A few years back my mom became LEED AP certified in building design and construction. What this is is leadership in energy and environmental design. she is an interior designer so she bring eco friendly materials and designs into the houses and buildings that she works with. After she told me about this i wondered why she spent all the time to do this and how it helps us as a society. So i decided to research why we should go green. There is tons and tons of information about being good to the environment, so ive narrowed it down to four major reasons and what we can do to help.

The first reason why we should go green as a community is our resources are slimming. We put increasing dependency on things like coal, oil, and trees for resources. Unfortunately, these resources are not endless! The more we use the less there is for everyone and the higher price it may cost. Not to mention all the deforestation going on from the need of resources. We do not realize that by doing this we are not only killing thousands of habitats but also slimming our resources. A way to decrease the need of extracting these resources is by conserving or recycling. By recycling bottles, cans, and paper we can make these products reusable for less of a price of taking from a new resource.

colorful recycling containers for trash by epSos.de available on Flickr

Secondly, global warming has become a factor in our environment. The average U.S. household generates 30.9 tons of carbon dioxide per year! Individual: 11.9
This number is calculated through energy used from things such as cars, heat, electricity, etc. Don't get me wrong, carbon dioxide is good for the planet as plants take it in and turn it into oxygen. But too much of it poses a problem. All that CO2 that we create is too much that our planet needs so it just gets stuck in our atmosphere and collects heat from the sun which in turn heats up the earth. Ways to avoid generating so much CO2 is by being more energy efficient (going green). Ways to do this is to use your car less, use less oil, buy green products. Basically, use alternative and renewable energy. There are also a million other ways which anyone can look up online.


global warming icon by Luis Prado of the Noun Project made available on creative common

The third reason why we should go green is because we save money. Using up all the resources and energy makes prices go up because we are so limited to what we have. Ever noticed that energy saving lightbulbs saves you money as well? Thats because energy=money
A good reason why LED tvs sell better than plasma, because it uses less energy which saves you money. It is also good for the economy. we saved $500 billion from this . creates jobs as well. Other ways to save energy and money is to use fluorescent lightbulbs, using solar heat to heat your house, hang dry clothes, etc. Like i said before, there are millions of ways to go green you just have to put an effort in!

Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb by Razor512 made available on Flickr

The last major reason to go green is because big food manufacturers take up a lot of our resources. Farms are often very large, highly specialized, and run like factories with large inputs of fossil fuels, pesticides and other chemicals, and synthetic fertilizers derived from oil. Clearly this is not good for the environment whatsoever. We are killing fish from the fertilizer runoff and polluting the air and groundwater with waste. If more people purchased organic and natural foods then we would have less damage being done on our environment. Naturally grown food does not kill animals or pollute the air. As an advantage it is also healthier for the human body. The best way that we can do this is by purchasing more organic and natural foods which will make those businesses grow and the large bad food manufacturers decrease.

bio brazil fair 2014 by CI Orgânicos /OrganicsNet made available on Flickr

On the top half of this slide I have some general statistics on energy used for transportation in the U.S. It's showing that it takes none of our nations energy supply to ride a bike. Down below is just some information on recycling an aluminum can.

Now after all this, instead of me telling you why go green? Instead think to yourself, why not?