Eat Local Foods & Organic Foods

What you choose to eat has a major impact on the world around us. By choosing locally produced foods, organic foods or locally produced organic foods, you can make a big difference without making a major change in your life.

One way to cut down on pollution while also supporting your local economy is to eat locally produced foods. While eating locally produced foods, you will dramatically cut down on the emissions created by the transport of the food to your area. This will help to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels and will also support your local food producers. You can often check labels at your local supermarket to find locally produced foods, or you can shop at local farmers markets. Check out the Eat Local Challenge website for more details.

Another choice you can make is purchasing organic foods. Organically grown and produced foods are not produced using toxic pesticides that end up in our air, earth and water. These pesticides also end up in the foods we eat, leading to cancer, asthma and other health problems. By buying organic foods, you can help save the planet while also avoiding toxic chemicals entering your body. Organic foods can be more expensive to produce, so the price tag is a bit higher at the grocery store. However as more people switch to organic foods, the costs will come down. Find out more at the Organic Trade Association website.

What is better than locally produced food, or organic food? How about locally produced food that is also organically grow? This will provide the benefits of purchasing locally grown foods with the benefits of buying organic!

Green Driving and Maintenance Tips

One of the more obvious ways to drive green is to switch to an electric power vehicle, whether a hybrid vehicle, a plug-in hybrid vehicle or a full electric vehicle. Or even switching to a smaller vehicle with greater fuel economy can make a world of difference. However, what if you can afford a new (or used) vehicle right now? Or what if you already own one of the vehicles above and want to do more? That is what this post is all about. First, let's look at some green driving tips to help you save fuel, energy and the environment.

• Before you start driving, first try to plan ahead and combine multiple trips into one. Rather than making three separate trips throughout the day, see if you can figure out a way to do all three trips in one go.
• Another thing you can plan ahead of time to avoid rush hour. If you can avoid the stopping and starting involved in normal rush hour traffic, you can save a bunch of gas. This can also lower stress and save time.
• Avoid rapid starts and stops. The average person is not being filmed for The Fast and The Furious, so a nice steady acceleration will do just fine. Also, look ahead at what is coming up. There is no reason to accelerate when a stop is coming ahead. Simply coast until the stop arrives. This will save gas as well as wear and tear on your engine and brakes.
• Stop speeding. Alright, I know that many of us drive over the speed limit every once in a while. However, did you know that vehicles can be up to 10% less efficient when the speed goes from 65 MPH to 75 MPH? So slow it down a bit and save some green. It is considerably safer as well.
• When you are parking, find some shade when it is hot so you can avoid using the air conditioner. You can also use a windshield reflector in the summer to keep the car cool and in the winter to help keep the car warm.
  

There are other driving tips out there, but this is a great start for anyone looking to implement greener driving habits. Next, let us take a look at some basic maintenance that you can do to increase gas mileage and lower emissions.

• Get rid of that junk inside of your trunk (I am sorry... I had to do it!). Seriously though, keeping a large quantity of stuff in the trunk of your car can lower your miles per gallon. If it does not need to be in your car, then take it out.
• Obama took a lot of heat from McCain and the Republicans on this one, but one of the more effective green tips for your car is to keep the tires properly inflated. You can lose 1% of your fuel economy from your tires being only 3 pounds of pressure below the recommended pressure. So check your tires every few weeks and make sure they are inflated properly. This will also improve handling and safety.
• Keep up on your oil changes. There is a lot of back and forth on when exactly you should change your oil, but at least keep it up every 5000 miles. Most oil change places recommend every 3000 miles, but it really depends on a lot of factors. Whatever level you choose, keep it up. You will get better gas mileage and your vehicle will last longer too. Just make sure that the oil is recycled, whether you do it or the shop you use does it.
• Get your regular tune ups. There are many factors that can effect your gas mileage, so make sure your car is running properly and make sure you fuel economy has not dropped.

In addition, the best way to reduce emissions and go green is not to drive at all. If you can walk or ride a bike, then go for it! Or take public transportation, such as a bus, subway, or train. If none of these work for you, try carpooling to work and to events. You will save gas, money and the environment!

-BeeHawk-

Try a Vegetarian or Vegan Diet... or Cut Back on the Meat

One of the most dramatic changes that humans can make to lower their personal carbon footprint is to change their diet to minimize the consumption of meat, dairy and other animal products. While a vegetarian or vegan diet is the most effective (and dramatic) method for accomplishing this, it is not necessary to cut out meat and dairy entirely to make a positive impact on the environment. Cutting back on meat and dairy can help to reduce water use, carbon and methane emissions and pollutants in the environment and can also provide for a healthier diet. Reducing meat and dairy can also save you money!

So what are the issues with consumption of meat, dairy and other animal products? Well, we all hear about CO2 emissions and usually think of vehicles, coal plants and other emitters as the largest contributors to global warming. With meat and dairy, there is a lot of CO2 produced by the transport, the processing and/or cooking, the refrigeration and so on. This is not minor by any means, but equally as important (if not more so) is the methane gas that animal agriculture produces. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2 and methane concentrations have more than doubled in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times. In fact, it is estimated that nearly one half of all human induced global warming comes from methane gas. While methane is produced by multiple human sources, the single largest is animal agriculture. Most comes from the digestive processes of livestock, with most of the remaining coming from man made lagoons of animal wastes.

To further compound the problem, human consumption of meat has increased by as much a five-fold over the past 50 years and is expected to increase into the future. In order to produce this massive increase in meat, huge areas of rainforest are being cleared for use as pasture land. So not only do we add more farm animals, we also remove trees that can help to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

In addition, the use of water and the pollution of water sources is greatly increased with the consumption of meat and dairy. Water is needed for production of feed for animals, plus water is consumed and used in the raising of animals. Animal wastes also pollute water sources, creating water issues all around animal agriculture areas.

So with all of the negative impacts of meat consumption, what can be done to start solving the problem? Switching to a full vegan diet or vegetarian diet is the best option, but simply reducing the amount of meat and dairy consumed can have a dramatic impact on our planet. Try some alternatives to meat and dairy such as a veggie burger instead of a hamburger. Experiment with tofu, or try veggie "chicken" and veggie "beef". Switch from milk to soymilk, or my favorite almond milk. Switch out meat in dishes where you can use fresh veggies instead. Or maybe even cut down portion sizes when you do eat meat. Do you really need a 16oz steak, when a smaller 6oz steak with some extra veggies might do the trick?

You may be surprised at how good many of the vegetarian alternatives are. Many people think they will be bland and tasteless, and instead find that they are full of fresh flavors that you cannot get in meat. Vegetarian food is also typically healthier and less expensive that the animal based alternatives. So give it a try and you might find you like the change.

For more information on reduction of greenhouse gasses and global warming by lowering consumption of meat and dairy products, see the Earth Save International website. For some more info on vegan and vegetarian diets, check out the Vegetarian Times website.

Stop Drinking Bottled Water

Bottled water does not seem very harmful at first glance. However when you start looking at the entire process of getting that bottle of water in your hands, you will quickly realize that drinking bottled water has a tremendous negative impact on our environment. First there is the problems and waste caused by water extraction. Water extraction can lead to water shortages in the area of extraction, causing water shortages for local populations and for farmers. Then there is water purification, in which water is wasted and energy is consumed.

Next, to the bottles themselves. The process of creating plastic water bottles uses massive amounts of water and energy, also creating waste in the process. The plastic bottles are made using oil... over 1.5 million barrels of oil every year! Then the finished water bottles, filled with water, have to be transported long distances to the point where they are purchased, wasting even more oil and polluting the environment with CO2 emissions.

Once the bottled water is consumed and finished, the plastic bottle is either recycled or it ends up in a landfill. Recycling is obviously the better option here, but recycling also uses water and energy. Plus, it is estimated that over 80 percent of all plastic water bottles are thrown away and never recycled. So for all of the good intentions, most plastic bottles end up in a landfill.

So what do you do? Get a reusable water bottle and use your tap water. For the water bottle, I would recommend a good stainless steel water bottle. Worried about the safety of your local tap water, or do you simply not like the taste? Then also invest in a good water filtration system. Or you can get something like the water filter systems built into water filtration pitchers. Either way, you will remove contaminants from the water and improve the taste considerably.

Still not convinced? Well, stopping drinking bottled water can save you money. Bottled water is dramatically more expensive than drinking filtered tap water, even after the costs of the filter systems and water containers. Depending on what type of bottled water you drink and how much, you can save a couple hundred dollars to several hundred dollars every year!

-BeeHawk-

Welcome to BeeHawk Go Green Tips

Hello and welcome to my Go Green Tips blog. The purpose of this blog is to find the best green tips available and present them to you in an easy to understand fashion. There are many websites and blogs out there that talk about going green and cover various environmentally friendly topics in a very thorough fashion. Instead of trying to cover everything, I am going to concentrate my efforts on simple tips to help everyday people make small changes to go green. The impact of each individual change may be small, but if we can get millions of people to implement a handful of these tips, it can make an incredible difference in the world we live in. So please visit often and try to implement some of the tips you find here. Also, e-mail your friends, give them a call, or chat with them in person and let them know some of the small things they can do to help save the environment. If you like what you see here, please send them to this site. Thanks!

-BeeHawk-