Photo: Glenn Fay

This is Earth Week of course and Earth Day is Friday April 22nd! What are you going to do? In my view, you don’t need to be leading a march to the Capitol in Washington DC to be make an impact of the future of our environment. There are plenty of small changes you can do that may not even impact your own lifestyle in any way whatsoever, that count. And if you convince others to join in, these impacts can really multiply positive outcomes.

Refuse Plastic

We use over 23 billion disposable cups per year. But that’s not all. Almost everything we use is made of plastic and much of it ends up in 5 gyres, floating garbage patches of tiny bits of plastic in the 5 oceans of the world. You can refuse to use plastic bags, cups lighters, toys and other products, by instead using reusable shopping bags, cups and products and recycling them whenever possible.  You can learn more at plasticpollutioncoalition.org.

Flip the switch!

If we switched off light switches and power strips when we aren’t using them we would save megawatts of electricity and millions of dollars. Using Smart Strips advanced power strips and CFL light bulbs and switching off unused appliances is a start. Our electric beill has dropped from $120 a month to $65 dollars a month with some simple changes. Learn how you can save  thousands of dollars on energy in your home!

Plant Trees

Plants are our #1 source of oxygen and they remove carbon dioxide fro the air. If every household in the US planted one just one tree, that would be 115 million oxygen generators and carbon dioxide absorbers in our country alone! Want to learn more? Check out Dan Tefft’s TreeBanker blog.

Turn Off The Water

With polar and mountain glaciers melting and increasing pollution due to fracking for natural gas and other issues,water is steadily becoming a rare commodity.  Lakes and aquifers are drying up and becoming polluted. We can conserve clean water by simply turning it off when we aren’t using it, or collect rain water for your garden using a rain barrel, which stops runoff and conserves water.

Garden or Buy Local Produce

Buying local supports open land, farming and best of all, high quality eating! Buying food at local farmer’s markets or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is one of the greenest concepts around if you can’t grow it yourself.

Buy used stuff

Instead of buying new all the time, check out the local consignment stores and used goods nearby. Often older products are better quality and the energy to manufacture them has already been used. Crafting with old clothing and products is fine art and sustainable living!

Be A Minimalist

Take my Friend Joshua Becker’s advice and downsize your life. Get organized. Buy less junk. Check out his blog becoming minimalist. All of these ideas are Earth-friendly and require very little sacrifice but when done in union can result in big changes in our environment.

Recently my summer came home during spring break. There were lots of adventures to report that’s another story! Anyway, like most college kids, he is on a very different schedule than the grown ups… Anyone living under the same roof with the college sub-species knows what I am talking about. They stay up late, texting, playing soccer and hoops, gaming, and of course eating.

What does this have to do with my sustainable living blog? We have become accustomed to switching off the power strips on the TVs, sound systems, computers, and other appliances in the house when he is away at school. This is done not only to keep carbon out of the air by reducing our electricity load but it also saves about $20 a month on our electric bill! But when Joe College is home, and he is gaming, online and watching bad TV, all of those electronic devices are still pulling power, into the wee hours. Since the adults are early risers, there is not much down time, even if he switches off the power strips when e finally goes to bed for the night.

My somewhat obsessive subconscious was lamenting this conundrum and then it dawned on me: What if we plugged our electronics into “Smart Strips”? Smart Strips are the kind of power strips that automatically shut off energy hog appliances that are continually drawing power, while allowing some appliances that need continuous power, such as the house phone, to stay “on”? Now THAT would allow electronics to turn on when needed, and automatically off when not in use. AND the Smart Strip would pay for itself in a month or two! As utility rates continue to rise, Smart Strips will be everywhere.

Is that enough reason to buy smart strips for your house? If not, here are is one more reason. We are giving $5 from the sale of every Smart Strip power strip sold in Vermont to the Vermont Foodbank to help support cold and hungry people!

Excuse me, I need to go now and order a bunch of those Smart Strips from my wholesaler. We are having a run on them! By the way, you can buy Smart Strips right here! Do you have Smart Strips in your house and if so, how do you like them?

Image: glennfay36, flickr

Recently Middlebury College was named one of the top green campuses in the U.S.. I am proud to say that my alma mater, the University of Vermont is also a rising star in environmental awareness and action. For one, the VSTEP Club is behind a campus ban on sales of bottled water. This blog has examined the commercialization, ownership and control of a substance that we all need for survival (water). Water is controlled by large corporations and the industry leaves a significant environmental footprint involved in manufacturing water bottles, bottling water in places that have sketchy water quality standards, and the carbon footprint involved in transporting millions of water bottles around the world, not to mention the “Pacific garbage patch”, plastic in fish tissues and other examples of epic pollution of plastic. Now UVM is leading the way on a new front.

The UVM Bookstore is selling Smart Strip advanced power strips at a pretty good clip. Smart Strips are the new power strips that automatically shut off devices that suck electricity even when the devices are turned off. Computer printers, fax machines, DVD players, audio systems, even phone chargers use electricity needlessly as long as they are plugged in and not in use. The average computer system uses 260 watts of electricity per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year! TV’s and entertainment centers can use even more!

Based on Efficiency Vermont and US Department of Energy Data each Smart Strip saves an average of 113 kilowatt hours each month, which translates to 3.4 pounds of CO2 a month or over 40 pounds of CO2 gas pollution saved per year! In dollars, one Smart Strip on average saves over $150 each year on your electricity bill! That is eco-fashon savings!

The first 100 Smart Strips the UVM Bookstore sells will will save close to $15,000 in electricity per year and will keep two tons carbon out of the atmosphere during the same time. Over the next ten years, those savings will be astronomical. THAT is something to cheer about!

Want to join the Go Green And Save Gold party? Buy Smart Strips ‘locally’ and support Vermont at the UVM Bookstore and of course right here at LoveEarthAlways.com!