Personally, I hate birds. Maybe it’s some weird fear that was developed when my 6th grade math teacher made us watch Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, which kind of freaked me out at the time. (Yes, I went to a public school!) Or maybe it’s the fact that birds always seem to practice target shooting on my head… whatever it is, I’ve never developed a particular affinity to these winged creatures.
Be that as it may, I read an article recently that talked about how birds may not be able to keep up with climate change, which is very disconcerting to me. Can you imagine not ever seeing another bird again? I know, I know, it’s extreme and I’m over-exaggerating, but really, how much further are we going to let this environmental crisis go? Are we going to let more plants & animals go extinct before we enact greater change?
I just came across an interesting study performed by AMP Agency, which found that green behavior and perspectives are less of a fad and more of a general movement. Of the 3,200 people surveyed, 19 percent of respondents were defined as influential or “Green Evangelists”. This means after these people learn a particular company or product is eco-friendly, they are very likely to recommend the company or product to colleagues, family, and friends. According to AMP Agency’s survey, these influential people tend to be in the 18 – 30 year old range, without 57 percent being female.
What is fascinating about this study is that industry standards usually find that 10 percent of a sample is considered influential. This particular study found nearly double that for the eco-friendly movement, indicating an extremely strong market penetration.
For a company, getting such “Green Evangelists” on their side is not only important, but it can offer huge returns to their bottom lines. As one can imagine, this particular group of people, especially those in the 18 – 30 year old range, can have strong influence in online social networks, offline social networks, and also amongst peers. In addition, if a company is able to capture such a demographic, the company can potentially have a customer for life! How’s that for a return on your green investment?
Of course, the flipside is that if these “Green Evangelists” find our your company and / or products are simply full of hot air, their influential effects can be just as devastating. It’s time to go green so you can add some green to your bottom line.
One of the first posts I ever did on Things That Make You Go Green was on junk mail. Man, I really hate junk mail. To this day, 95% of my mail is J-U-N-K. I’ve signed up for various services, with the hopes of getting off of random mailing lists, but it still keeps on coming!
I’m a recycler - but for those of you who are interested in a more creative solution, you can try composting your unwanted mail. Shred your junk mail and throw it into your compost bin - just make sure not to use the slick, coated paper that is sometimes found in brochures, as this makes the paper water-resistant and slower to decompose.
The paper from your junk mail is high in carbon and will make for great composting materials, provided you mix in high-nitrogen wastes with it. High-nitrogen waste items include fresh grass clippings and kitchen waste.
I’m a pretty compulsive paper shredder-er, so I’m going to try this. Are any of you already doing this today?
Raise your hands if you own one of those nice flat-screen TVs? My hand is up. I replaced my old tube television about six month’s ago, and opted for a large, flat-screen LCD. It turns out these TVs are really bad for the environment in a couple ways.
First, these TVs contain nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), the same environmentally harmful gas found in the new 3G iPhone. This gas is estimated to be 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and there will be about 4,000 tons of it will be produced per year.
In addition, large, flat-screen TVs use much more energy than traditional tube television sets. I was a bit suspicious when I felt the huge amount of heat my LCD TV emitted when compared with my old TV set. Next time you think about getting a new TV, you may want to think twice. I was going to replace another old TV of mine, but now I think I’ll hold off on doing so.
I was pondering how population affects our environment, when I came upon this article in the Yale Environment 360 called, “Too Many People,
Too Much Consumption” by scientists Paul and Anne Ehrlich at Stanford. In it, they argue that we need to reduce our population if we are to solve our enviromental problems. I could not agree more. Once someone is born, they are free to pursue life happiness, a car, a house and the American dream right? It seems obvious that best way to avoid the problem is to have fewer people.
But I read the article, eagerly looking for the part where they talk about how we reduce the population, but found very little. Their suggestion is to do so (I kid you not):
Through a global dialogue in which people discuss the human predicament and decide whether they would like to see a maximum number of people living at a minimum standard of living, or perhaps a much lower population size that gives individuals a broad choice of lifestyles.
Huh? Really? That seems kind of a like a recipe to do nothing.
I think a much more straightforward option is to make sure that women around the world have access to education. Quoting the National Center for Health Statistics study, there was, “a direct relationship between years of education and birth rates, with the highest birth rates among women with the lowest educational attainment.” This means that those of us who feel strongly about the planet should support the efforts of those who are working to educate women around the world. It’s a huge way we can make a difference.
Personally, I hate birds. Maybe it’s some weird fear that was developed when my 6th grade math teacher made us watch Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, which kind of freaked me out at the time. (Yes, I went to a public school!) Or maybe it’s the fact that birds always seem to practice target shooting on my head… whatever it is, I’ve never developed a particular affinity to these winged creatures.
