Living Green

Living "Green" is about minimizing your impact on the planet's resources.

It encompasses a variety of actions, which are generally in the categories of reducing consumption; reusing existing items, in possibly novel ways; and recycling waste items instead of throwing them away.

Benefits of Living Green

Living Green has positive impacts in many areas. For example:

• Saving you money (such as lower utility bills by saving energy)
• Climate change (global warming, such as caused by greenhouse gases)
• Reducing dependency on foreign oil (reduced demand for which can also reduce the price of oil, gas, plastic, and other petroleum products)
• Reducing pollution (such as by having cleaner car emissions, cleaner power production using inherently cleaner technologies such as via solar or wind, cleaner power production using existing technologies, e.g. cleaner coal power plants)
• Reducing the need for costly new landfill space (by having less to throw out)

and so on. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, just enough to give you the flavor of the idea of what "Green" living is about.

Living Green and You

Living Green is something that you can do in three ways:

1. You can take actions that are directly green, such as using less electricity by turning off lights when you're not in the room — and a whole variety of other actions that are listed on our Green Tips list;

2. You can contribute funds that cover aspects of your life you are unable to change (such as buying carbon offset credits for air travel);

3. You can contribute funds that will be used to promote green behavior via projects that are larger than any one person (such as research into cleaner energy production) or covering the impacts of other people whose behaviors you are unable to alter.

You can also help educate other people on what living green is about, and the ways they can help. (Such as by displaying our Green Tip Bar).