Green Your Library or Office

• Encourage staff and patrons to walk or cycle to the library, and install a convenient bike rack.

• Don’t heat or cool unused areas of a building; you can switch the heating or cooling to a lower or higher setting, or even off altogether, during holidays and weekends. Reduce the temperature by a degree or two; people are less alert in overheated rooms.

• Use low energy light bulbs, especially in ceiling and wall fixtures.

• Ensure that windows can be opened easily. Install ceiling fans; they consume a fraction of the energy of air conditioners.

• Position tables and desks by windows to make full use of natural daylight (studies show that students perform better under natural, not artificial, lighting).

• Draft-proof doors and windows, and report any dripping faucets.

• When computers and other equipment are not in use for a period of time, turn them off, and use energy-saving and standby modes on electronic equipment.

• Make sure all outmoded computer equipment is reused or recycled. Go to http://www.computertakeback.com for information.

• Set up a bulletin board–online as well as actual--where people can offer free items, put up notices about stuff they’re looking for, and announce community events.

• Position laser printers and photocopying machines at a distance from workstations (they contain toners and solvents that staff shouldn’t breathe all day).

• Green—literally—the library with real plants. They are good for the air and for the spirit. Increase the humidity in the office by standing plants in trays of pebbles and water. 

• Choose drinks and foods that are packaged in glass rather than plastic. Stock the kitchen with real paper cups rather than plastic or polystyrene cups and with real glasses and mugs.

• Create a ‘green’ book collection.

• Invite speakers to talk about local and global environmental issues.

The Armchair Environmentalist

3 Minute a Day Action plan to Save the Planet

For daily updates and inspiration, visit www.armchairenvironmentalist.com/blog

No place like home

We’ve been living on Planet Earth like we’re making a one-night stop in a cheap motel. We throw towels all over the place, pile up the pizza boxes and soda bottles, and don’t worry about the hairs in the bathtub or hairspray on the mirror.

 But our planet isn’t a temporary stop and there’s no maid to clean up in the morning. It’s true, that Nature can clean up almost anything, given enough time. But the natural cycles often take centuries, or longer. We’ll grow old with the problems our parents got started, problems we’ve been making worse. Wouldn’t it be nice to think that when we have children or grandchildren they won’t grow up wearing masks to school and that there’ll still be butterflies to point out in the garden? To make that happen, we need to realize that the Earth is home, not a temporary stop.

 For too long, people thought that the earth was so vast that nothing humans could do would really mess things up on a big scale. The threat of nuclear weapons was the first thing that clued us in to the impressively destructive capacity of mankind. But after that a whole succession of other surprises were in store. Bird life began to disappear because farmers and governments were blithely spraying DDT on everything in sight. School cupboards used to be sprinkled with DDT to get rid of insects!

 The American writer Rachel Carson, a biologist with a deep love for the natural world, created the worldwide environmental movement we know today with her book Silent Spring. She should be a hero to all of us, dying of breast cancer herself while she worked, quietly but with great determination, to alert the public to the dangers we were creating.

 Now we know that our activities have made massive, and threatening, changes in the planet. The core of environmental thinking is the question of how we humans can live – successfully and sustainably – on this beautiful planet of ours. Sustainability means making ourselves at home on earth in a way that works today and will go on working in years ahead. And ecology starts at home. In fact, the word ecology means home, and the best place to start saving the planet is in our own homes. -- Karen Christensen

© 2004