February 1, 2012. An article in the latest issue of the Sunday Tribune (by Dr Andrew Venter, who is CEO of the Wildlands Trust) got me going… In it, Venter laid out his thoughts and his action plan to improve his environmental footprint and consumption of electricity at home this year. Good on him.
We live in a world where Green is the new hip scene. Everyone wants to know how to do better (on the environmental front), at work and at home, but at times it seems as if we’re not quite sure how to go about it. We’re stumbling around in the dark (and the lights will go out if we’re not careful). And it can be expensive. As Venter points out, to go “off the grid” at home will likely set you back hundreds of thousands of rands… nice if you can afford it.
In my personal experience – and on my radar for projects at home – these are some of the things people are focusing on: solar geysers (tick, from Solar Beam); those fancy light bulbs that don’t use as much electricity (compact fluorescent light bulbs, tick); JoJo tanks for the collection of rain water (on the radar), consumption through use of home appliances (we should all think about how we consume in this area); putting the pool pump on a timer and reducing the time it operates in winter (tick); water-wise showerheads (tick); recycling (tick); building houses intelligently to ensure insulation in winter and cooler temperatures in summer (a serious and potentially costly exercise). And, of course, there’s lots more, particularly when you get to the corporate environment, as evidenced by a number of green buildings now standing, or under construction, right here on The Ridge.
But I believe the key to real change in our environment brings us back to my first point, truly understanding the problem and having a genuine desire to make some changes. There’s a world of information at our fingertips on how to live greener… acting on that information and making real changes will only come from embracing the undeniable reality that we’re buggering up this planet and that the future is not going to be rosy at all for our children and the following generations.
Once we accept global warming, understand that water supplies are going to be under even more pressure as temperatures keep rising, embrace all those images of glaciers melting and reject the naysayers, maybe it will be easier to draw up a definite action plan, and file it as being just as important as the imperative to make a living.
My personal mantra for 2012 is: waste nothing. Use your leftovers to make tomorrow night’s supper; cannibalise broken products and use whatever you can; buy less charcoal and firelighters, and rather look for dead, untreated wood lying around the neighbourhood; STOP buying products you don’t really need, there’s a massive difference between “want” and “need”; grow your own vegetables and herbs, and cut out on unnecessary trips to the shops.
Imagine the knock-on effect on our environment if we all dropped our consumption of everything by just 10% (preferably more). Understand the global conundrum, think before you consume and WASTE NOT.
3 Comments
I like your thinking! Waste not, want not. Plus, there’s such satisfaction in eating veg that you grew yourself. It’s not all about self-denial!
Good article and agree on dropping consumption by just 10%. Now the tough question – does that mean that you’ll be print 10% less magazines???
Good comeback Dave. The good news is that The Ridge and our company in general is slowly migrating to web and “future technologies”, but for the forseeable future there will still be 21 000 Ridges delivered to our database of residential, estate and business addresses.