A new year is so refreshing. It’s like hitting the reset button and feeling like you have a fresh start again. If you’ve been trying (or maybe even failing) to live green, the new year gives you a good opportunity to find some new and fun ways to live greener.
Here are a few such ideas…
1. Ride Your Bike More for Transportation. Riding your bike is downright fun. Tons of people do it for recreation and I think nearly everyone rode bikes for fun as a kid. It also happens to be one of the greenest things you can do when you do it for transportation purposes.
2. Host a Regular Vegan Pot-Luck. Going vegetarian or vegan is one of the greenest things you can do, but for many, that sounds out of the question. Whether you are already vegetarian or vegan or not, hosting a regular vegan pot-luck is a fun way to be a little greener and share ideas.. and hey, maybe someone will end up going all the way.
Of course, you can also commit to doing the one- or two-days a week vegetarian thing on your own, but probably more fun with friends…
3. Learn about Solar, Micro-Wind, and/or Micro-Hydro More. Learning is fun. And, again, if you think that going solar (or micro-wind, micro-hydro, or super micro-hydro) is out of the question for you right now, you can at least learn more about these options so that you can be sure of that (or find out that you are wrong) or to be ready when it does become an option for you. From homemade solar panels to community solar gardens to buying solar with a group of people and getting a discount on it, there are a lot of potential ways to green your energy supply for less and have fun in the process.
4. Commit to Shower Pooling. Say what? This is a fun way of saving water that Jeffrey wrote about awhile back. Shower pooling is basically taking a shower with another person (or more) “to save water.
5. Ride Public Transit More. Not into or able to bike more for some reason. Try transit instead. Here are 7 cool reasons to ride transit I discussed four months back.
6. Use Condoms with a Cause. Using condoms is a good way to be greener as is, since increasing the population (especially when not wanted) contributes to a number of the environmental issues we are struggling with. But if you want to be even greener, start using condoms that help the environment in some way (i.e. condoms that help clean up the BP oil spill).
7. Water Your Garden in a Green Way. I think water scarcity in many areas of the world is going to become a bigger and bigger issue in the years to come. One way to green your already green garden is to water it in an efficient way, especially recycling water when possible. For starters, here’s a great post on 6 DIY self-watering methods.
How are you planning to live greener in 2011?
[Photo: amirk/Flickr]
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