[Dilangos]

Since getting all 'environmental' over on the sports drinks thread, I thought I'd start a thread dedicated to sharing ideas on how to limit your global footprint.

What ideas have you had? What are you doing now? How hard has it been? What have you got out of it?

I'll start.

I had this idea but haven't had the discipline to put it into action yet: to live for a year purchasing only products that are wrapped in paper, cardboard or glass. This would pretty quickly take my family back to our grandparents' era where staples such as flour and tea were bought in paper, or even decanted into reusable cloth bags. Nearly all value-added wheat based products were made in the home: bread, cakes, etc. I think it would be an interesting experiment to measure how much of an overall waste reduction this would lead to. It would certainly lead to a massive saving in money.

The second idea is a little more radical. I'm a cycle commuter. As carbon trading takes off, there's no reason why motorists couldn't purchase carbon credits from passing cyclists using an e-tag system similar to how tollways charge users. Imagine how many people would leave their cars at home if they realised that they could make money just by zooming passed hundreds of stationary cars sitting in traffic jams.

What ideas have you had or put into practice? Perhaps something as simple as stopping using tumble dryers in favour of sun and wind power to dry washing. I believe in some parts of the US, hanging washing outside is illegal, forcing people to use power-hungry dryers.

b