Growing Greener

Every time I walk into a Wal-Mart that’s overly air conditioned or see a building lit up at night, I wonder why none of the lists of what we can do to reduce energy consumption include stuff that could seriously reduce business energy. But I can’t control that what those businesses do, so I’ll just do what I can. Here are some new suggestions I discovered tonight while reading an airline magazine:

. Cancel your phone book delivery and use the online directory. About ten percent of dump waste is decomposing phone books.
. Keep your tires inflated. Doing so can improve your mileage up to 3 percent. That’s about 16 gallons per year for the average American.
. Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. If every American did this with just five of their bulbs, we’d save a trillion pounds of greenhouse gases.
.Give the receipt a pass. Next time you use the ATM, forego the little slip of paper. If everybody in our fair land quit doing this, we’d save a roll big enough to wrap around the earth like an Ace bandage…fifteen times over.
. Wash your clothes in cold water. I’ve been doing this for years, and nobody has ever told me my clothes look dingy. (Or are you all just being polite?) Number of barrels of oil we’d save if we all did this: 100K. Every day.
. Work from home. Ah, the joys of being a freelance writer. If everybody were so lucky, we’d save a billion galls of gas every year. But then, all that competition. Oy!