tuna, squid, lobster, brown shrimp etc.”

37. Buy carbon offsets to balance any non-green things you do. Many air and cruise lines offer them (Whoa! Buying them doesn’t make it okay to use a line with a high carbon footprint). You can find your own carbon offsets online.

38. Enlist your kids in everything you do to green the planet, and help them design their own climate change solutions list. After all, it’s theirs too—and let’s hope they’re going to be living here a lot longer than you. Besides, it will give them the confidence of knowing that you, your family, and they personally are taking action to make a difference.

What other steps can you think of to help move us toward a sustainable future? Let me know in a comment!

To your success with eco action,
Chiwah Slater
Founder, ecoactive101.com
Founder, https://AWriteToKnow.com
Founder, https://PetWrites.com

October 1, 2019

| by Chiwah

How Many Insidious Single-Use Plastics Do You Use?

Plastic can be fun—plastic Hallowe’en capes, masks, goggles and ears and tails. Plastic Christmas trees. Plastic squeaky pet toys. Squirt guns. Sunglasses.

Trouble is, it’s everywhere.

Have you noticed? Take a look around your home or office. Does your eye land on plastic water bottles? Plastic cups, plates, forks and spoons, drinking straws? Ziplock and other sandwich, freezer and trash bags? Plastic CDs and DVDs?

Worst of all is that horrid plastic shrink-wrap packaging you have to cut open. Runner-up: the plastic clamshell containers most berries are now sold in, even at many farmer’s markets.

Magazines, even! I used to read Conde Nast’s Wired magazine. I liked it fine, until the replaced the glossy paper cover with a plasticized one. Why does a magazine need a plastic cover? Not only that, they delivered it sealed in plastic so tough I had to use scissors to get the magazine out of its wrapper.

I canceled my subscription.

What’s Wrong with Plastic?
For ecological reasons, I’m doing my best to get single-use plastics out of my life. The manufacture of plastics not only contributes to pollution, it also adds to the carbon footprint and the greenhouse layer that have become the focus of the global fight for a sustainable earth.

Then there’s the source material problem: traditionally, plastics are made from petroleum, a non-renewable, primarily Middle-Eastern resource that costs us soldiers’ lives and hundreds of billions in military dollars each year and leads to millions of civilian deaths in the lands we occupy. The alternative is American oil, which means drilling more life-endangering oil wells here.

Also, plastic has a deleterious impact on our health. I recently read a Reader’s Digest article enumerating the many health problems caused by exposure to plastics. I learned that it’s not just to the BPA in plastics, that the BPA replacements we feel so safe with now appear to produce a broad range of of undesirable health effects similar to those produced by exposure to BPA, contributing to birth defects, miscarriages, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. They also cause bowel irritation and genital birth defects, affect thyroid and other endocrine functions, and more.

What about the new bioplastics? Plant-based plastics have a lower carbon footprint, in that as they degrade they simply release the carbon that was sucked up by the plants from which they’re created (as opposed to releasing carbon that was trapped in oil deposits)—a major consideration when we’re thinking climate change.

And since they require no mining, their processing is significantly less destructive than that of petroleum-based plastics. On the other hand, bioplastics are often produced from trees that would not otherwise have been cut down. Even if made from bamboo, hemp, or some other plant, there is a cost to the water and soil additives used to grow the plants from which the plastic is produced (though hemp doesn’t take much water and is probably the best choice). And depending on what chemicals were used in their production, they may or may not be toxic. Finally, even plastic from biomass ends up as trash, contributing to unecological landfill or perhaps harming or killing wildlife.

Dining Out and Grocery Shopping
When I dine out, I often ask for a doggie bag. Many restaurants are taking steps to eliminate petroleum-based plastics. What most don’t realize is that bioplastics are still plastics, still a threat to wildlife on our beaches, and they only biodegrade in industrial composting plants, which few will end up in.

So, while plant-based plastics are more ecologically sound than their petroleum-derived counterparts, they’re not an ideal solution. What to do? Three suggestions:

Make a point of speaking to the restaurant manager about replacing plastic containers with containers made from heavy paper, or
Consider taking your own reusable containers to hold your takeaway food. You can carry them in an attractive canvas bag, and if you don’t need them, no harm done.
Do both of the above—take your own containers AND talk to the manager.

When you go shopping, do you bring home plastic grocery or produce bags? I used to. Conscious shoppers learn to take their own reusable canvas bags, but it took me a while to start remembering to take them into the store with me. No matter. You can say no to the store’s paper or plastic bags, stack your purchases in the cart, wheel it out to your car and transfer them to your own canvas bags for easy carrying into the house when you get home.

When buying fresh produce, there’s no harm in skipping the bag altogether. I used to like getting those plastic produce bags so I could reuse them as liners for my countertop compost bin. No more! Who needs a liner? A quick rinse after I empty the container and I’m good to go.

Multi-Use But Still Disposable
And then, if you’re like me, there are the multi-use but still landfill- or recycle-bound product containers on your kitchen shelves—plastic oil bottles, plastic soy sauce and vinegar bottles, plastic spice jars, plastic nut butter containers, and so on. Products we used to buy in glass!

What makes glass better? First, it’s made from plentiful materialsa that are available right here. Second, glass doesn’t contain toxins that endanger your health. Third, it doesn’t threaten sea life. True, it’s not ideal—it’s heavy and has a bigger transportation footprint than plastic, making it hard to get to recycling plants. But I reuse the Ball and Mason jars I buy food in for storing leftovers in the refrigerator. I’ve found they keep food fresher than plastic.

Now it’s time to sneak a look under the sink. What do you see? In my case, a slew of plastic household cleaner containers greets my jaundiced eye.

And in the bathroom? Plastic toothpaste tubes? Plastic combs and brushes? Plastic shower cap? Shower curtain liner? Eventually, these will all hit the trash or the recycle pile, and most will end up in landfill.

Recycling Is Becoming Less Available

It used to be I didn’t feel so bad about plastics because we could recycle them. But not all plastics are recyclable, and it’s hard to know the difference between those that are and those that aren’t.

And now that China has stopped accepting imports of mixed paper and severely cut back on plastic recycling, most of our single-use plastics—even the ones you dutifully wash and put in the recycle bins—are likely destined for landfill. And some American cities, counties and states no longer support plastic recycling; in some cases, recycling is entirely a thing of the past.

It’s Up to Us—Vote with Your Dollars!
Vote with your dollars, and let manufacturers know. As the saying goes, the pen—or the computer—is mightier than the sword. I’ve started writing to let them know that plastic packaging is the reason I’m no longer buying their products. It’s not hard—I designate half an hour a week to visiting the websites of brands whose products I no longer buy or buy less of because they’re packaged in plastic.

Most either publish an email address or a contact form; I click “Contact” at the top of the site or scroll down to the footer at the bottom of the page and click “Contact” there. Then I paste in this note, brief and to-the-point:

“I’ve been a customer of yours for years, but I am no longer buying your products because of your plastic packaging. When you start making them available in more ecologically sound packaging, I will consider buying them again.”

Does changing your buying habits change your lifestyle? Somewhat. When I can find brands that use more eco-friendly packaging (glass, cardboard, celophane or waxed heavy card stock), I switch. If I can’t find one—for example, it seems all cottage cheese and sour cream is now packaged in plastic—I experiment with making a reasonable facsimile of my own.

My homemade cashew-nut vegan cream cheese, I admit, doesn’t taste like cream cheese. But it’s great mixed with fresh mango as a dessert I would never have discovered had I not decided to stop buying vegan cream cheese in plastic containers. (And since I’m not 100% vegan, I bought dairy cream cheese today, packaged in foil and paper.)

Am I saying I never buy anything packaged in plastic anymore? No, I’m not there yet, but I’m moving in that direction. I slipped today and bought blueberries in plastic, didn’t realize it until I put my groceries away. It happens.

But as more of us look for alternatives to plastic-packaged goods and let manufacturers know we’re serious about getting single-use plastics out of our lives, they will have no choice but to respond.

I had no idea how plastic-riddled my life has become until I decided to phase out single-use plastics.

Change Isn’t Easy, But It Beats Extinction
Please don’t misunderstand—I’m not saying change is easy. Change can be a real challenge. But change we must. And it does open new doors to discovery.

Sure, you’re only one person. Your actions alone are not going to save the planet. But every meaningful change starts with one person, joined by another, and another and another … and voilà, the change that seemed hard becomes a trend.

And when we all speak out to let providers know you’re voting with our dollars, they will respond. Yes, it’s the corporations that need to change. But it’s we who must force them to to do that.

The ball is in your court. Pick it up and play.

To your eco-active success,
Chiwah Slater
Founder, ecoactive101.com
Founder, https://AWriteToKnow.com
Founder, https://PetWrites.com