round the same time you learned your ABCs, you probably learned your RRRs, too, right? Reduce, reuse, recycle. As a kid, you didn’t know much about why you followed the three R’s, you just knew that when it was your week to clean the blue boxes in Mr. Nicholl’s third grade classroom, you would trade your pizza-flavored Pringles, Fruit Roll-up, and a Coketo get out of it. Blue boxes were nasty. They were sticky. They smelled gross. They were filled with an inch of residue liquid from a week of discarded juice boxes–‘cause whoa, didn’t 8-year-olds fiend on their Juicy Juiceback in the day—and you didn’t really get the difference between the blue box and the silver trash can, anyway.
Now you get it and you realize that being green is more important than ever before. But you have a lot of things on your mind already without worrying about whether your probiotic yogurt cup is recyclable or not. You know all the big ways of going green but you don’t really have time to install a new energy-saver dishwasher in your apartment between first and second class. No need to go white with worry about it, though, when you can go green with Her Campus, in ten easy (and cheap!) ways.
1. Turn off… everything
Turning something off is a simple decision. In fact, it rarely takes more than the flick of a switch or the twist of a knob. So why are we so hesitant to do it? The U.S. Department of Energy notes, for example, that only about 10% of the electricity used to power an incandescent lightbulb (i.e., the common bulb) is converted into light. The rest is converted into heat. When you don’t need the light on, you’re allowing a lot of electricity to just flow out uselessly. Nancy Sleeth, author of Go Green, Save Green, also advises trying an energy-efficient bulb: “If you have been reluctant to buy energy-saving lightbulbs because you think they give off an unflattering light, give the new “soft” and “warm” bulbs a try. Their light is indistinguishable from regular lightbulbs—and the wide selection of bulbs available today makes it possible to find the right energy-saving bulb for every fixture.”
As for water, it’s one of our world’s most precious natural resources, but when it’s flowing out of a faucet in gallons, it’s easy to think of it as coming from some infinite spring just behind your sink. Listen, the only thing behind your sink is a bunch of pipes and the single feather earring you dropped down the back after a long night of partying that one time. Turn off your lights and turn off the tap.
2. Overhaul your laundry routine
You’re probably not keen on shaking up your laundry routine when you’re still patting yourself on the back for learning how to wash your clothes in the first place. While the best thing you can do is swap your top-loader washing machine for a front-loader, you’re probably not in a position to do this when you’re scraping together dimes just to replenish your drugstore shampoo. What you can do is make sure to only do laundry once you have a full load’s worth, hang your clothes on a drying rack instead of tossing them in the dryer, and use cold water instead of hot—up to 90% of your washer’s energy is used by heating the water! Sleeth suggests, “Be frugal with detergent (use no more than the recommended amount), and don’t wash items such as pants, skirts, dresses, and sweaters every time you wear them–they’ll last longer and you’ll save time, water, and energy.” Furthermore, if you really need to do laundry but don’t have a full load, talk to your roommates about combining washes.
3. Subscribe to eco-friendly blogs
Okay, so the act of subscribing to a blog does not, in itself, make you the next No Impact Man, but receiving environmentally-savvy updates to your email account will definitely keep the Earth on your mind (and by the way, No Impact Man actually runs a really great website that sends email updates). The key to going green is incorporating littlechanges into your life to be more sustainable in the bigpicture. If every time you check your e-mail you’re reminded of your goal to go green, you’ll start adding tricks and rules into your daily routine without even noticing it! TreeHugger is a good beginners’ newsletter and covers everything from sustainable living to environmental news and business.
4. Perfect the five-minute shower
If your showers are anything like mine, you’re probably scoffing right now at the prospect of a five-minute rinse-off. Sometimes it take five minutes alone just to work the shampoo in your hair into a proper lather. And everyone knows a good lather is what separates the great hair from the average. A long, hot shower at the end of a busy day can be relaxing, but you can still make the spa treatment long while keeping the shower short. Organic face masks post-steam, anyone?
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5. Shop thrift and vintage
Any red-blooded collegiette can find more than enough excuses to shop until the proverbial drop, no? When you buy something secondhand, you’re repurposing something pre-loved and making it your own, instead of purchasing something new and fueling demand for further production, which expends natural resources. Sleeth notes, “After food, clothing has the highest environmental impact of any consumer activity. Nearly 40,000 gallons of water are used in the production and transport of new clothes bought by the average American household each year!”
She also says, “Buying used means less land must be used to grow crops for clothing, and new items don’t need to be manufactured and transported.” Furthermore, by shopping secondhand you’re saving something unwanted from simply being dumped in a landfill. Shopping vintage or thrift is très chic, and when you’re doing good by the environment, why would you want to spend your time as a mall rat? The only thing recycled at a mall is the air.
6. Buy eco-friendly beauty products
While the overhead cost of switching over your beauty products to those produced environmentally is a bit high, ultimately it costs the same to replenish environmentally friendly products as it does any other product, plus you receive the added bonus of knowing your fave shimmer shadow was sustainably produced. Just wait until each product runs out and replace it with a green product, instead. Courtney, a sophomore at University of Western Ontario, recently replaced every product in her cosmetics bag with ethically-made, eco-friendly options: “Switching brands was so easy! I just researched products online, found which ones were good for me, animals, and the environment before heading to the drugstore! I feel so good now that I’m not looking fabulous at the expense of animals and the environment.”
Aveda manufactures its products using 100 percent wind power, Burt’s Bees sells exclusively all-natural products and uses only recycled material in its packaging, and REN even donates 2.5 percent of its profit to campaigns working toward a sustainable earth. And on that note, don’t forget to take a look into green initiatives like Origins cosmetics’ Return to Origins Recycling Program. If you’re using something every day, why not try to go eco with it?
7. Green your lunch (We don’t mean eat salads every day)
Brown bag your lunch instead of buying things from vending machines or a take-out place where you’re faced with more packaging surrounding your food than food itself. Sleeth advises, “When comparing products, try to consider how much packaging the item comes in and avoid individually wrapped items. Instead, buy in bulk, refill, and choose concentrated versions.” Think about repurposing leftovers from your fridge; we waste so much food letting it just rot away in our refrigerators! Get creative: stir-fry sandwich, anyone? How about turning leftover pasta into pasta salad to eat cold by tossing in the remnant vegetables in your crisper? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that Americans waste 34 million tons of food per year! That’s almost 14 percent of the total solid waste stream in any one municipality. Stop contributing to it.
The first step is buying yourself a cool lunch box. Don’t think “cool” and “lunch box” go together in the same sentence? Think again, collegiette. Brown bag it in style with a FEED bag, whose profits go to feeding starving children in Africa, or try a Baggu Bag, which can also double as a reusable grocery bag–(see: 8. B.Y.O.__ ). You’ll be on your way to some earth-friendly eats in no time.
8. B.Y.O. __
If you’re willing to bring your own beer for the sake of a party, why not bring your own water bottle, shopping bag, or travel mug around wherever you go for the sake of the earth? Collegiettes, for one, love their reusable water bottles. Autumn, a pre-collegiette high school ambassador, says, “I have a best friend: my Waterbobble! It’s an awesome filtered water bottle that filters as you drink. I fill it with tap or water-fountain water, and it saves me a ton of money on plastic bottles and saves plastic from being wasted or not recycled!” Kelsey, a sophomore at Boston College concurs: “Investing in any kind of reusable containers (either thermoses, coffee mugs, water bottles, etc) is an excellent way to go green without spending too much money. Also, saving any plastic bags from stores to reuse is great for the environment and essentially free!”
Also, many coffee shops, including the Queen Mother of all coffee shops, Starbucks, will provide you small (but valuable!) drink discounts if you bring a reusable mug instead of grabbing a paper cup to go. Need more incentive? If your reusable travel mug is pretty sizable, Starbucks will still ring it in as “grandé”; that means more low-fat, light water, extra foamy Tazo chai for your buck, baby.
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9. Share your magazines
There’s little that can beat plunking down on a lazy afternoon with a thick issue of your favorite glossy. But what do you do when the final page is turned? Tossing a magazine out after reading has no less environmental impact than throwing out a novel once you’ve finished the epilogue, but you’d never think of doing that! By creating a magazine exchange between you and your friends or on your floor, not only do you get the benefit of everybody else’s subscriptions, you’re extending the lifespan of that Seventeen or Vogue longer than one single use, so you can feel good about staying true to the print issue.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that paper and paperboard accounts for the single largest portion of the solid waste stream municipally in the United States per year. Each year, more than 2 billion books, 350 million magazines, and 24 billion newspapers are published. Do your part and create a lending library with other like-minded environmental collegiettes like you and when its finally time to toss a well-read rag, make sure you’re recycling it, and doing so properly!
10. Use reusable dishes and utensils
Think about what would happen to your grades if you wasted time like you waste material things on a daily basis. You would flunk out before you had time to say, “I can’t find the recycling.” Forgoing doing the dishes every day by eating off disposable tableware may seem like a great time- and labor-saving habit, but to save yourself the work, you’re sacrificing the environment. Kelsey from Boston College has the right idea: “I only use silverware that is reusable. We have the option of silver utensils as well as plastic utensils in all of our dining halls, so I always grab the silver!” It really is as simple as that, so why not make the environmental choice?
As for drinkware, consider for a moment the entity of the red party cup. A staple at mixers, keggers, and frat parties alike, the red cup has become the official vessel of the college student; can you think of one beer pong tournament this year that used something different? Exactly. There’s even a Facebook page for it and the group’s description points out the same: “You’ve seen it, you’ve gotten drunk out of it, odds are you’ve spilled a few. A true American Legend.”
Perhaps it’s a legend, but given its non-recyclable status, it’s also a legendary waste. Next time someone suggests beer pong or flip cup, suggest a reusable cup you can play with for parties to come.
As Albert Einstein wisely noted, “The environment is everything that isn’t me.” You may not think yourself capable of generating any considerable negative impact on the earth—after all, you’re just a college girl, how much damage could you be doing when you don’t even have a car?—but simply holding this passive attitude is enough to lead anyone down the path to wastefulness. Be conscious of your environment and choose the earth-friendly path instead. Green looks great on you.