Habits That Matter More Than Recycling

By Mat McDermott, Planet Green

Drink Less Bottled Water = 2.6 Tons CO2

You’ve probably heard it dozens of times, you really should be avoiding bottled water. It uses figurative tons of resources to bottle and ship to you, and much of the time (at least in the developed world) is no more pure than the water coming out of your tap. Even if you regularly drink tap water there’s probably some time when you’ve forgotten your water bottle, or the tap water isn’t exactly palatable, whatever. So you reluctantly buy a bottle of water. But oh how fast those emissions add up! Even if you only do this once per month, over the year you’ve just emitted 2.6 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Twice as much as you’ve saved by recycling. So, really make the effort and reduce your bottled water consumption

Wash Your Clothes in Cold Water & Air Dry Them = 1 Ton CO2

Another perennial favorite suggestion on Planet Green that really works: Wash in cold water and air dry. There are plenty of detergents now that work as well in cold water as they do in hot, and even in the middle of winter shirts dry in a couple of hours on an indoor drying rack (or in the case of my shirts, as I write this, on my shower curtain rod). How much will you save by a very slight tweak in your laundering routine? You guessed it: As much as recycling your paper, plastic and metal for an entire year.