How Green Do You Want To Be?

Going green can be the easiest or hardest thing you ever do. It depends on how green you want to be.

Green design, or a green lifestyle, does not necessarily have a quantifiable definition. You might say there are many “shades of green.” In the most general sense, the measure for an individual, a building, or an institution,  is the impact, or footprint, on the environment. Carbon emissions, water usage, energy consumption, and landfill contributions are the basic components of an environmental footprint. You may already be somewhat green and not even realize it. If you use a recycle bin, own energy star appliances, or fluorescent light bulbs, you are already more green than the average citizen.

To be solid ‘green’ your environmental footprint must be environmentally sustainable. This is a debatable topic, because it is difficult to calculate how much each human can safely emit/use/consume/contribute while nature comfortably digests. For example, humans do not need to emit zero carbon to be sustainable. Nature—specifically, plants— consume carbon and emit oxygen in order to live. Human society can, therefore, safely emit a certain amount of carbon without threatening to render the earth uninhabitable.

It is possible to be ‘net zero’ and this is a popular goal in the building culture. This is not a problem, because many people are emitting much more than their share, and those at net zero are helping offset the others.

How green do you want to go? Please comment below.

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Tags: cfl, energy star, environmental footprint., green, green design, recycle