The concept of a ‘smart’ life or smart living has been growing slowly over the past decade. This concept is about living in a more effective way and has people saving costs and cutting corners that should really be cut, and saving on useless items and services. But there is another term that is gaining more popularity, “Smart Green Living.”
How then does green living fit into smart living? Well, people soon realized that a lot of the tenets of a green life also fell into the same bracket as smart living by using technology in an eco-friendly way, Smart Green Living.
The goal of Smart Green Living as it were, is to take advantage of the technology at hand and use it to help save the environment, save costs, and make for a better quality of life.
So how can this be done? Well, think to yourself, where do you spend the most money regularly? Paying electric bills? Getting your car refueled? Paying for gas heating?
Well, you can substantially reduce all of these by implementing smart green living standards around your daily lives.
How to Live Green and Smart
Well, first things first, change comes from your home and that is where you must start first. Research what source of renewable energy is best for where you live. Usually solar works for all across the board but looking at alternatives such as geothermal is not bad either.
Solar can go as low as $0.10 per kWh so already you would be doing yourself a huge favor in the way of saving money. Solar is a one-time big investment that can give back to you can benefit from if the infrastructure allows it, once you produce more energy than required. That is right, you can sell your solar power back to your city if you make a surplus amount. If that is not smart green living, then what is?
Geothermal energy is especially great for warming up your house if you are dealing with low temperatures since it is very efficient. A lot of the energy you might put into warming your house gets wasted with conventional means. This means that you will be seeing higher bills for lower results. That is not smart!
Drive Green
There has been an incredible push toward electric cars and hybrid cars. These cars can transform the way you go to work by giving you an absolute powerhouse on four wheels. Normal combustion engines lose so much of their energy through heat, sound, and movement that they become extremely inefficient through depreciation. Electric cars, on the other hand, are absolute beasts when it comes to power.
Take for example the Tesla Roadster 2. This car is all-electric and can go from 0-60 in 1.9 seconds flat. This makes it the fastest car in history. Electric cars are as cheap as $30,000 these days and are looking to only get cheaper since many manufacturers such as Volvo are pledging to go electric.
This means that there will be an abundance of electric cars in the market in the near future and prices will surely go down.
You can effectively make your life easier and greener to live if you go green. The only coal or fossil fuel you should be using is for BBQ parties and nothing else.
Carpool or Take The Public Transportation
If you don’t have an electric car, carpooling is one of the best methods of living greener. Uber started off and still advertises itself as a carpooling app. The entire point of carpooling is so that there are fewer cars on the road and fewer emissions. It’s very fortunate that ride-sharing apps like Uber or Lyft have become as popular as they have as businesses that promote a greener way of life should be rewarded.
If you don’t know anyone that is willing to carpool, there’s always the good old way of taking the bus and train. If you have a long commute every day, you’ll know how much you dread driving at 8 am in the morning, when all you want to do is relax! Taking public transportation gives you the ability to kick back and relax and listen to some music, the ability to read a book, and lets others do the hard part of getting to work for you! You can also just simply walk more, you walk and exercise at the same time.
Not only that but you’ll save so much on fuel. You wouldn’t believe how much fuel eats a chunk out of your budget. For less than 1/5ths the price of spending money on a car and its maintenance and fuel, invest in bus tickets!
Adopt a Green Lifestyle
With the rise of electronic communication, the use of paper would have naturally declined but it still remains an existing threat. If the amount of paper we use in a year was stacked vertically, it would form a 100 feet tall tower. And ironically, it’s the same type of 100 feet tall trees that are cut down to make paper! By cutting back on paper, you can save 700 pounds of paper every year. Imagine adopting a policy at work to minimize paper use, a lot of paper would be saved!
You can change the way you consume products and dispose of waste. For things like paper, you can honestly go on with your life without consuming lots of it. If you’re someone who does everything online, you don’t really need it.
Making recycling a part of your life is living green. By recycling paper or plastic, you’re contributing to the growing movement of consumers demanding environmental conservation. It’s unfortunate that there are certain groups that deny global warming as a whole, it sets back growth in this sector.
In conclusion, smart living is not green living unless it takes into account the environment. What do we mean by this? With Smart Living, we are dependent on several devices that use technology to make our lives easier. What do we do with these devices once we don’t need them anymore? The answer to this question will determine whether we are talking about Green Smart Living or simply “Smart Living”.
Through our collective actions, as little as they may seem, we can help save the planet for future generations!
Thank you for taking some time to read this article. Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments in the section below.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40505671
https://electrek.co/2018/06/05/tesla-new-next-gen-roadster-prototype-shareholder-meeting/
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/29/cheapest-electric-cars-available-comparisons-thoughts/
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