It’s finally time for beach weekend! Images of palm trees and paint penned chugalugs are dancing through your head, but before you jet off on your sneak-preview of summer, here are a couple of tips for a green girl on this most unsustainable of weekends.
Turn off & Unplug
Once you’ve uploaded your new beach-y playlist and finished scouring ‘The Cooler Connection’, remember to turn off and unplugbefore you go. Chargers left in the wall leak energy, even if nothing is charging. So if it doesn’t need to be powered all weekend (your mini-fridge does, your Thinkpad does not), go ahead and disconnect it.
Share!
Talk with other girls going! If you split up snacks, dinners, and cutlery, you’ll reduce waste and save money. Also, try to hit up Fresh Market or Whole Foods for some healthy snacks. (And, fun fact: I was told today that grapes, dairy products, and salty junk foods make you bloat, so maybe shoot for some bikini-friendly snacks like veggies and whole grains!)
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Clean-Up After Yourself
Though North Myrtle Beach probably isn’t the poster child of the “Leave Only Footprints” campaign, we still don’t want it looking like this:
Do the Little Things!
So make sure to pick up before you head back inside. Also, I know you’re on a date weekend, and you can’t exactly be that girl running around and asking everyone to sort and recycle their aluminum and glass. It’s aggressive. However, it’s so easy to pop the tabs off the top of cans and toss them in your beach bag! It’s a simple as that.
Think Sustainability
If you go out to dinner, make sure you order sustainable seafood by checking at
http://www.blueocean.org/seafood/seafood-guide. There’s also an iPhone app!
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Minimize Baggage
You’ll probably be riding with other people anyway. (Yay, car-pooling! You’re already doing great!) But, remember to also pack light. You can still look fabulous without bringing eight different bikini options and a separate bag for shoes. Think less Rimmel London and more Neutrogena commercial. It’s a little known fact, but extra stuff adds more weight in the car, which lowers gas mileage. An extra 100 pounds reduces mileage by around 2%. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but with Americans using 386 million gallons a day, it will save billions and billions of gas a year!
Re-Use & Recycle
Bring reusable water bottles for you and your date! Or some sort of beverage-holding container. After all, who would choose a Solo cup over a lovingly paint-penned ‘Bubba Keg’? If you plan on the actual intake of H2O, toss some Crystal Light in your bag
instead of buying a case of water bottles. It’s easier to deal with, and it gets rid of the sulfur-beach-water taste.
So that’s it! A couple of tips to keep you nice and green while getting bronzed on beach weekend, or any of your weekend get-a-ways.