If you have to travel for business as much as I have been, and you’re concerned about your carbon footprint as much as I am, you begin to look how you conduct yourself on the road a little differently from everybody else.

When you travel you tend to leave a trail of disposable items behind, from food containers, to styrofoam cups, to magazines, to miniature bottles of shampoo. And then there’s the things you don’t see: The exhaust from your plane, or the energy consumed by your hotel room’s A/C while you’re not in the room.

It all adds up, and what’s worse is that we’re leaving an impact on a place that’s not our home. (Although, strictly speaking, the Earth is our home.)

Lately I’ve done so much traveling that I feel guilty every time I hop on a plane, take a taxi, or rent a car (because the businesses I have to go to are nowhere near urban centers).

So I started to ask: If we have to travel, what can we do to lessen our impact on the world?

Here are my thoughts, and tips:

Continue reading Minimizing Your Travel Footprint »

As I continue to minimize and strive towards a simpler lifestyle, I’ve been putting some thought into how I can control what new physical things come in to my life.

Here are my thoughts:

• First of all, really determine if the thing you’re looking to acquire is a really a want, or a need. You probably already know what category it falls into, so this shouldn’t take much thought.
• Put that thing on a 30-day waiting list. I read this trick somewhere, and I like it. If, after thirty days you still think you need the thing, then you probably do. In 30 days, your “wants” will hopefully disappear.
• Consider borrowing the things you want, first. This includes hitting up your friends for stuff, renting movies instead of buying them, and signing out books from the library. If you borrow something and evaluate that you have a need for your own, personal thing, then your purchase decision will be further justified. For whatever reason, I personally grew up feeling like I had to own everything. I frequently bartered with my brother for things that I could have otherwise borrowed; this behavior became part of who I was, well into adulthood. I eventually realized that this was just plain stupid.
• Picture what might happen if you had smaller containers for your things. Living in a smaller space really made me question the place for all of the stuff I owned. This forced me to make some tough decisions (at the time) about what to keep. While this opportunity doesn’t happen often, imagine if you had to move tomorrow. What could you get rid of today to make it easier on your future self?
• Keep a list of the things you buy, and how much you spent on them. (Don’t include regular expenditures, like food.) Review this list when you’re thinking about buying something, to see if those other things you bought that you thought you truly needed at the time are still proving to be a worthy investment.
• Get moral support. Talk to others who don’t have the thing you want. They may be able to convince you that you don’t need to have that thing that they don’t have, either.
• If you currently don’t think in terms of acquisitions as costing you money, start to. Every purchase impacts your bottom line, which you could be putting aside for memorable experiences, or other, more worthy investments (your definition of “worthy investment” may vary).
• Perhaps more importantly, if you currently don’t think in terms of acquisitions as costing the environment, start to. Everything you buy is made from something, and packed in something else.
• Convince others to stop buying things for you that you don’t need, or give them meaningful alternatives. Here are my thoughts on that.

How do you keep yourself from buying things you don’t need?

So, it’s almost been a full year since I became a vegetarian.

(Technically, January 2nd, 2009 was my first full day, because I slipped up on New Year’s Day by partaking in a single, tasty shrimp!)

Here’s a look back at my first year as a vegetarian.

Continue reading Vegetarianism »

Over the past year of living in Toronto, I’ve made some positive changes in my life; one of which was getting a little more… social.

Another, partly due to the conveniences of living in a city, was a conversion into someone a little more… green!

Continue reading It’s Easy Being Green »

With a mild December behind us, and not a spot of snow on the ground in the first week of January, I am more concerned than usual that something’s amiss with the environment.

Continue reading Climate Concerns »