WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY
Is your company or organization green? Prove
it!
Green Directory Montana offers proof of the sustainability efforts of listed businesses and organizations
Green Directory Montana brings
customers and businesses together to help make Montana sustainable for
future generations. Every purchase is a vote. A vote for a company that
either does or does not agree with your vision of the future.
-
Conserve - using less is always the best first move. For electrical
usage, get yourself one of these:
Kill-a-Watt Meter now available in stores as well. This handy little meter tells the truth about energy
use by anything that plugs into the wall outlet. Reads real time usage
in watts, amps and volts, and accumulates total usage. A new model
even calculates savings in $. Electricity is invisible and can be hard
to understand, but with this meter it becomes tangible.
- Go solar! Liquid fuels are great but solar fuels itself.
Solar air heating is the most affordable, followed by solar hot water and
solar electric which costs less than half compared to just 2 years ago!
- Hire Choice Energy to consult you on your alternative energy projects
so you can get started faster! See Consulting page.
New construction or remodels.
- Use a
B-Corp
credit card. Why fund banks with 2-3% of everything you run through
your credit card? B-Corps invest in things you are more likely to support,
like permaculture and community supported agriculture. This credit card has
all the same perks as other cards.
- Take the ski rack off your car in summer (2 mpg savings)
- Consolidate your hot water usage; learn how much hot water is wasted each
time you use the hot faucet. The amount of water that comes out of the
faucet before it turns hot is the amount of hot water left in the
piping
after you're done, and the energy it took to heat that water is now lost as
it cools uselessly in the piping.
- Consider changing to programmable thermostats
- Turn off lights; add motion sensor wall switches that turn lights off for you
-
Clean your refrigerator's cooling coils
-
Take your own towel to the gym and when traveling
- Don't buy bottled water or drinks in plastic or glass containers
- Don't eat chemicals (msg, food coloring, etc), don't use petroleum based shampoo
or soap
-
Use a clothes line and indoor drying racks
-
Wear warm clothes in winter, even indoors
- Use an electric blanket & turn it on an hour before bed instead of heating
the whole room (there's nothing like crawling in a hot bed!)
-
Look ahead while driving and coast up to stop lights & stop signs. Stopping a 3500 lb car from
60 mph wastes enough energy to light a 40 watt bulb for 4 hours.
- Drive half as much and pretend your car gets twice the mileage
-
Install a 20-cent flow restrictor in each shower head to save hot water
- Use newspapers for paper towels - doubles as fire starter
- Compost your organic waste
- Grow food in your yard in place of some of the lawn grass
- Don't waste anything - food, heat, light, water
- Control you junk mail catalog flow
https://www.catalogchoice.org/environmental-facts
- Walk or ride a bike! It can even be electric assist (see EV page on this
site) if you prefer not to sweat. Biking is oftentimes faster than
driving.
-
Weatherize your home
- Enroll in the
Half
Plan and cut your energy use, energy cost, and CO2 emissions in half
- Buy local food in season; build a root cellar in your basement
- Talk about human overpopulation
Along with driving sustainably (and less) here are my other favorite things to keep in touch with:
Real News
- Subscribe to
www.montanagreenpower.com monthly
newsletter
- Join Rocky Mountain Institute
www.rmi.org
-
Link TV (satellite 9410) and Free Speech TV (9415). Email our
PBS station
to request programming.
-
Amy Goodman's Democracynow.org,
the War & Peace Report (stream from web site, PBS should also add)
-
Bill Maher, HBO weekly report
- Clean Energy Bulletin
- Check out the long list of renewable energy projects and news in the
NW. You can sign up to receive the bulletin or log on. This is an
impressive list revealing our 'on-the-brink' status of exploding biodiesel
production, ethanol, wind, wood/biomass, hydro, etc..
Books
- Natural Capitalism, Amory Lovins,
www.naturalcapital.org
(downloadable book)
- The Oil Endgame, Amory Lovins w/ forward by George Shultz,
www.oilendgame.com (also
downloadable)
-
Lee Iocaca, excerpt from Where Have The Leaders
Gone
This page last updated on: Tuesday December 01, 2015