AN ECO-FRIENDLY LIFESTYLE
What does that mean? From my point of view it means thinking about the climate and trying to have as small a carbon footprint as I can as I go about my daily life. How do I do this?
It all starts with where I live. My wife is an educator and we live barely 2 miles from the school where she teaches, that way she can cycle, or even walk, to work. In addition to not having a carbon heavy commute through LA traffic, it means she can get to and from her class in 15 minutes - a real luxury in LA, where so many people spend hours in their car every day staring at the car in front of them. Because of this we don't need a second car, which also saves us a ton of money.
Another reason why we like the neighborhood that we live in is that there are a lot of good restaurants and local activities for my daughter. She has dance lessons at a studio which is barely 10 minutes walk from our house. We also have guitar lessons locally and often walk the 15 minutes to the class and back. It’s good exercise and it feels liberating not to have to use our car every time we go out to do something. It’s also good to patronize local businesses, as that is so much better for the community.
The metro in Los Angeles still doesn't cover many areas, so it’s not possible to use it to get to all the places that I need to go, but one thing I do is combine car and train on as many journeys as I can. For example the tour company that I own, The Real Los Angeles Tours, has a tour that starts in Hollywood and finishes in Santa Monica, so I drive to downtown and park my car there. That way I can take the Red Line to Hollywood to begin the tour and then I take the Expo line back to downtown from Santa Monica after finishing the tour. It’s so much faster and easier than trying to drive it anyway - and sometime you get a free concert (see video below).
In general we turn off devices and lights whenever we’re not using them at home and we only run the air conditioning or heating when we have to (we have used the heating a couple of times this month ;-), therefore reducing our electricity usage and bill. I contracted last year with a power company to get 100% of our electricity from renewable sources, but it’s great that our bill is only around $25 a month. Our gas bill is about $15.
I’m writing about this just to give people ideas on the kinds of things they can do to bring down their carbon footprint. Clearly there are things that I’ve mentioned here that aren't going to suit some people, or maybe are simply impossible for them to do. Many people are just not able to move their residence to near where they work for example. Nevertheless it’s all about starting a conversation, or thought process, about what we can do - because we can ALL do SOMETHING. Amazingly there’s nothing that I’ve mentioned here that has cost me extra money or otherwise created significant difficulties for me to achieve, on the contrary they all save me money and contribute to a happier and healthier lifestyle for me and my family,
By Damien Blackshaw
Damien is the owner of The Real Los Angeles Tours and is on twitter: @damienblackshaw
