We’re not here to talk about all of that junk, but all of that in your car’s trunk.  The advice herein will likely save you money and improve your envirohuman impact.

As is often the case with improving one’s envirohuman impact, the math required is not only addition but multiplication. Travel is another case where multiplying the effect of your actions will likely yield a better indicator of where you could easily trim your negative impact.

With travel, the big multiplier is often the distance traveled. Let’s say you travel an average of 300 miles a week in your car (you commute and use your car for errands). In addition to the normal gear found in your car, you have left your hiking bag in the trunk since last summer. You don’t need that space for anything (typically) and you never know when the mood will strike you to take a hike (you tell yourself).

Seems harmless enough, anyway. Simple calculation will show us that if you tote an extra ten pounds of gear in your car, that’s equal to unnecessarily moving 1.5 tons one mile each week (300 miles X 10 lbs. = 3,000 lbs moved). That’s equal to moving 78 unnecessary tons of gear one mile each year.

And that’s calculating by only having ten extra pounds in the car.  If you have fifty pounds extra (some of us are looking down at our stomachs) with gas prices at the highest ever in the U.S., you would do well to cut out extra weight in your vehicle — folding chairs, baseball bats, the tools and excess wood you left after helping a friend with a project — it all adds up to extra weight that you essentially are paying for your car to move.

And all that junk inside your trunk (your hump.  your hump, your hump, your hump) might be a place to cut corners, too — (Check it out!) it costs money to eat, it costs money to haul “that junk” around, and despite what some will tell you about the sight of having a little too much back there, it is in fact, “unhealthy” to be overweight.  All insensitive joking aside, if you find yourself a little overweight, losing a little by moderate exercise and slowly decreasing your caloric intake to a healthy level (discuss this with your doctor or a nutritionist) could help both your gas mileage and make you a healthier person, less likely to develop heart disease or diabetes.  Food production and transportation in most cases has a significantly negative envirohuman impact as well, so eating less helps in that respect, also.  As if you need one more reason, having healthier eating and exercise habits can also be better for the environment.

And the environment pays, too! Burning through extra gas hurts your pocketbook, but it contributes to global warming and pollutes our environment as well!  So if it totals fifty pounds of unneeded weight average in your car over the course of a year, it’s like moving 390 extra tons one mile every year.  Depending upon the efficiency of your car (and driving habits), that could represent a lot of gas money, but also a whole lot of carbon dioxide and other gases expelled from your tailpipe, into our atmosphere!

Another way to look at it? Think of it as driving one ton an extra 390 miles every year.  So it might be pretty close to you driving an extra week every year, if the extra gear totals 50 pounds.  Whatever your average gas cost for a week of driving would be close to the cost of driving that extra weight around with you every year.  That’s costly for both you and the environment!

Action item: clean out the extra gear in your car. No, don’t remove needed tools, flashlights, and other safety gear you might need if your car breaks down or if you have a flat, but that baseball bat, folding chair, hiking gear, or other stuff you leave in there as a matter of habit should all be asked of it, “do I really need this in my trunk?”  Check not only in your cargo area, but the inside of the vehicle might also have extra unneeded gadgets that you might do well to leave at home.

The best way to improve your envirohuman impact via your vehicle is to leave it at home more.  Consider walking, biking, and using public transportation more, or even giving up your vehicle completely and using a car share program when you feel you “need” a car for a task or errand.

We all see the constant stream of news, commercials, and websites claiming new ways we can and should green our lives (hey, you’re on one of those sites right now!), but it can get difficult to discern from that, or rather, sift out of all of it, a few tips you plan to implement immediately to improve your personal envirohuman impact.

Here, I have compiled for you a list of five areas of your life for you to examine and begin making improvements to reduce pollution.  Ready?

1. Transform your transportation: If you can (and have not changed already) consider getting to school, work, shopping, and play by means other than your own personal vehicle.  So explore the opportunities of using public transportation, biking, or walking. If these options do not fit the bill all of the time, consider implementing them some of the time, so maybe you can walk to the store but public transportation may not be available to you, so you might end up driving to work. Also, the option of carpooling is available in most areas, so try a website such as e-rideshare or a slew of others.  Also, make sure your tires are fully inflated and do not accelerate and break suddenly.  With gas prices as high as over $4.00, if you are tired of filling the tank on your older car (or for many, SUV!), consider buying a hybrid or other more fuel-efficient car — it will pay you dividends for the less gas you use and reduced carbon footprint!
2. Change your household cleaners: I’m going to direct you to our rapidly increasing list of product reviews for specific products’ information, but concentrate on finding truly greener products, ones that list the ingredients on the label, and if you have the time, investigate the safety of those ingredients, an area where usually, Wikipedia can help.  Concentrate on finding one quality “green” dishsoap, laundry detergent, and all-purpose cleaner, looking for natural, petroleum-free, plant-based, biodegradable products, especially, and you will be well on your way.
3. Greener thinking by greener reading: Begin frequenting a green website that can offer you daily news and tips related to your new, green lifestyle to offer you encouragement and continued ideas for little ways to live a more environmentally-friendly life.  What does this do for you?  While websites like Grist and Tree Hugger are great, and rather all-encompassing, for some, it can feel almost like too much advice and tips.  You can count on EnviroHumanImpact to provide you with something everyday that puts you in a greener mood, including tips, our different series of posts, like Greener Under Twenty, can give you realistic, simple life changes, usually for less than $20 in fewer than twenty minutes.  EHI provides, “just enough,” rather than more environmental information than you can possibly read in one sitting — and we will not overflow your RSS feed everyday — typically one or two per day from us at EHI.  You can join our RSS feed for a daily dose of information and advice.  Plus, reading a green-focused website will keep you on track toward a more sustainable lifestyle!
4. This one is easy!  Save some energy, money, and the world from significant amounts of pollution by switching over to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), which now can be recycled at Home Depot!
5. Speaking of recycling, if you are not recycling, then you should be.  Find ways at work and home to recycle paper, metals, plastic products, and organic matter!  It is highly energy- and environment-intensive to extract raw materials from the earth, and it is in most cases better to recycle your garbage.

Polar bears have been listed on the “Endangered Species” list, although environmentalists did not get the win they had hoped for with this case. They had wanted for this to push legislation to combat global warming.

From the New York Times’ May 15, 2008 story, “Polar Bear Is Made a Protected Species,” we will get some of the details of this story, of course with commentary:

The polar bear, whose summertime Arctic hunting grounds have been greatly reduced by a warming climate, will be placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced on Wednesday.

But the long-delayed decision to list the bear as a threatened species may prove less of an impediment to oil and gas industries along the Alaskan coast than many environmentalists had hoped. Mr. Kempthorne also made it clear that it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use the listing as a tool to reduce greenhouse gases, as environmentalists had intended to do.

What seems to be lacking is a clear explanation for why that is so inappropriate. Here is some explanation provided:

Here’s our first Greener Under Twenty tip: convert some of your lights over to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

CFLs can actually be somewhat costly, so if you have a great many bulbs, be selective. Chances are, you can identify four or five bulbs that are prime candidates for replacement and can do so for under $20 at your local home improvement store. Picking them up while shopping and replacing your incandescent bulbs should take you less than twenty minutes.

At a few dollars each, and only replacing a handful of bulbs, you can easily stay under $20. Also, attempt to find a deal or coupon you can use for maximum savings. Remember, these save you money over time.