What Can We Do to Slow Down Climate Change

By: Maryclaire Wright

Hello! My name is Maryclaire Wright and I am a senior at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School and intern at Bethesda Green. I'k involved with the Environmental Activity society at schoolhouse and desire to keep trying to protect the environs in college. I promise to major in civil technology to build sustainable infrastructure in cities with a minor in light-green applied science or ecology sciences. I pursued this internship to learn more well-nigh green initiatives in Montgomery County and what nosotros tin all exercise to assist our community. This by year I've worked every bit part of a team that helped to typhoon a Climate Action Plan beak that the canton will laissez passer to lower carbon emissions by eighty% past 2035. I was able to sit in on meetings and hear everyone speak about such an important issue and discuss the actual changes that volition be made in the next few years. It was an incredible experience to be a function of and made me fifty-fifty more than passionate about contributing to this effort.

Me at a Climate Action Plan Meeting for the Transportation Technical Workgroup

The typhoon bill mentioned huge infrastructure and institutional changes that would be made that would dramatically lower and restrict the carbon emissions produced by our county. It made me start to call back about what everyday mutual citizens could do just to lower their touch on the surround. Sometimes it's easy to feel like what picayune impact you have won't matter considering information technology seems like our actions pale in comparison to the affect of big industries and decisions of the national and canton governments. And, in some means that's true, considering according to ScienceAlert, about 100 companies are responsible for 71 percentage of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Simply we definitely aren't powerless. In a recent study done past the Journal of Industrial Ecology, it was found that consumers take the biggest impact on the planet. And then I put together a list of 10 ways to lessen our impact on the environment. Hopefully, by reading this article, we tin come across that if nosotros each change a few of our simple twenty-four hour period to day behaviors and practices, we can make a huge positive impact.

i. Go Zero Waste

You've probably heard nearly the three R'southward: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. They've been plastered all over cities on charabanc stops and billboards, and on plenty of websites and commercials. But there are really 5 that are equally important.

The five R's of "aught waste material":

• Refuse- Endeavor to avert single use plastics and say "No" to the common plastic and paper products yous encounter every day. Endeavor to use more recyclables and reusables.
• Reduce- Buy less stuff! Be more than mindful about what you REALLY need and try to lower the amount that you purchase. Co-ordinate to a written report washed past the U.Due south. Section of Agronomics, Americans tend to waste about 30-40% of the food supply and according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces most five pounds of trash a twenty-four hours. That is a lot of waste in our landfills!
• Reuse- Try to fix and go on an item in bully condition or detect a way to upcycle it when it breaks or you no longer want it, so that you don't throw it in the trash correct away.
• Rot- Fix up a Compost system for your scraps or find a nutrient scrap drop off center virtually your house (like a farmers' marketplace).
• Recycle- Always try to properly recycle any plastic, metal, or glass that you cannot reuse.

If y'all follow these 5 rules, we can attempt to minimize the waste matter nosotros produce.

two. Avoid Plastic

Although recycling and reusing can reduce the amount of garbage that enters the landfill every twelvemonth, merely a few types of plastic can be recycled. The fraction that does become recycled yet requires a lot of free energy and water which just isn't a good proposition when it comes to unmarried-use items. Information technology's pretty much everywhere – on streets, in rivers, on the beach, in cosmetics, in wastewater, in our clothing, and even in the air we breathe. It will most likely cease up in landfills and oceans and takes hundreds of years to degrade and we're adding more and more than every twenty-four hours. In that location's a shut connectedness between climate change and our massive global plastic problem, considering every plastic is produced from fossil fuels and in every phase of its "life", it emits greenhouse gases.

Here are a few means to avert plastic.

• Bring your own shopping pocketbook

Although free to shoppers, grocery store plastic numberless have a high ecology toll and are one of the most ubiquitous forms of garbage. Endeavor to bring your ain reusable bags every time y'all store

• Finish ownership bottled water

Use a reusable water bottle, they keep the water cold and last longer.

• Bring your own mug to the coffee shop

Most java shops endeavor to sell their own mugs. Invest in i and come dorsum for more coffee or tea with our own mug and thus assist salve the surround every time y'all practice.

• Say no to straws

They are usually single-employ and unnecessary.  They state in the oceans and injure our sea-life.

• Re-think your food storage

Instead of sandwich baggies, utilize a bento box or jars or glass containers, and a reusable lunch handbag.

• Store in bulk

For many households, the majority of plastic waste is generated in the kitchen. So one of the all-time ways to reduce the packaging waste madness is to bring your ain numberless and containers and stock up on bulk foods.

3. Upcycle Clothing

Accept you ever heard of the term Fast Fashion? Information technology is a term used to describe trendy clothing designs that motion apace from the catwalk to retail stores in gild to meet new trends. Information technology has a huge environmental impact considering of its production and disposal. Creating new materials and wearable requires an immense amount of free energy and resources and depends on toxic cloth dyes and other chemicals that contaminate freshwater. One written report constitute that it produces almost a tenth of the global carbon emissions which is more than all international flights and water shipping. Information technology also contributes to big amounts of textile waste because heaps and heaps of clothing finish upwards in the landfill.

Instead of being sucked into the newest trends that you will end up throwing away in simply a few months, endeavor some alternatives to fast fashion. From austerity stores, to garage sales, to online peer-to-peer buying and selling apps, there are many places you lot can avoid the fast fashion industry. Always endeavour to discover a retailer who is transparent about what they are doing and where they get their materials from, where the labor is carried out and who by. At that place are even places around the Bethesda area that are rubber to buy from such as Moco Thrift and Reddz Trading and many more. Fifty-fifty if you aren't able to completely cut out fast mode from the clothing that you buy, endeavor to limit and reduce the amount that you purchase and always look at second manus stores before you go straight to the big name brands.

4. Change Lightbulbs

Energy-efficient light bulbs have higher initial costs, but these light bulbs can help save the environment and your coin in the long run. A recent report by the International Free energy Bureau shows that efficient lighting systems (like LEDs and CFLs) could prevent a cumulative full of 16 billion tons of carbon from existence added to the world's atmosphere over the next 25 years.

There are ii types of lightbulbs that you should effort to invest in:

• CFLs (Compact fluorescent low-cal) accept been around for a while, and they're all-time known for their spiral pattern. They typically last for about ten,000 hours, and use much less energy than incandescents, about 75 percent less.
• LEDs (Light emitting diode) use fifty-fifty less energy than CFLs, and they concluding upward to 50,000 hours. Dissimilar CFLs, they burnish instantly and can assistance y'all salvage up to 80 percent in energy costs per twelvemonth.

Both options are slap-up choices that are enormously energy efficient and will assist limit greenhouse gas emissions.

v. Go Paperless

Going paperless reduces unsightly clutter in your habitation, and likewise saves trees and helps the environs. The average American receives 41 pounds of junk mail each year, and almost 50% of it winds up unopened in a landfill. Hither are a few tips and strategies to go paperless:

• Opt out of Junk Postal service Lists

It'due south called Junk Mail for a reason. Reevaluate what comes in your mailbox and cancel any unnecessary mailing or catalog lists.

• Pay Bills Online

Many financial institutions offer online banking and there are many services that allow you to view and pay bills online. When you tin can pay all your bills digitally rather than with checks and envelopes, you get one step closer to beingness paperless.

• Switch to Online Subscriptions

Abolish subscriptions to reduce the newspaper coming into your abode and save money. Reassess your newspaper subscription and magazine subscriptions, and try to notice an option where you can admission the aforementioned news or data online.

• Digitize Your Documents

Try to scan documents that yous need to proceed and store them electronically on a hard drive or storage service such as DropBox or Microsoft One Drive. No matter which selection you lot choose, option i and stick with it and then that yous can put all your digital documents in one place.

6. Turn Off Your H2o

Did you know that only about 2.5% of all the water on Earth is freshwater and the rest is saline? Even then, just ane percent of the freshwater is easily accessible, with the rest of it trapped in glaciers. We need to help conserve water.

Here are some easy ways you can reduce your water usage:

• When you brush your teeth, be sure to shut off the water while brushing. Don't leave it running, and only turn it on when it'due south time to rinse your mouth out.
• Take shorter showers. A fun mode to do this is by listening to iii-4 songs, and then shut the shower off when it'south over.
• Don't flush things down the toilet to dispose of them. One flush can waste matter up to 5 or 7 gallons of h2o.

7. Support Local Farming

Eating locally grown foods keeps our local farmers in business and lessens the carbon footprint of shipping foods across the country or even between continents. At farmers' markets, in that location is a wider multifariousness of salubrious and delicious food and y'all get to know where your food comes from. Farmers' markets are also usually more affordable and will help rebuild local food economies. Many farmers are also implementing more than sustainable growing practices by going organic and reducing pesticide and chemical use. There are many farmers' markets in our expanse such as Bethesda Central Farm Market, Bethesda Women's Market, and Norman'due south Farm Marketplace. Every one time in a while, take a weekend trip to a market place and come across what y'all can detect!

8. Compost

By composting our food scraps, we reduce the amount of nutrient scraps that go into our landfills. Co-ordinate to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food waste is estimated between xxx-40 percent of the food supply which is shared betwixt the retail and consumer levels. This amount of waste material has many impacts on nutrient security and climate alter. Some harmful effects of nutrient waste include:

• Information technology is the unmarried largest component going into landfills and it quickly generates methane, making landfills the 3rd largest methyl hydride source in the U.S.
• The free energy, country, water, labor, and time spent producing, processing, transporting, preparing, and storing the food could've been spent else where or in other ways that might exist more benign to society.

Composting can help to minimize the drastic effects of food waste product. Information technology benefits the environment by recycling organic resource while conserving landfill space. It likewise enriches soil, helps to maintain wet, and suppress plant diseases and pests. There are many local websites and resources on how we tin can easily compost. One popular compost service in the DMV area is Compost Coiffure. They will provide food scrap collection services for homes, neighborhoods, and businesses to plough your trash into valuable compost that helps the environment.

9. Adopt a Establish-Based Diet

Animal agriculture produces huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, consumes massive volumes of water, and causes a lot of pollution. A UN Food and Agriculture Clan study found that livestock farming contributes about fifteen% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

That doesn't mean that everyone has to go vegan or vegetarian – fifty-fifty a small shift in diets, with a reduction in meat and dairy products, and calculation more plant-based foods instead, could reduce the pressure that agriculture places on the environment and would do good the climate essentially. Eating more vegetables and fruits is too healthier. In the Bethesda Area, in that location are many restaurants that serve local, salubrious, delicious, and found-based meals that volition fulfill your needs and have you licking your lips afterward.

• True Nutrient
• Little Beet Table
• Barrel and Crow
• Flower Kid
• Chopt
• MOM'south Organic Market
• Founding Farmers
• Dawson's Market
• Beefsteak
• Argent Diner
• Sweetgreen
• Busboys and Poets
• Chef Tony's

10. Use Public Transportation

Evaluate and reimagine our transportation habits.  Driving cars in long commutes and sitting in traffic is not only time-consuming but harms our environment.  Transportation accounts for roughly 28% of global greenhouse emissions and that per centum is getting even larger every year. We tin can each rethink our arroyo to transportation. We can bike, walk, or have public transportation to work, school, or while running errands. Possibly fifty-fifty consider joining a carpool or vanpool. The Bethesda area has a great metro system and we should all support public transportation when possible. Montgomery County also has an all-encompassing network of ride-on buses and metro buses that are gratis to students. Since it isn't completely realistic to never drive in a auto again, when we do accept to utilise or buy a motorcar, consider buying an electric vehicle that is low in carbon emissions. Still, in the long run, nosotros should aim to reduce the number of cars on the road.

Sources:

Ten Personal Solutions to Global Warming." Union of Concerned Scientists, 17 July 2008, www.ucsusa.org/resource/x-personal-solutions-global-warming.

Suzuki, David. "Top 10 Things You lot Can Do about Climate change." David Suzuki Foundation, davidsuzuki.org/what-you-tin-practise/height-ten-ways-can-stop-climate-change/.

Kellogg, Kathryn. "v Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint." Going Zero Waste, Going Zero Waste, 23 Oct. 2018, world wide web.goingzerowaste.com/blog/five-ways-to-reduce-your-carbon-footprint.

Badore, Margaret. "11 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Plastic Waste matter Today." TreeHugger, Treehugger, 2 Sept. 2019, world wide web.treehugger.com/green-dwelling house/eleven-easy-means-reduce-your-plastic-waste matter-today.html.

"A Guide to Lite Bulbs: How to Salve Money, Environment." The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Scientific discipline Monitor, sixteen June 2014, world wide web.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/0616/A-guide-to-light-bulbs-How-to-save-coin-environs.

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Source: https://bethesdagreen.org/10-ways-to-slow-down-climate-change-and-protect-the-environment/

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