Greening your garage can help you green the rest of your lifestyle. Your garage is the place in your home where environmentally questionable practices like over consumption, chemical use and driving pile up in a way that is painfully visible. Cleaning up the garage can lead to cleaning up your other lifestyle habits, too! Here's how to go about it.
1. Save what you need. If you already own something, it's more environmentally friendly to use it than to buy a new one. Save things that you might have to buy again if you got rid of them. Also, run them into the ground before you discard them for newer, shinier models.
2. Reuse or recycle what you don't need. Rather than tossing your garage discards into the trash, hold a garage sale or donate them to the Salvation Army. When you come across things that are too run-down to be reused, recycle whatever parts of them you can. Think of your garage as a recycling bin, not a junk-pile!
3. Eliminate dangerous chemicals from your garden supply section. If you can possibly avoid using toxin-laden pesticides, do so. They don't affect just your garden: rainwater carries them into the gutters, down the storm drains and all over the rest of the ecosystem you call home. There, they pollute soil and water and harm other creatures. If you must use pesticides, carefully research which ones are the least harmful.
4. Put the bikes near the front. Don’t be too hasty in swapping your old minivan for the latest flashy hybrid lest you waste the resources used to build the minivan. Wait until the van totally breaks down, and in the meantime, do more walking and biking. This shrinks your carbon footprint as little else can. It's also great boost for you in terms of physical fitness!
5. Don't forget about that toolbox. Keeping cars, faucets and appliances in good repair makes them more resource efficient. Fixing a broken item and extending its life rather than replacing it makes your lifestyle more resource efficient. A little basic maintenance makes a big difference in the life of a product, so keep your toolbox handy.
6. Keep it clean! Next time you're tempted to buy something you don't really you need, visualize your garage. Is the new item likely to end up in a box, never to be used again? Or does a box in your garage already contain a similar item that you can use? If either of these is the case, don't buy the item! You'll keep your garage and your planet clean and functional.
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