Seven Steps To Saving the World
By: Brody Smith
Tags: Consumerism, World, Pollution, Environment, Lifestyle

Step 4: Grow Your Own

If you have space, plant some seeds and let them grow. This is the best thing you can do for the environment. Grow trees.

If you are an investor or have some spare cash you want to land bank, look for cheap land or foreclosures and let them turn into forests. Plant up as many trees as you can. Tree’s are all we need to get out of this mess.

Plant up trees and let them grow and grow. Obviously away from power lines and buildings, don’t break any by-laws or property codes. But all in all we can all grow a few more trees.

The trees you grow may last decades and produce huge timber, that might be used to build a house or just keep on growing and provide clean air. If you really want to change the world, start counting your trees not the amount of protests you attend. Plant the trees, let them grow and stop making such a noise, because you are doing the biggest change — you make clean air.

Don’t get smug about it or show off, just plant them and let the trend continue. People like to talk about their big purchase, ask if they want to go ride your ATV through your forest later and see how they like that. It kinda dwarfs their holiday or sports car because you own a piece of nature and it’s living, breathing and growing. It’s a real asset.

If you want to make money from your investment then just rotate your trees so every year plant more and harvest the ones getting big, buy a saw mill and produce boards and lumber. Make furniture or sell the boards, that’s up to you. You are doing your bit and you are sustainable, that’s what counts.

Step 5: Recycle and Sell Your Scrap

Now you buy the best meats and products, and you have a forest started, you really have done a huge amount to change the world. If everyone done that, it would be a totally different story and all you need to do now is ensure you recycle.

Recycling is the default for when you want to trash something, old electronics — got gold in them. Glass, can be made into something new. Plastics, it’s very easy to recycle either back to oil or into another product (that will probably break in the first month but eh at least it’s not totally new)

So first separate your waste into three bins, put the glass in one. Plastics in another and food waste into a third. The stuff that does not fit into these such as electronics, batteries or other toxic waste can also in most recycled or disposed of in a safe manner. If your local area does not have waste collection for recyclables then you must go to the recycling center in your area and take advantage of their service, often you can get soil for your trees or garden patch here also so it’s worth making the trip.

If you cannot recycle in your area, start up a collection service and bail up the produce you can then sell it online to a larger recycler and make a tidy profit in many cases for just getting yourself together.

A bale of waste paper is actually valuable to some people in the business, practically all trash can be turned into profit if you know the process. So start by sorting it and baling it into half tonne or quarter tonne lots, so that it can be sent to the buyer. To sell look on Alibaba or on a search engine for your local area to find a purchaser of the scraps you have, also check your local government / town council as they may also purchase. So phone around and see what people say.

Waste paper sells for $60 to $200 on the tonne depending on grade and buyer.

Scrap metal sells for $100 to $500 a tonne

Scrap computer memory (RAM) is around $3000 to $4000 a tonne.

Stop throwing money away and start living sustainably, you can always start a depot and allow profit sharing if you think you can find enough people.

I know several people doing car scrap and paper for the past decade and they drive some very nice vehicles living on the scraps left on the ground. Don’t think this is chump change, most people throw away hundreds of dollars every month.

Step 6: Be Conscious of Travel

Well all need to get places, but sometimes we can be really wasteful in how we do it. Zig-zagging around and going back and forward is expensive on our time, vehicles and environment.

Try to group things into a route so that you can make a round trip and get several things done with one trip instead of making many small trips. Your vehicle will thank you as short trips are always not recommended in that boring owners manual you never read.

If you are flying then go to several locations during your trip, don’t make a return unless you have to. Try to bulk together you vacation with some business if you can, your family may end up seeing another side of the world they didn’t plan on and pretty much everywhere has hotels and fun stuff to do as a tourist. So maximize the opportunity.

For example if you need to fly to Europe on business, take the whole family with you. Drop them down somewhere nice, rent a car and do your business, when you return — keep the car for a bit and drive to some nice places, maybe even do a few meetings on the road whilst leaving the gang at a day attraction.

This means vacation and business has been done in one move! Instead of trying to go it alone, getting lonely on the road and then saving up for a family vacation later in the year — whilst having to balance taking time off work. Just accept that both exist and if you are going on a plane, taking a few more people isn’t going to hurt.

Obviously this is time and occupation permitting as I understand you may not want to take your family into an industrial estate but there are always tourist locations near-by as literally no country on earth is 100% full of dullards who don’t have fun.

So when you land make the first few days getting them settled, then head off for your conference or meetings and when you re-unite spend the rest of the trip enjoying the country. Vacation and business can work very well, plus you save a bundle so you might even be able to do it much more than once a year.

Your family will thank you for being able to get out there and see something new, and you will build a bigger bond as you wont be away ‘on the road’ so much — they were there for the journey also. That’s huge! You go through the trials and tribulations, build life experience and of course save a bundle as it’s one return flight and you are booking in bulk so all prices come down somewhat. Your co2 emissions are less because you made less flights but your satisfaction is just the same, if not more because you don’t have to go on so many damn flights to satisfy everyone.

This step here is really the crux of being environmentally friendly it’s like carpooling for the whole family, we all want a vacation and we all need to do business so make sure you optimize the trip.

Step 7: Carpool, Ride-share or Taxi on your Commute

It’s obvious that many people will be going into the city center and all need to get there around the same time in the morning so here you have a few options

Firstly you can start a car pool at work and share the journey with people from your job (and take use of the car pool lane if you have one!)

Secondly you can register with a ride-sharing app and just go with whoever is using the service like Carma Carpooling

Lastly you can become a Uber or Lyft driver for those commutes, sometimes you are not going to bag a costumer sure — but by being open for business, and obviously only taking fares that are going into the direction you are going to end up making a bit of profit on the commute, which can offset your travel expenses and leave you with some spare cash at the end of the week.