Choosing how to incorporate green technology into your life can be a complicated decision. Use the suggestions below to consider government efforts at growing green that can better inform your own decision-making process.
You can research government examples of going green in incremental steps. For instance, consider EPA rules regarding fuel efficiency standards designed to be reached for cars by 2025. The steps include gradually achieving goals such as reaching 34.5 miles per gallon before achieving the ultimate 2025 goal of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. In your home, you can use this approach to reduce your energy usage and costs for water, electricity and gas by setting up a multi-year set of goals with incremental benchmark dates.
Consider whether implementing a particular green technology is really a change you’re willing to make. For instance, the EPA has been slow to regulate emissions of both the shipping and air industries in spite of those industries’ significant contribution to environmental pollution because of the possible impact on US competitiveness and international law.
You should be aware that your commitment to green technologies is likely to have limits, such as in the case of having a motorized boat for your lifestyle, in spite of its contribution to pollution from unregulated engine exhaust and dumping waste in water.
Avoid choosing green technology that works less well with your lifestyle than other kinds of technology. For instance, you can research the number of police departments that use energy efficient vehicles, and you’ll find that only recently have police forces been adding vehicles using green technology to their fleets, retaining traditionally fueled vehicles that up until now have better met their needs.
In your life, you may find yourself replacing a broken washing machine with a traditional, less-green washing machine because the machines that use less water tend to pick up a smell which makes them less attractive to you.
Green technology often creates new problems that require adjustments to be made. For instance, the City of San Francisco adopted low-flow toilets that ultimately ended up costing them millions of dollars and required the use of a non-green solution, bleach, because of the smell that came from waste in pipes that had too little water pressure to push waste through. In your own life, you might have chosen to compost only to find that the bugs and other pests attracted to your compost required non-green treatments around your home such as the use of pesticides.
Sometimes green technology is not the short-term priority. You need look no further than the fracking controversy to realize that governments frequently choose short-term priorities over long-term priorities.
In your own life, you may want to have a particular green technology, but more important financial concerns such as needed medical care require that you make a non-green decision in how to spend your money.
Your household green technology policy can benefit from governmental examples. Use the suggestions above to apply the lessons of governments and green technology to your own green technology choices.