What about the environment? You hear about the greenhouse effect and how we’re polluting our world. Making it toxic. Here’s how you can make a difference every day.

What about the gasoline in your car? If you consumed less gas everyday, would it make a difference? Look at the gas mileage when you’re looking at new cars. Turn your lights, TV, radio, off when you’re not in the room to use them. Consider the energy requirements when you buy big appliances like your refrigerator, hot water heater, or wash machine.

Buy products in bulk so that there will be less packaging to throw away later. If you love the smaller sizes and find they work in your house better, consider buying one small container and refilling it with a bulk sized product. I do this with dish detergent and hand soap in my house. Not only does it cut down on my trash it saves money!

You don’t have to stop at your home. Use energy saving tips at work. Cut off your office lights when you’re not in your office; turn out the lights when you leave at night. Turn your computer off when you’re done for the day. Not only will that save energy, but it will reduce any security risks of somebody trying to hack your computer.

You don’t have to stop at your job. Get involved with organizations that target corporate pollution. The magazine, Pollution Engineering, reports in January 2005 that the EPA will be focused on reducing corporate pollution by one billion pounds. They have increased their inspections by 11% and their investigations by 32%. This doesn’t come for free; it will cost corporations $4.8 billions dollars to clean up. Think about this. If they know that they can target a billion pounds of pollution, imagine how much more corporations could probably eliminate if we had stricter regulations? If you believe in this, you need to support the EPA. Let your lawmakers know that you believe strongly in this and support it.

Don’t give it to counter arguments that it will make everything more expensive for you. It may be true that companies will try to recoup their money spent on making cleaner products by increasing the prices of their products. However, the converse of that argument isn’t valid. Just because it’s cheaper to make a product with more pollution doesn’t mean that it’s okay.

A common tactic that American companies will do is taking their facilities off-shore. Why? It’s not just for them to save money by paying foreigners a fraction of what they’d have to pay Americans. It’s also because they don’t have to shell out as much money making their facilities pollution production within American regulated standards. China, Mexico, and India all have lower standards as far as corporate pollution.

Hey, here’s something to think about. We all live in a fishbowl. What ever happens over on the other side of the world will eventually make its way to our side. If you don’t like this, then put pressure on your lawmakers to make it less appealing for American companies to sneak over to other countries to dump their pollution.