Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Living Green with Father Time

Time for a watch or clock upgrade?

These days most of us use our cell phones for just about everything, including a clock. Yet, most of our watches haven’t fallen to the wayside yet. Bearing in mind that living green is about being conscious of resource use through reducing what you use, reusing the items you already have, donating or sharing the items you no longer need, and properly disposing of the items that cannot be recycled, upcycled or composted. These simple principles apply to any measures within your lifestyle. Let’s take a quick look at the disappearing age of watches.

Here are a few tips for living green with father time and mother earth.
  1. If it’s broke, fix it! These days it is often cheaper to buy new, instead of fix the old. With watches this is far from true. A typical watch battery costs less than $10 USD, while new watches cost anywhere from $10 USD to thousands of dollars. Living green means switching from a disposable viewpoint to a re-usable viewpoint. Not to mention it provides jobs for tradesmen and women.
  2. Battery vs. Electricity. This is an unsolved debate because there are too many possible factors. There is great disagreement whether a battery-powered clock is more energy efficient and eco-friendly than device plugged into the wall like a phone or alarm clock. Obviously reduction is important. Having a plethora of clocks may not be necessary. The associated waste with batteries can be high dependent on the type of battery. While the toxic chemicals within a cell phone or electronic device are known to be highly hazardous. Yet with multiple uses for phones this debate is in the hands of the consumer.
  3. Upcycle it! You can buy a “Clock Kit” and make your own clock out of plates, old records, or other unused things around the house. You just carve a hole out of the middle and insert the clock kit and viola! Anything becomes a clock. A nice way to reduce resources and have a fun project to do with family and friends.
What is happening in the trend-setting clock industry? Well drain plugs that also function as clocks, perhaps not appealing to the living green types and minimalists alike. There are also online clocks that give you the time, growing global population, growing disease counts, and other serious statistics. A Food Clock that counts the impact of animals consumed, clocks powered by human hands, the sun, the wind, clocks made out of …paper, clocks on wheels, the list goes on.

This is just one example of exploring your options for re-thinking how you use items around the house. Keeping in mind what is necessary, how the item will be used, how you can utilize the least amount of resources possible, and how to keep the chemical equation to a minimum can help streamline your eco-choices.

There is still time to innovate and think smart about how we want to develop through simple steps.

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