Column by Emily Foerster

At the beginning of every new school year, declarations abound. Avowals fly from our eager mouths asserting our noble intentions to eat healthier, exercise, stay organized, finish assignments on time or finish assignments at all. Then, eight weeks later, after two months of diligent procrastination, we face a savage demon: midterms.

Ready or not, that demon is upon us, reminding us of all we have yet to accomplish. The time is right for UK students, faculty and staff to take a good long look within, to assess their “greenness” and to determine whether or not they are doing everything in their power to advance sustainability in their personal lives. At the beginning of the semester, I listed a few simple lifestyle changes we can all make that offer big boosts toward greener living:  take quicker showers; wash dishes with less water; turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth; turn lights off when in other rooms; ride a bike; ride the bus; and turn down your water heater.

I’ll admit that, although I preach greener living, I’m not always a perfect example. My 21st -century addiction to modern conveniences periodically gets the better of me, and I sometimes cut corners where I definitely shouldn’t. But going green is a process, and sometimes it helps to be reminded that even the smallest of efforts can yield big results. Here are a couple more easy green behaviors that you can start practicing today:

– Buy food at the farmer’s market.

I cannot stress this enough.  Did you know that roughly one-third of the oil we consume is used to transport food? That seems so silly when we have plenty of fresh produce, meat and dairy available every week from farms in our own state. It’s true that shopping at the farmer’s market requires a little prior planning, and it requires that we be willing to eat only what is currently in season, but so what? If Kentucky can’t efficiently produce bananas, Kentuckians don’t need to eat bananas. We must be willing to make concessions in order to alleviate our energy and environmental crises.

– Exchange regular incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs.

The Web site for Energy Star (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “green” stamp-of-approval for appliances and other energy-using products) reports that if every American household exchanged a single incandescent bulb for a compact fluorescent bulb, “it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emission of more than 800,000 cars.” And all it takes is a little twist of the wrist.

A common complaint about greener bulbs is that they emit light that is literally green. Fortunately, this technology has evolved so that the light looks perfectly normal.

While compact fluorescents may seem expensive, they last a very long time, and the amount of money one saves on energy by switching to efficient bulbs (roughly 75 percent) quickly offsets the extra cost. If you don’t have the funds to replace all your bulbs at once, change them individually. Whenever an old one burns out, replace it with a compact fluorescent. In small increments, you’ll hardly notice the expense.

– Use cloth bags when you go shopping.

We’ve heard the rhetoric before: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”  While recycling is a wonderful thing, reducing and reusing have a bigger impact on sustainability.  If you reuse a cloth bag every time you buy groceries, you have not increased demand for plastic or paper bags, thus helping to reduce the number of bags created in the future.  If you still have old paper or plastic bags, you can also reuse those until they break or otherwise cease to be useful.

These behaviors are very easy to enact. So as you muddle through midterms, be sure to spend a little time every day asking yourself, “What am I doing for sustainability today?”  In 20 years, your kids will thank you.