When most individuals hear the phrase “going green” in conversation or the media, a number of ideas, concepts and scenes come to the forefront of their mind. Going green is far more than doing basic recycling or being nice a tree in your yard. Read on into the following paragraphs for frequently asked questions about going green.
What exactly does going green mean? Going green is deliberately taking any action (or inaction) that helps you reduce the damage your lifestyle makes to the global environment. In some cases, it might even be taking steps that improve them. It can be anything from turning off lights in rooms you are not in to flat out installing renewable energy sources on your property and living off of the power grid. Anytime you buy a more fuel efficient car or plant a tree to capture carbon emissions, you are going green.
Recycling waste is a large part of going green, as it prevents land from being used for landfill use and keeps trash from winding up in the woods or ocean. So much waste has wound up in the ocean that there is now a patch of floating garbage in the Pacific the size of several states. Recycling all available waste, either through local collection programs or composting is a huge step in minimizing impact on the environment.
Using less polluting energy sources is another key aspect to moving towards a greener world. The burning of oil and coal emits serious levels of pollution into the atmosphere, which then affects the entire planet. Nuclear power and natural gas are by and far much cleaner, although there is still some pollution from natural gas and leftover radioactive waste from nuclear plants needing storage.
There are power sources that have absolutely no pollution from them. These include solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric. Solar and wind are certainly the purest forms of energy, although the installation costs are high, and they are weather dependent. Wind turbines also sometimes kill birds. Hydroelectric can run around the clock, but done on too large a scale, it can have a serious environmental impact on the rivers that it dams up. Geothermal might actually be the one that can brag about having no environmental impact, but the terrain possibilities are limited as to its installation.
Environmentalists dream of a day when the world can go completely green, or at least even individual nations. This will take time however. So long as fossil fuels and dirty sources of energy are cheaper than clean ones, certain sectors of the global economy will continue to use them, hurting the air and water the entire planet shares.
When anyone talks about turning the modern world into a sustainable one, they are hoping for a planet where everyone’s standard of living can be maintained or even raised, but not at the expense of depriving future generations of natural resources, pure air and clean water. Green energy sources are certainly a large part of that but so is recycling and energy efficiency. Keep all these ideas in mind the next time you hear someone talk about going green.
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