Well over two months since BP’s deepwater oil rig exploded, thousands of barrels of oil are still spewing into Gulf waters every day.  Nothing I have seen in recent years has focused attention on the urgent task of breaking our addiction to oil like this terrible incident.

     We’re all in it together.  Our society was built on fossil fuels, and currently, we all depend on oil for many of our daily activities and needs.  But we can make choices in our daily lives to at least reduce our oil consumption.  The following are some tips from the National Audubon Society for reducing your consumption of petroleum-based products. 

     By the way, in addition to acting on Audubon’s suggestions, you might also talk with others about the changes you’re making.  Quite likely you will find that others are also looking for things they can do in their own lives to cut their petroleum consumption.

     Here are Audubon’s tips:  

• Drive less. Take public transit. Carpool.
• Combine your driving errands to reduce vehicle miles traveled.
• Insist that meetings and other activities be held near public transit.
• Stop using plastic bottles. It is estimated 17 million barrels of oil are used to make them. Nearly 90 percent are not recycled but go to landfills where it takes many years for them to decompose.
• Stop using plastic bags. It is estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags are used each year, made from around 12 million barrels of oil. They are slow to biodegrade and many end up in trees and waterways and threaten wildlife.    

     These are all good suggestions.  An especially easy and effective tip, I think, is to avoid bottled water.  If  you like having water with you when you go about your day, a good option is tap water in a non-BPA thermos.  You’ll save money too.

     And it’s easy to avoid plastic bags if you keep a few canvas, reusable bags in your car.  Then you’ll have them when you shop, and you won’t need to take a plastic bag from the store.–April Moore

 

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Act now to save our beloved Earth!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.