Adjust your environ|mentality to banish your eco-doubt!

Am I green enough?  Do my greener purchases really make a difference?  Are we collectively saving the earth or just making ourselves feel better about our consumption?

Okay, so you may be going through some eco-doubt.  Everyone does and I’ll help you get over it.  I’ll show you the environ|mentality to see your more sustainable living choices really make a difference and that you can get over your eco-doubt.

Sources of Eco-Doubt

Sure, you see it everyday on the news: the latest oil spill, mountaintop mining, chemical dump leaching into drinking water, or a coal’s toxic sludge flooding a town.  We see pollution in so many forms everyday.

And you likely have thought to yourself something along the lines of, “I’m using a somewhat greener laundry detergent (and paying a little more money for it) and the world around me is being polluted millions of times more than I ever have.  What’s the difference?”

Making A Difference

I was discussing just this issue today during a phone call with my older brother.  He’s relatively eco-conscious, using a reusable water bottle, recycled paper toilet paper, and generally trying to do some of the little greener, more sustainable things you or I may be employing in our daily lives.  So, he’s not your typical eco-doubter.

Environ|Mental is a series of posts regarding changing your mentality about the environment.

Adjust your environmentality!

What?  Don’t recycle plastic?  A website promoting greener living telling you not to recycle?

Kind of…  but not really.  Read on!

Actually, I’m telling you to think about not even needing to recycle plastic — that is, when possible, avoid using plastic altogether.

Don’t let plastic into your life!

Plastic is difficult and costly to recycle, it degrades each time that it is recycled, and it takes many lifetimes to break down. So, when you can, stop using it! Just cut it out of your life!  Use metal, use wood, don’t use it at all!  Don’t buy that gadget.  Don’t pull that plastic bag off the roll.  Give

Despite increasing warnings about the fact that current human, government, and corporate consumption and behavior are unsustainable, the envirohuman impact of decisions still seems to not be considered enough by both individuals and large organizations alike. Yes, it’s beginning to be important for more than a small number of people, and many are really considering the impact of their decisions, but it still is not weighed for every big decision. Even when it is considered, we often decide against the more sustainable choice.

This is where news, blogs, conversations, and emails all come into play. The environment has to be in the daily conversation before it gets considered in our daily decisions. Earth Day/Week/Month is not the only time for this dialogue. It needs to be everyday.

For this reason EnviroHumanImpact joined the ranks of other websites and blogs to help promote the consideration of one’s envirohuman impact. We’re here everyday trying to help you the individual to make daily living changes that help improve your envirohuman impact while influencing companies to bend to your will, as a consumer, to offer greener options and to improve their behaviors.

We’re bringing news, advice, and tips because we care and we want everyone to care. It matters to us all, whether we have admitted that or not. Please, when you read something here, participate! Don’t leave the site thinking how great the ideals are without doing something. Start employing small life changes that add up to improved envirohuman impact.

Your behavior rubs off on your peers and can have a huge impact over time. Being greener can be healthier and can save you money! Start with our Greener Under Twenty Series or check out our growing Product Reviews section for easy ways to begin living greener!

Find something useful? Share it with friends! Use our Share functions found at the bottom of every post. You can email articles or share them on many different social networks. Use the Digg or Reddit functions so that these online conversations infiltrate others’ consciousness, making it easier to have personal conversations on a shared basic understanding of the issues we face.

At that point, when news, websites, social sites, etc. are all saturated with quality content regarding the environment, people will begin talking, considering, buying, and acting greener. Companies will have to listen and adapt or face potential loss of business.  In many ways, people are adopting a more environmentally friendly approach — but we have far to go.

We have joined the conversation, helping to spurn action, and you can do the same, right here. Comment on articles here, and please, take the opportunity to make our environment healthier for today and tomorrow with your daily living choices.

I come across it everyday: people who have, for whatever reason, not jumped on the sustainability boat. They’re going down with the (rapidly sinking) over-consumption, worry-not-about-waste boat. Maybe they have not been reading it in the newspapers and magazines as the movement has re-cemented itself like it has not done since “recycling” became a mainstream concept.

But I see people all of the time who don’t turn off lights when they are not in use (sure, we all forget, but I’m talking about those who always seem to leave them on), don’t recycle when there is a recycling bin right next to the trashcan, and who generally do not take an interest in improving their envirohuman impact.

You might hear from people that you’re preaching to the choir. “You don’t need to say that, you’re preaching to the choir.” Or another favorite: “You very well may be preaching to the choir.”

Does the choir not attend sermons? So we are supposed to keep quiet about issues we find important, simply because we tend to be around people who are also passionate about them as well? No. The way that coalitions are formed, the precise method of building a movement is to have people who believe in the same proposal, in this case, improving overall envirohuman impact, discuss that passion, share ideas, and encourage one another.

When will you know who does and does not know everything you know about the environment? I once felt that it was not important to conserve paper and to recycle what we use because I thought (I was much younger at the time) that the main problem was the burning and clear cutting of forests, and not that we use too much paper or don’t recycle.

The Environ|Mentality: There is usually a way to make your consumption less envirohumanly toxic, but there is also usually an available excuse you can make. Overcome that temptation by realizing a little effort goes a long way.

We all have done it: “I’m in too much of a hurry to take my soda can down the hall to the recycling bin, so I just put it in my own trashcan at my desk.”

“I get all confused when I use the double-sided copying function. I don’t know how to use it.”

My favorite: “Gosh, I print so much I go through a few trees every week.” Yes, admitting the crime of printing items that just as easily could have been viewed on your monitor makes it all better.

The screen saver might save your computer screen from clouding over time due to images brandishing into it when it has been left on. I have never seen this happen to a computer monitor, but maybe that’s likely due to the ubiquity of screen savers and not because it cannot happen.

That aside, while the screen saver is saving your computer, it likely is doing something else: giving us all a false sense that it’s okay to leave the monitor on for a long period of time. Saving your computer and punishing our environment.

Sure, I know, computers have “sleep” modes allowing for the monitor to go into a more “restful” state and use less energy. But I have seen monitors remain on for way to long after the user has left. The attitude that pressing a button is too difficult just does not resonate with me. It’s a simple task and one that saves energy from being used unnecessarily.

The Attitude: Increased energy consumption leads to more pollution.

How many times do we see a light sitting idly on, helping no one to see, but nonetheless causing pollution? What causes this foolishness? We know of the economic benefit to reducing our own energy consumption: lower power bills.

We also have made it easy as can be to flick a switch or press a button to turn lights on and off. The amount of time and energy it takes is negligible.

The attitude: Reducing your envirohuman impact can keep you in better physical condition.

So, you’re asking, greener can keep me in shape? Sure! Yesterday we left off talking about how taking the stairs at work can give you more exercise while making elevators work a little less. But there are all sorts of activities you could participate in that both improve your envirohuman impact and build more exercise into your day.

What if you are reusing the water you rinsed your lettuce with on your garden? Big deal? Well, carrying that bucket of water outside counts for burning some calories. The fact that you’re gardening counts as burning calories. Yes, these are great in that they improve your EHI, but they also are great in that they give you the exercise that never seems like a priority.