My Financial Recovery

Thoughts On An Inconvenient Truth

Posted on: May 12, 2009 by Matt

Today I am going a little off topic and touching on another issue that I find increasingly important: saving our planet.  Last night my girlfriend and I watched Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth.  I had not seen the film before but had always had an interest in watching it due to the critical acclaim and the subject content.  What I discovered was that our planet is in much worse shape than I had originally thought (and I had a pretty negative view to begin with).

If you have not seen the film yet please stop reading and head out to get a copy.  Order it online, rent it, get it from Netflix, download the audio book from iTunes – just get a copy and try watching it with an open mind.  You can also get more information from the web site www.climatecrisis.net in order to take action to reduce your carbon footprint.

Overall – I think it is important for everyone to learn at least a little bit more about our current environmental situation.  If we do not take steps to save our planet we could be in for a nasty awakening.   In addition – a lot of the steps you can take will also help save you money in the long run as well (hey a little frugal after all).  That said here is a short list of my goals to help do my part:

• Replace standard light bulbs in the house with CFL’s: They use 60% less energy than a standard light bulb – enough said.
• Use less hot water: I am going to try to shorten my showers by 5 minutes each day.  I am not sure what the current baseline is but I plan to time myself at a normal speed and then see what I can do to reduce that time.  We already wash our clothes in cold water.
• Power off electronics when not in use and unplug:  This may be a little tricky but I am going to see what we can do to turn off and unplug electronics while they are not in use.  I can easily make this change at work without impacting anyone but myself so I will start in the office.
• Walk or bike to work: I live about 1.25 miles from the office I work from.  I often am lazy and drive in to work.  Follow that with a trip home and back for lunch and the end of day trip home and I am at about 5 miles a day.   Walking or biking that would not only help the environment but also help my health!
• Recycle: Our town has a pretty weak recycling program: you actually have to pay to recycle.  However my office has a big old dumpster for all-in-one recycling that we can add to.  I have set out a paper bag in our kitchen to collect recyclable materials in and will continue to bring them in to be recycled.
• Use the local farmer’s market: I like to support local business and have been pretty bad about practicing lately.  However – the local farmer’s market will be starting back up soon and I hope to start picking up some of our produce there.  We also have a local grocery store that buys from local farmers as well that I have been shopping at more frequently.

So it is a fairly long list of steps I hope to take and I am sure that I will think of more along the way but I do believe that too often people get caught up in the “but I’m just one person, what can I possibly do?” mindset.  For those of you personal finance nuts out there: Think of saving our environment like you think about passive income streams.  Each of us can be a “passive income source” for the planet by making just a few changes to our every day habits. Each individual that makes a change adds to the overall total and with enough individuals the change will be massive.  Plus – all of the steps suggested should save you some cash as well!  I think we have a big win-win situation going here!

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