Green Around The World

The word green has become such a trend, it’s the cool thing to do to help the environment, reduce, reuse, recycle and all of that jazz. But what is actually happening to make changes towards a “greener” earth.  This varies in different parts of the world and countries all have their own ideas about it. The world could benefit a lot from sharing ideas on how we can live in a way that is more beneficial for the environment. 

Australia has had to find ways to use the resources they have in a smart way.  The Australian land is very hostile and needs to be approached on its own terms.  The defining characteristic of their land is that it is very dry.  Australia is almost constantly going in and out of stages of a drought.  Their techniques to deal with this a lack of water can be implemented to our water using habits in America.  For example, their toilets have two flushing options: a half flush or a whole flush.  The half flush can be used when there is not much to flush, and it uses half of the amount of water of a normal flush.  This makes a big difference because the average amount of water used from toilets in Australia is only 12% of daily water usage compared to America’s 27%.  

  

Australians also work to save energy in more drastic ways that could be implemented at times in some parts of the United States.  For one, they do not use central heating or air conditioning.  You may think that Australia does not need heat, but in the winter (yes, there is winter there) it gets down to 40 degrees.  This actually feels really cold when you can’t escape it because it is the same temperature inside as it is outside.  The Aussies just bundle up indoors and deal with it.  They get smart about dealing with the cold by heating only a room or two that they are in most often, and they board up doors and close the curtains to keep out drafts.  While a winter in Minnesota without central heat just might kill everyone, this could work in other parts of the country where it doesn’t get as cold. 

You would also think that AC would be necessary in a country that gets to temps in the 100s in the summer, but they are smart about that as well.  They build houses to keep the heat out by using bricks and other methods and it actually stays quite refreshingly cool inside.  

The United States could implement some of Australia’s ideas to be more environmentally friendly, but Australia could also learn from the many innovative things that America is doing to make the world a greener place.  For example, right here in Minnesota, the most environmentally friendly stadium was just built.    The new twins stadium captures rain water and purifies it so it can be used for field irrigation and stadium wash-down.  The lights around the stadium are low energy as well and are going to end up saving Minneapolis a lot of money.  There are many large stadiums in Australia that would benefit greatly from this sort of technology.  The world can work together and share ideas to improve the state of the environment.