Diet Coke Nutrition Facts I Want to Make My Family Greener But Money is Tight - What Can I Do.
For those of us with limited budgets, greening our families can seem overwhelming. Isn't going green expensive? Who can afford to live an eco-friendly lifestyle these days? It turns out that there are many ways to go greener that don't add costs. In fact, in many cases you can save money while helping the planet. Below are five changes that will help your family's finances now while you support the future health of our planet.
1. Remove everyday toxic items from your home. You can make a positive impact in your home simply by removing products you may not think of as toxic - conventional cleaning supplies, drain cleaners, air fresheners, and pesticides. Taking these items out of your home will improve your indoor air quality and make your home healthier and greener immediately. Just think, no more searching for places to store items away from your children and pets, no more smelly fumes, and no more reading warning statements a mile long. Keeping them out of your home also means lower totals at the checkout.
Be sure to protect others by disposing of these items safely; check with your local city government for hazardous waste collection procedures.
Recipes for inexpensive and safe replacements to all these items can be found online - just search for non-toxic recipes and pick from one of the many options.
2. Avoid the dirty dozen. With the cost of groceries going higher and higher, most families are looking for ways to save at the supermarket. Many believe that buying organically grown food is no longer an option for their budget. To help you get the biggest bang for your buck at the grocery store, check out the Dirty Dozen/Cleanest 12 list produced by the Environmental Working Group. They've analyzed the data on pesticide levels and created a list of foods with the highest and lowest levels of pesticides so you can easily target your shopping dollars to reduce your family's exposure to pesticides. Their site even has a handy wallet guide that you can print it out and take it with you.
3. Drop the pop. Whether you call it pop, soda, or coke, stopping the purchase of soft drinks is good for your family's budget, your family's health, and the environment. The Bay Area Nutrition and Physical Activity Collaborative calculated that Americans spend $56 billion annually on non-diet sodas - think of what the total dollar figure would be if diet sodas were included!
Soda is the #1 source of sugar in American's diets, according to research conducted by Tufts University. The environmental cost of shipping ingredients (especially sugar, which is often imported) and the resulting soda is huge, as is the cost of creating the cans and bottle. Since many of the cans and bottles are not recycled, they go directly into landfills. In 1999, the last year for which statistics were available, 44 billion soft drink cans and bottles were landfilled. Yes, that is billion with a 'B.'
If this is a tough switch for your family, visit for helpful resources. Next time you are in the grocery store, skip over the soda aisle and green your family in multiple ways!
4. Unplug your electronics when not in use. It seems logical to think that when a computer or television is turned off that it does not use any electricity. However, many electronic items continue to draw a little electricity, sometimes called the phantom draw. While the electricity draw is typically small per item, they add up quickly over devices and time. A study released in 2000 by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that 10% of residential electrical consumption in America was due to these phantom draws. That is a lot of money for nothing!
So when you are done using your computer or television, don't just turn it off. Unplug it or, if you are using a power strip, turn off the power strip. This will both save money and the planet since no energy will be wasted.
5. Cut back a little. One of the keys to implementing change successfully is to do so a little at a time. Breaking a larger project into bite-sized pieces simply makes it easier to swallow. Try cutting back, just a little. Whether it is turning the heater one degree cooler, the AC one degree warmer, or walking away from one item in the store, every little bit you cut helps to reduce your spending and your carbon emissions.
Diet Coke Nutrition Facts.