12 Ways to Green up your Apartment (and Life)
- Buy Bulk Food: Cut down on packaged products by buying in bulk while reusing your bags and twist ties. Cutting down on the packaging used helps to save energy in food production as well as eliminates extra garbage from the waste stream. For perspective, 40% of what Americans throw away each year is packaging. You can also reuse packaging from other items like jam jars and yogurt containers to store your food as well as reduce your waste.
- Household Cleaners: Stop by CCAT for ideas on non- toxic, natural house cleaning alternatives.
- Compact Florescent Bulbs: reduce the energy demand of your lighting source by investing in efficient bulbs.
- Compost bucket or Worm Bin: put your food scraps back into the cycle of nature by turning them into valuable compost. Drop off site sponsored by the Campus Recycling Program located at CCAT.
- Thermal Curtains: help to stop cold drafts from coming in through your windows and valuable heat from escaping.
- Keep the Refrigerator and freezer full: hold in coldness thereby decreasing the frequency of cooling cycles (use of energy). Jugs of water can be used if necessary. Also, keeping the coils clean and proving a ventilation space will increase efficiency.
- Container Gardens: grow some of your own herbs and foods in containers that can be moved easily as needed. Also, indoor plants will help with air quality and aesthetics, and can also be medicinal and/or culinary.
- Recycled Material Furniture: tap into the urban waste stream to make home furnishings such a wood pallet mattress box springs or milk crate shelving. Or check thrift stores for more conventional furnishings.
- Reduce, Reuse, Rethink, Recycle: Look for ways to reduce your consumption, use of water etc, and ways to reuse the byproducts of your consumption (i.e. reuse cans and bottles, do dishes in portable bucket so grey water can be used for landscape irrigation etc.). Rethink your lifestyle patterns and 'needs' to see if there are excesses that can be avoided in the future or if alternatives exist. Recycle everything that you can as a last option after reducing, reusing and rethinking.
- Be conscious of your energy use (i.e. turn things off when not in use) and aware of phantom loads (electrical devices that continue to draw power even when 'off.' For example, anything that has a clock built in is a phantom load. The solution is to either unplug certain electronics or have a power strip that can be switched off).
- Ride a bike, walk, take the bus, or car pool. All these are ways to decrease your consumption of fossil fuels.
- Support your neighbors: buy locally grown and/or produced items whenever possible.
More information is available by visiting the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology, located at Buck House 97 at HSU (behind the NR and FOR buildings). Or visit the CCAT website.
Sendog6913 17:30, 2 March 2008 (PST)
Humboldt State University - CCAT
