Earth Day – Islam’s Perspective on the Environment and Things YOU Can Do

April 22, 2008 at 1:42 pm Salam Ottawa Team 1 comment

Host: Omar (Green Kufi)

Discussion

For Islam’s Perspective on the Environment read these posts by Green Kufi: http://greenkufienviro.wordpress.com/tag/islam/

How to green your life
News.com posted by Elsa Wenzel

What’s your footprint? http://www.myfootprint.org/
You can start off by finding out what your environmental footprint is from the environmental footprint calculator from the Earth Day Network. You may be quite surprised with the result.

Greener gadgets: Check the Energy rating of the products that you use, like EnergyStar certified appliances. Buy gadgets that don’t use PCPs, and toxic plastics, and metals. Like the MacBook Air for example.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up.

Electronics waste:
Electronic waste is a huge problem. More than 3 million tons of e-waste wind up in landfills each year, according to the EPA. With the dawn of digital television, Americans will toss more than 80 million old TVs within the next two years, according Electronic Recyclers. If electronics aren’t properly disposed of, the Thousands of toxic chemicals used to make them can pollute natural resources and hurt people’s health.
What can you do? Hewlett-Packard and Dell have strong takeback programs. So does EcoNEW at Best Buy and Wal-Mart Stores, as well as TechForward. Also, “with a little creativity the life of old equipment can be extended. For example, an old desktop could serve as a music center to pipe MP3s throughout the house.”

Greener energy: Ottawa’s Alternative Energy Sources. For greener energy one easy way is to swap incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents and LEDs, which can drastically reduce electrical costs. However, CFLs, which contain mercury, shouldn’t mix with the rest of the trash. Sylvania sells CFLs with reduced mercury.

Greener homes: Avoid toxins in your home since indoor air can be more toxic than air outdoors with the number of cleaning products that are used. Try cleaning products with fewer fumes, such as from “green” companies like Seventh Generation. Or, you can make your own eco-cleaners. Vinegar, for instance, can polish windows. A lemon cut in half with salt poured on top can scrub a sink.

Recycling: Don’t forget to Recycle. Glass bottles, aluminum cans, and newspapers are obvious recycling-ready items. As for questionable items, you’ll need to read the local rules to find out what’s landfill-bound or not. For example, narrow-necked plastic bottles labeled #1 or #2 are usually safe to toss in a recycling bin, while yogurt tubs are not accepted. And #7 labels both plant-based plastics that you could bury in the garden as well as less green, petroleum-based polycarbonate.
Food scraps can also be recycled. Composting fruit, vegetable, and yard waste makes powerful garden fertilizer. Tidy composting kits–including some with worms–can fit beneath a kitchen table without causing a stink.
In addition to nearby thrift stores such as Salvation Army, Internet operations like Craigslist, Freecycle, eBay, and SwapThing facilitate offloading other old stuff. Yahoo maps more reuse groups. What to do with dubious junk, like packing peanuts? Lookups at Lime and Earth 911 should help to recycle almost anything.

Greener transportation: For car owners: Car pool, plan routes for more efficient driving, consider fuel efficient cars over gas guzzlers, research fuel efficient cars, use your car less take public transportation, bike, or walk. Live near the places you will frequent in order to reduce driving time. Avoid ideling, it burs gas and spews emissions. Also, regular maintenance and oil changes also help, and “green” motor oil is a new product.

Green food: Buy local produce rather than imported goods. Try organic products, but if you don’t buy that, then consider growing your own produce. Especially the foods you use the most often, and are usually imported at your grocery.

For green food use you can use an interactive “Eat low carbon guide” from eatlowcarbon.org, which gives a sense of how much your meal could be warming the planet. Eat organic meat. A blooming Muslim business called Blossom Pure provide organic meat and dairy products along with other organic grocery for Muslims and anyone else. You can visit their website at www.blossompure.com. Also, when grocery shopping, take your own bags instead of using the plastic bags at the store. With regards to bottled water. Well, a tremendous amount of energy is used in transporting bottled water. Just use tap water since bottled water is likely no safer or tastier.

Green your body:

Avoid bad personal health habits like smoking, bad eating, and consumption of toxins. Taking an extra step of ensuring the things you eat and drink, and apply to your body will be a practice that your body will repay you for in your older age.

Use beauty and cosmetic products that, if not organic, are at least biodegradable and from sustainable sources. Your grand children will thank you when they grow up and are able to enjoy the various water habitat wildlife that would have been wiped out had you used those serious chemicals.

Green your mail:
You can also green your mail. If only two percent of households switched to electronic from snail mail billing, more than 180,000 trees would be saved and more than 10 million gallons of gasoline wouldn’t need to be used, according to the PayItGreen Aliance of banks. If you have documents to send, try scanning them and sending them online instead of mailing them.
Sign up for electronic billing. Most companies offer it, and you can sign up with Canada Post to get e-post.

Green your reading:
How about green reading? Services built to make newspapers or magazines easier to read online, saving trees in the process, include Zinio, Zimbio, NewspaperDirect, and qMags–not to mention the Amazon Kindle. Bookworms can trade books with each other via BookMooch, Novel Action, Bookswap, and Swaptree. Sales of used books through Better World Books help to fund literacy programs. You can also go to your local library and read the newspaper there instead of getting a subscription yourself.

Just Plain Greening: Actually green some place by planting something. This time of the year is perfect for this kind of greening practice. You can join an organization that commits to planting trees and srubs to maintain the integrity of Green Spaces in your city, as well as rehabilitation of stream banks, etc. If you aren’t of the outdoors type of person you can have someone plant a tree for you in the rain forest for under CND$6. Through MyBabyTree.org You will then get the coordinates for where your tree was planted, possibly some photos, and when it’s big enough you could probably see it on Google Earth.

Here is my baby tree.

For life-greening guides that delve into more detail than this story, check out those from the Green Guide, Treehugger, NRDC, and GreenYour.com.