If you think about your daily routines and what you are doing everyday I’m sure you will find somethings you can improve easily to make your day a bit more sustainable without limit yourself. Find some ideas here.
I don’t want to tell you about the things like “Turn the lights off when you leave a room” or “Shower instead of taking a bath”. I will try to give you ideas on how to improve sustainability where you didn’t expect any improvement. As a daily Internet-User I will start with things from the internet.
Sustainable search engines:
I use Google a lot and I know that one search can produce 15 gramm of CO2 which is enough to boil water for one cup of tea. Servers farms are big CO2 producers so some companies had the idea to compensate the emission and donate money to environmental organizations. Here are some examples:
ecosia.org – grow trees!
The search engine ecosia.org is collecting money with “ecoADs”. The raised money is going to the Plant a Billion Trees project which plants a tree in the rain forest area of brasil for every donated dollar. Regarding ecosia.org 25.816 trees have been planted by them (September 2013). Ecosia is getting supported by Yahoo! and Bing.
Direct Link: ecosia.org
Blog: Ecosia Blog
ecosearch.org – a environmental friendly search engine
With ecosearch.org you can use a search engine which supports different organizations. Not all of them are for sustainability. Some are for educational reasons or to help and protect natural environment. Ecosearch uses Google to search the web but donates money made with the advertisement to different non-profit organizations. Also donations are welcome.
Direct Link: ecosearch.org
Blog: ecosearch Info
Sharing and reuse of different Items
Instead of throwing things into trash think about if other people could still use them. The internet provides a good way to share things.
bookcrossing.com – for sharing old books
Did you finished a book? What do you do with that book afterwards? My finished books go into a bookshelf and start to collect dust there. Honestly I haven’t read many books twice and I think many people are like that. So bookcrossing.com is a website to share books you have finished. Instead of putting them into a shelf or else you release them into the world. Put a bookcrossing.com sticker on your book and you can follow it around the world. The website tracks your released book and people can catch it and then read it. A nice way to share books! Find out more here!
99dresses.com – old clothes? Trade them in
On 99dresses.com you can upload your unwanted clothes which can be turned into buttons (kind of like a currency). These buttons can be traded into other clothes by other members of 99dresses.com. All you have to take care of or worry about are shipping costs!
neighborgoods.net – Safe money and share tools/items
Do you have a drill but no ladder? Look on neighborgoods.net and find someone who has a ladder and would borrow it to you. The idea is simple. Upload your items you would like to share and people can start borrow it from you. To see how it works watch this clip:
Image by Garden State Hiker – flickr.com (CC-BY-2.0)