The Environment - What Can I Do?
Want to help the environment?
Search: “The Environment - What Can I Do?”
Then build daily habits
Of just one . . . or a few.
© Forrest W. Heaton 27 June 2020
A number of readers have written over the past three months advising they are mentally exhausted from their coronavirus physical isolation and consequent mental overload of bad news from multiple crises—health, economy, race, politics, climate. Some have advised they are finding the action recommendations in our Blog posts helpful in mitigating the bad news mental overload and giving them a feeling that they are “doing something about it.”
That gave us a thought about some easily researched yet often overlooked suggestions, action recommendations regarding many of the items in the daily news in which you might have a strong interest. So, we’ll give this a go and see what we learn from you.
For many of us, our brains have a swift response when we come across a recommendation we’ve read or been told before: “I already know that . . . nothing new here.” However, we think you’ll agree it is one thing to think “we already know that” and quite another to ask ourselves: “Have we built that recommendation into our daily habits?” One example: we know that for better health, we need to drink at least eight glasses of clean water every day. The question is: “How many days this week/month did we do that?”
That said, and if you’re willing, let’s try to examine one issue—the Environment—with a list of potential actions for you to consider. You may already be doing many on the list. If there are items on the list that sound like a good idea that you have not built into your daily habits, give it a try for the next few weeks. After trying your best to develop them into daily habits, look back in a few weeks and ask yourself two questions: 1) “How am I doing on that list?” and 2) “Is my working these items into my daily habits giving me a bit of a mental lift?” We can promise you that, even if it’s not helping you, your actions are helping the environment!
To view the list of potential action items, click the below link. We’d love to hear from you about this post. With a bit of encouragement, we may develop another with a similar approach but on a different topic. Many thanks to all!
Reader Surprise! Unbeknownst to us, while we were writing this blog post, good friends, Folkert & Helga Herlyn, living in Koln Germany and readers of our Blog, were writing to us, telling us of their recent work to help the environment by installing additional solar on their vacation home in Stroodorp Netherlands. We had just completed our post, intending to blast 12 July. On receipt of their email and realizing including a portion of their note with photos would be of interest to most readers, we emailed our draft for their review. They immediately gave us permission as well as provided additional information. Many thanks, Folkert & Helga! Here’s a brief summary of what they had to say:
“. . . . Through eBay I bought solar panels and the inverter and aluminum pieces to build the support structure for the proper angle to the sun. With that in hand, I installed the 6 voltaic panels and other material for 1200 € instead of using the offer of 3400 € from a shop. It was fun working too. Now I produce enough extra electricity power for the Tesla when staying in Stroodorp (1,5 MWh/y). There is more already (installed 2013) on the main roof to compensate for house use. . . . we have to do something to save the earth. My dream is to get the power from the sun or the wind and bring it into the socket of the garage for the consumption in the house, the car and the heating. . . . We have in Germany the option to buy green electricity from the grid for less than a cent extra per KWh. . . . I calculate once a year how much my footprint was (websites available) and buy for the rest compensation (support to foresting in Latin America or Africa). This is only about 100 € per year. In the end, we are climate neutral since three years.”
