Today, it seems that everybody is "going green." From food products to office supplies, you can buy sustainable products of any nature, but when you're a college student, buying the more expensive, eco-friendly products is not always an option.
These tips will help you save money and the environment, and you can start doing so right from your dorm room. "Green and cheap are the new cool."
1. Wash, Don’t Throw: Keep some form of kitchenware in your room. Get bowls, plates, cups and utensils that you can rewash after each use. Dry your dishes with a reusable dishtowel instead of paper towels. You won’t accumulate trash with paper products and save money by not buy dishes as often.
2. Reuse Your Water Bottle: One important reusable product to use is a water bottle. Nalgene (www.nalgene.com) or Sigg (www.sigg.com) brand bottles provide high quality while going easy on the environment.
3. Walk or Ride a Bike: If you live on or close to campus, walk or ride a bike. You’ll get exercise, save money on fuel and even reduce your carbon dioxide emissions.
4. Strip Down to the Basics: Most college kids can't live without computers, stereos, televisions and other electronic devices. Power strips and chargers still use energy even when the items plugged into them are turned off. To conserve energy, unplug power strips or any other electronic devices whenever they’re not being used.
5. Trade is the New Buy: Instead of spending hundreds of dollars for those trendy designer jeans, simply trade them in. Need new books for next semester's classes? Trade those as well. Web sites like www.rehashclothes.com offer a place to trade in books, clothes and other items for 'new-to-you' items at no cost.
6. Light the Right Way: Halogen light bulbs generate hundreds of watts of electricity. When replacing light bulbs, choose the little spiral-shaped bulbs known as compact fluorescents (CFLs), which use less than a third of the energy and last ten times longer than their halogen counterparts. If every U.S. household replaced just 1 regular bulb with a CFL, the amount of energy saved could light 2.5 million homes for a year.
7. Recycle: Pretty much everything that a college student overuses can be recycled, from soda cans and fast food bags to printer paper and ink cartridges. That’s why it’s important for you to recycle as much as you can. If your campus has recycling stations, use them.
8. Buy a Tune, Plant a Tree: Music is a big part of any college campus. If you're going to buy songs or albums online, why not also plant a tree and offset some carbon dioxide emissions at the same time? At www.tunesfortrees.com, buyers can purchase 10 songs, and a tree will be planted in his or her name.
9. Eco-friendly in the Office: Print on both sides of the page, optimize your printer settings and use scratch paper for notes. Paper doesn't grow on trees (pun intended), and the less you waste the more cash you'll pocket.
10. Turn the lights off when leaving a room.
11. Stop Idling: Every moment you spend idling your car's engine means needlessly wasting gas, as well as rougher wear on your vehicle. Idling for more than 10 seconds wastes more gas than is needed for startup. Overall, Americans idle away 2.9 billion gallons of gas a year, worth around $78.2 billion.
12. Wash Your Laundry in Cold Water: An easy way to clean green is to turn the dial on your washing machine to cold. Most loads don't need hot water, and 90% of the energy used by washing machines goes into heating. The higher the water temperature, the higher the cost to you and the planet.
13. Tonight's Dinner is Tomorrow's Breakfast: Leftovers. Eat them for breakfast, pack them for lunch. The amount of food we eat -- or don't eat -- leaves a huge carbon footprint on old Mother Earth. Save your money, save the planet... clean your plate.
14. Wear Your Clothes: Less than 2% of all clothing thrown away every year in the U.S. is trashed because it's truly "worn out" -- as in threadbare, falling apart, full of holes. The other 98%, for the most part, is dumped because we want something new or we've outgrown our duds, and we're too lazy to pass them along to someone else who can use them. The most eco-friendly thing you can do when it comes to your clothes is to consume less.
15. Buy Local.
16. Simplify: Drive less. Stay at home more with family and friends, making your own fun rather than paying to be entertained. Take heed to Ghandi's word: "Live simply so that others may simply live."
These tips present just a few ways you can become green. Information for this blog post was pulled from these sources and will provide readers with more green living tips:
http://greenstudentu.com/
http://rehashclothes.com/
http://www.lifegoggles.com/772/how-to-be-a-green-student/
http://www.dailyecotips.com/
http://www.thedailygreen.com/
http://www.tunesfortrees.com/
