How to live Green in a developing country?

Sustainable development is a huge word that needs a huge number of actions include a lot of work, new laws (industrial and civilian), and spreading the culture between our people, it need also to invest a lot of money. Most of these actions can only be conducted by the government, the problem is that the governments in the developing countries always make excuses like "they have a lot of other urgent problems to deal with". But why we keep harming our environment -more and more- every day and our excuse is "we need a better government to manage the process"? Why waiting for an external change to live green? Why don't I start live sustainable -myself- and the change will be forced in the recent coming years?

Be the change that you wish to see in the world " ...Gandhi

Actually you can live green as a person and you don't need the whole country to change to be able to take on sustainability, The question now is what can I do to live Green?

Reduce your carbon footprint.

Your carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide -or any greenhouse gas- that emitted to the environment because of your usage of energy -or any product-. By reducing it you will help to "delay" global warming. And the surprise is that you can reduce it by simple changes in your life style, and here are some examples for you:

• Turn off unused lights. That ridiculous advice -that everyone knows but doesn't do- is a very powerful way to reduce your carbon footprint.
• Turn off unnecessary appliances. Why do you use air conditioner and cover yourself with a heavy blanket, just remove the blanket and turn off the air conditioner unless it’s very hot, and if so 25°c is enough for you and healthier for your family. Or just use a fan.
• Keep your appliances, and car maintained and efficient. maintain your car if it takes fuel more than usual however it goes well functionally.
• Use public transportation. I know that in some cases this is difficult because of the quality of this transportation –ask me-, but if you want to fight for a cause you must bear, and also the more demand for the public transportation will encourage the transportation company to develop it.
• Use lower energy consuming appliances. for example:
  -use CFL (energy-saving light) or LED light bulbs instead of incandescent light bulbs.
  -use a regular stove-top tea kettle instead of the electrical kettle.
  -use gas fired water heater instead of the electrical one.
  -use a broom instead of a vacuum cleaner as much as you can, or use a lower power vacuum cleaner.
• Use cold water when you can. I am in a hot country but everybody around uses hot water all the time –also in summer-. (Can anybody tell me WHY?) Also set your washing machine water temperature on a lower degree if your clothes aren't that dirty.

You can find a lot of ways to reduce your carbon footprint, just Google it.

Reduce your consumption of goods, paper, and plastic.

Use less money to save money, use less food to save food, and use fewer goods to save the environment. Goods like food, canned food, office stationary, clothes, baby toys and any kind of goods consumes the natural resources and uses energy for production and transportation.

Paper consumes a lot of water, trees, and power to produce. However these consumption are lowered dramatically in the past decade but it still high and must be reduced more and more to save earth for the coming decades. Plastic is made from fossil products that are finite and will end in one day.

Reduce your water consumption.

In the coming years here in Egypt we will suffer from reduced water supply because of the Ethiopian dam being built on the main tributary of the Nile River. Every counter in the world has –or will has- its water problems. Some people expect that the next world war will be over water.

Why waiting for the government to shut off water (forced) and to force us to use it wisely –like the electricity load shading that being forced because of fossil fuel shortage- ? Why we don’t start to use the water wisely to save it for the future? And as usual what you have to do is very simple.

Use water if you really need it, fix your leaking water tap and your over flowing toilet flusher, set your washing machine to a short program if it is enough, and last but not least take a 5 minutes shower instead of a bath. You can think of a lot of ways to reduce your consumption if you really want to.

Wake up earlier and sleep earlier.

Some countries applies Day-Light-Saving strategy, some countries not. Some people with, and some people against. My opinion is that day light saving is necessary for energy saving and we need to know how to deal with it to eliminate its side effects –if exist- instead of refusing the idea.

Wherever you live, whatever applying D.L.S. or not, and whatever your opinion, sleeping early will reduce the amount of energy that you consume at the night energy consumption peak hours, not to talk about the benefits of waking up early.

Separate your trash into categories.

Even when your country doesn't have any recycling strategy. you can help recycling your waste.

Here in Egypt we have the "freelancer" garbage man -with a donkey cart or a cargo motor tricycle- who collects the paper, plastic, glass, and metallic wastes from the waste container and sells it to the recycling factories for his own. However he is very efficient but he can't pick up the small plastic and paper waste that are mixed with your other waste. So why not to help him do his valuable job.

Reuse whatever you can.

Plastic bags can be used again and again. you can write on the other side of the draft printed papers or print on both of sides if that is applicable. reuse plastic bottles or replace it with a reusable plastic or glass bottles. save cardboard boxes to use it as a storage box.

you can also upcycle some of your wast and use it for a different purpose . like upcycling cardboard into furniture you will gain new cheap furniture and good family time.

what else can you upcycle? think about it and have fun.

Learn more about green life style.

If you want to do something and don't know how, learn it.

you can learn it online, you can read about it in books and magazines, you can join social associations which care about environment and learn from it, meet people with the same interest. You can also invent new ways that you can do in your country to reduce your bad impact on the environment.

Teach your children -and your circle of influence- to live green.

As we want to save the natural resources -or what left- for the next generations. we must build our children to do the same and not to fall in the same mistakes that we fell in.

Side by side, Try to spread this culture among the people around you as much as you can because this is the only thing you have personally to help saving the earth.

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If you are living in a developing country tell me what you are able to do to live green?
If you are in a developed country try to imagine to live green in a country that barely support this cause -till now- and tell us what you would do then?

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Abdelhalim Osama (Halim)

you can read the original post on linkedin here