Environment-friendly resolutions
HAPPY New Year!
For those who make it a habit to draw up New Year’s resolutions, you can add adopting a more environment-friendly lifestyle to your list. Helping protect and conserve nature will not only secure our future but also that of our children and grandchildren.
And the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) assures us shifting to a more climate-friendly lifestyle need not require drastic changes or major sacrifices. In fact, it says people can start right away to “kick the C02 habit.”
Carbon dioxide or CO2 is the main greenhouse gas. In combination with other gases, it traps heat in the atmosphere instead of letting it escape into space, producing an effect similar to that in a greenhouse.
This is causing a warming of the earth threatening, among others, to melt polar ice caps that will, in turn, result in a rise in sea levels that will flood low-lying and coastal areas.
In an earlier column, I mentioned how traveling light (carrying below 20 kg of goods and items when flying) and going by road to destinations that can be reached by car, bus or train, can make a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions.
UNEP has other suggestions on how non-travelers can also reduce their carbon footprints.
People who need an alarm to wake up in the morning will save almost 48 g of CO2 each day with a traditional wind-up clock rather than an electronic one. From personal experience, I know you are also less likely to ignore the shrill ringing of a wind-up alarm clock than the gentle beeping of its electronic counterpart.
Drying clothes on a washing line instead of a tumble dryer will prevent the release into the atmosphere of some 2.3 k of CO2. Except perhaps for condominium dwellers, most Filipinos still have space to hang their clothes and let the sun and air dry them.
The fitness buff can reduce his/her carbon footprint by replacing a 45-minute workout on a treadmill with a jog in a nearby park or any open space. UNEP says, “This saves nearly 1 kg of the main greenhouse gas.”
Modest but effective
The UN agency says the choice of what appliance to buy will help reduce CO2 emissions. Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary general and UNEP executive director, said though some of the initiatives might seem small and modest, “but multiplied across the world and acted upon by 6.7 billion people, the public have the power to personally and collectively influence economies to ‘Kick the CO2 Habit.’”
Other lifestyle changes you may want to consider to reduce your carbon footprint:
Using a nonelectric toothbrush will avoid nearly 48 g of CO2 emissions; heating bread rolls in a toaster rather than an oven for 15 minutes saves nearly 170 g of CO2; switching from regular 60-watt light bulbs to energy-saving ones will produce four times less greenhouse gas emissions; taking the train rather than the car for a daily office commute of as little as eight kilometers will save a big 1.7 K of CO2; shutting down the computer and flat screen both during lunch break and after working hours will cut CO2 emissions generated by these appliances by one-third; and investing in a water-saving shower head will not only save 10 liters of water per minute, but will also slash CO2 emissions resulting from a three-minute hot shower by half.
Heating (in temperate countries), cooling and lighting homes and using household appliances use up over ten per cent of global energy supplied. Buildings account for about 30 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions-perhaps even more-according to UNEP’s “Sustainable Building and Construction Initiative.”
A 150-liter refrigerator with a freezer that is A++ rated (the rating system indicates how energy efficient an appliance is) emits over 130-g less in CO2 than a comparable A-rated one.
Steiner said Green Economy was starting to emerge across the world fueled by the “sobering science on the impacts of climate change… but also the abundant economic opportunities if economies become more resource efficient.”
The changes, he said, were being demanded by companies and consumers and countries were responding to the clamor. It is about time Filipino consumers make the same demand of their government. The much-vaunted richness in natural resources of the Philippines will not last forever without any deliberate and committed effort to preserve and protect such diversity.
Those who are interested to know more about how they can be eco-friendly consumers might want to check out the UNEP book “Kick the Habit: The UN Guide to Climate Neutrality” by visiting www.earthprint.com.
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