As I was planning this post I came across an article about Starbucks’ recent national break to re-educate their baristas with the intricacies of espresso and cappaccino making (Google “Starbucks 3 hour break to find various articles on the subject). As I read over that particular article it kept occurring to me how often people confuse their message and purpose by over-complicating matters and getting lost in the details without minding the big picture.

This inspired me to write this series of posts, which I’m calling “Back to Basics”. Our basics of green living are “reduce, reuse, recycle and don’t pollute!” This post will cover “reduce” in the classic Green Your Apartment way, according to your personal level of green commitment with 3 tips at each level. The great thing about reducing your consumables is it’s remarkably easy, really does just take a bit more forethought instead of actual “work” and is easily the most effective way to – you guessed it – reduce your ecological footprint!

Newbie

1. Look for ways to group your outings. Don’t take a trip to the corner store in your car to pick up milk this morning, go out and get your hair cut this afternoon and then head across town to pick up a book you special ordered at the bookstore. Instead, plan out your trip – haircut, book and milk on the way home. You probably saved yourself not only an extra forty minutes of commuting time but also easily a gallon or two of gas.

2 . Look for reduced packaging. Those 100 calorie packs which are suddenly the big marketing ploy are a packaging nightmare. You can do the same thing by purchasing a regular package of the food and separating them out yourself at home in reusable containers. Save yourself the money and the packaging!

3. Buy in bulk when it makes sense. Bulk buys tend to use less packaging, but please use your discretion on this as there are definitely exceptions. With that in mind, remember that the idea is to reduce your packaging and use, not go to excess.

Amateur Environmentalist

1. Turn off the lights. People don’t realize how often they over-brighten their homes in the evening and then wonder why they have a hard time winding down for bed! Our biology reflects the solar day, so minimize the amount of lighting you have at night. I’m not saying you should eat dinner in the dark, but do you really need the dining room light, the kitchen light and the living room lamp on to eat dinner? Didn’t think so.

2. Be aware of your water usage. Scrape off your plate and put it in the dishwasher, don’t rinse throughly and then place in the dishwasher – that’s like double-dipping to your water use! Replace your shower head with a low-flow shower head to reduce your water usage there, but make sure to keep the old one around for when your lease is up – you’ll want to take your handy-dandy low-flow shower head with you anyway!

3. Minimize the plastic bags. If you haven’t taken up my suggestion to be a bag-person, then I suggest when you do shop, minimize the bags you do use. Use that giant bag you got at Target to also hold the earrings you purchased at the Mom n’ Pop shop next door as well as the shoes you picked up at Payless. Not only will you save your arm the deadly five-line circulation cut-off, but you just cut your plastic bag use by two thirds!

Certified Tree-Hugger

1. Two words: public transportation. At least twice a week you can swap out your car (even those great Prius’) for the bus, subway or light-rail and instantly reduce your carbon emissions. Plus less miles on your car means less up-keep, cheaper car insurance rates and less stress in traffic.

2. Go vegetarian for two dinners a week. This reduces your impact on the environment since it takes an estimated 3 times the fossil fuels to raise animals for meat and over a whopping 30 times the water! If just twice a week you forgo the chicken, beef, lamb or pork for, say, eggplant parmesan with spaghetti marinara (sounds good, huh?) you’re helping reduce the impact of over-consumption.

3. Stop watching television. I’m not saying entertainment is bad, I’m saying advertising on television is insane. The whole marketing industry is designed to make you think you aren’t <-insert adjective here-> enough so you need THIS product! Being that I write about the entertainment industry and my Husband would kill me if he couldn’t watch NHL Center Ice, we’ve decided to pay a bit extra for DVR. This reduces waste in our lives by 1) reducing the amount of wasted time because we only watch the shows we want to watch when we wish to watch them; 2) our electricity usage from the television is cut by one third since it only takes 18-20 minutes to watch the actual show versus the 30 minutes with commercials; and 3) our desire to consume, consume, consume! is vastly reduced since we don’t watch commercials. It’s amazing how much more time we have and how much more satisfied with our little home and our “stuff” we are since we “unplugged” the marketing industry from our brains.

The next installment of the “Back to Basics” series will cover “reuse”, one of my favorite creative pastimes!

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Like the tips but have an even better one? Leave it in a comment!