Six Extreme Ways to Go Green

by AndrewM in Advice, February 9, 2009

There are lots of way to make your life more eco-friendly, but what if you want to take things a step further? Following a discussion in the pub (where else?), I decided to note down some of the more extreme approaches that could be taken to green living.

1. Child powered vehicles – are you forever running your kids from place to place and want to try and cut down on your carbon footprint? Why not put a cycle rack on top of your car and then attach a chain to the axle! The kids get exercise, you get to make sure they arrive safely from the comfort of the car and the whole thing is better for the environment – it’s a win-win situation.

2. Annual bathing – if it was good enough in medieval times why can’t it be good enough now? The savings in water will be huge, not to mention the money saving benefits that will come from the drastic decline in your social life. If you’re finding it a bit lonely get your friends involved too and spread the pong.

3. Fit your house with piezoelectric flooring – it’s been introduced in green nightclubs so why not at home? Forget solar panels and wind turbines which depend on unreliable natural phenomena and instead encourage friends and family to boogie on down all day long for endless renewable energy.

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4. Forget fair-trade, source it yourself – if you want to ensure that products you buy are really ethical then what better way then compiling your own list of producers and sourcing everything direct from the point of origin? From fruit and veg to shoes and socks, you’ll be paying retail prices so the producers get an even better deal. Of course some producers may object to the paperwork and insist you buy in wholesale quantities, but hey, you can never have too many bananas!

5. Become a hermit – if even ethically sourcing everything yourself seems to resource intensive then why not shun worldly possessions altogether, live in a cave and eat what you can forage? You can’t get much closer to nature than that! You may cause a few pollution incidents in the early days as you learn which berries and fungi are good to eat, but at least you’ll have plenty of peace and quiet to recover.

6. Coat your house in tin foil – When all else fails there are always geo-engineering options. By coating your house and garden in tin foil you can reflect more of the Sun’s energy back in to space, thus reducing the global temperature and helping to reverse climate change.