We all know how important renewable energy is as we try to integrate it into our lives more and more. People are using the sun, wind and even rain to run their homes. You might have noticed, passing a row of houses, that many now have solar panels attached to their roofs.

Many people who use solar panels to run their home are even making money from the energy they produce. Most solar panels can produce more than enough electricity to power the home and many households are left with energy they can sell back to the electricity board. This means solar panels pay for themselves after a time.

If you are looking to get solar panels for your house, one option is to take solar courses. If you already work in a trade such as a plumber or an electrician, there are a number of different courses you can take to help you understand solar panels more.

You can learn about different types of solar panels that are used in the industry For instance, if your trade is plumbing, you can learn about vented and un-vented solar panels and how they attach to a roof safely. Ploughcroft Solar offers a variety of different courses in various places around the country. It’s only a matter of finding the right one to suit you.

You can even train with a qualified installer on the job. That means you get first-hand experience of the job and how to install everything properly. This live demonstration would surely be one of the best ways to learn.

With the ever increasing popularity of solar energy it may be time to get on board. Or, if you know someone who works in a trade, then this may be a great career expanding option for them. Maybe they’ll even help install your system!

By preparing now for the renewable energy switch, you’ll be one step ahead of the game.

This is a guest article by Debbie Dragon. What’s up, Debbie?

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Sometimes the recommendations for living a greener lifestyle cost quite a bit of money to implement.  Sure, you can power your home with windmills and a solar panel roof – but the cost of implementing such a lifestyle change puts it out of reach for the typical household.  There are many ways living green can save money, though, and add more of it to your budget.

To see exactly how much the following green-living tips can save you, enter your numbers in a budget calculator – then use your savings to reduce your debt or take a vacation!

Make Your Own Meals:  Save Thousands Annually (Potentially)

The United States Consumer Expenditure reports show that an average family spends about $4,000 a year on restaurants and take out meals.  Not only can you reduce your food budget by thousands by preparing your meals at home, but you’ll start paying more attention to the quality of ingredients you buy, and perhaps plant a fruit or vegetable garden to further your savings and health.  Preparing your own meals is healthier than eating in restaurants, and will cost significantly less.

Try Carpooling: Save $650 to $1400 Annually

Cars aren’t that great for the environment, and with the high costs of filling up, they’re also not so great on our budgets!  If you’re commuting 30 miles a day, and your car averages 23 miles per gallon – you’re looking at about 6.5 gallons of gas a week.  At $3.95 a gallon, you’re spending $25.76 a week to get yourself to and from work.  If you look at the cost of commuting 52 weeks a year, you’re in the $1,300 range for gasoline—and this doesn’t count any other driving you may do, or any other car ownership expenses.

You can reduce the effects of driving on the environment and save money by carpooling.  Share a car and a gas bill for commuting with a friend and you’ll save about $650 a year.  Find a couple more friends, and increase the savings in each of your budgets and reduce the number of cars on the roads day after day.

Recycle Your Electronics: Save a Few Hundred Dollars

What do you do with cell phones and charges you aren’t using anymore? How about laptops and other gadgets once they’ve worn out?  If you’re like most people, you toss them in a drawer out of sight or toss them in the trash.  Instead, recycle your old electronics and get cash.  Try Gazelle.com, or YouRenew.com for details about trading in phones and electronics and how much they’ll earn you.  Throwing electronics in the trash is potentially toxic and not a good move for the environment – so look at methods for recycling them before tossing.

Stop Buying Bottled Water: Save Over $240 Annually

Instead of buying bottled water at $4 or more a case, purchase a water filter that lets you purify tap water.  Not only will you reduce the amount of plastic containers you waste each week, but the savings can really add up.  If you tend to spend $5 a week or more on bottled water, you’re looking at over $260 annually.  Purchase a $20 water filter for your faucet, and keep refilling your glass.  The filters are much less expensive to replace than what you spend on bottled water; and you won’t have all of those plastic bottles to fill up the landfills.

Hang Your Clothes to Dry: Save $85+ Annually

The clothes dryer is one of the biggest consumers of home electricity, to the tune of about $85 a year, according to the California Energy Commission.  Simply hanging your clothes on a dryer rack or outside on a line can save electricity—good for both the environment and your budget.  Further savings are found by air drying clothes because it helps your clothing last longer.  When clothes are tossed in the dryer after each wash, they tend to wear out much quicker than when they’re air dried.  With the average family spending $900 on clothing annually, you could potentially save another few hundred dollars a year by air drying clothes instead of tossing them in the dryer.

Debbie Dragon is a finance writer providing articles for Vertex42.com, which offers a large selection of free spreadsheet templates and financial calculators.

This is a guest post from Alban at Home Loan Finder.

The economy and environment are at the forefront of our minds as governments the world over look for ways to improve the health of both, and as individuals, we try to make the financial and environmental aspects of our lives more comfortable. There are plenty of simple ways you can save money and the environment at the same time around your home, from making your own cleaning products to avoiding aerosol cans. However, if you want to make a real, measurable difference, you need to look beyond the obvious frugal tactics, and consider these 10 financially and environmentally life changing ideas.

1 – Eat less meat

Most nutritionists will tell you that cutting down on eating meat is better for your health, and the spend at the butcher would easily be the biggest portion of most family budgets each week. Therefore, with so many benefits already, the fact that eating less meat is also good for the environment is a bonus.

Research has shown that if we all ate less meat, we could reduce the cost of fighting climate change by $20 trillion. This research takes into account the consumption of beef and pork, and if land was not needed to farm these animals, vegetation would be able to thrive in these areas. Even though additional farmland would be needed to grow the alternatives to meat, less space would be required than is used to farm meat producing animals.

As well as the extra vegetation which would be allowed to grow, millions of tonnes of methane would be saved thanks to reduced emissions from farms. This would negate the need for expensive carbon saving technologies such as clean coal power plants. The methane is also released from the animals themselves, where cows in particular release methane when flatulent, and as their manure decays.

You wouldn’t need to give up eating meat all together, and instead need to look at how meat can accompany other foods, rather than be the star of every meal. If the global population were to eat a low meat diet of 70 grams of beef and 325 grams of chicken and eggs per week , 15 million square metres of farmland could be used for more vegetation to absorb more carbon dioxide. The farmland could also be used to grow bio energy crops which could replace fossil fuels.

2 – Downsize your home

It is easy to think that you need a big house with a games room, three bathrooms, a separate study, guest room and formal dining room. However, if you were to downsize your home to accommodate your family in a bedroom each and one or two living areas you will be able to not only save money on mortgage repayments, heating and cooling costs but you’ll also find more time to spend together as a family for a richer lifestyle outside of your bank account too.

Plus, even if you do remember to turn the lights off when you leave the room, turn the air conditioner up in summer and down in winter and turn off your standby appliances, when your home and living areas are smaller and more compact, you are using less power in less space, and producing fewer emissions.

3 – Look in your own backyard

Your own backyard presents numerous opportunities to be frugal, for example, growing your own vegetables and collecting rainwater for use in the garden and in your home. However, as you’re saving money in your backyard, you can also be landscaping in an environmentally sensitive way to reduce your carbon footprint.

To design a backyard which is affordable to maintain, and also beneficial to the environment around it:

• Design your yard so it requires little or no mowing so you can get rid of your petrol powered lawn mower.
• Plant varieties which are native to your area and so require little to no watering or fertiliser.
• Research companion planting so you can grow your garden without using harmful chemicals, and can instead use natural ecosystems to control bugs.
• Make your backyard a relaxing and inviting place to be and you and your family will be able to enjoy evenings and weekends at home together and save on costly family outings.

4 – Renovate instead of moving

In many cases, reusing materials from old properties and refurbishing existing homes can save more carbon dioxide than building a new home. For example, the construction of a new house generates approximately 50 tonnes of carbon dioxide; however, the renovation of an existing home emits just 15 tonnes.

Plus, there is often little difference between the performance of an old house, compared to a new one, and it can take decades for the operational savings of a newer more energy efficient home to offset the carbon emitted during its construction. As a result, there is almost no difference in the average emissions of a new house, compared to a refurbished house over a 50 year period.

Therefore, while it is more environmentally friendly to renovate your existing home, compared to building a new home from scratch, it can also be much more affordable. When you renovate a home there are many materials you can reuse, even if not in their original capacity, for example, structural timbers taken out to open up a living area could split and sanded to be used for floorboards, a kitchen bench top or a dining table.

5 – Build a new sustainable home

If you don’t have a home you can renovate, building your own home is often more affordable, and better value than buying established where you are paying for landscaping and all of those expensive finishing touches, which might not all be to your liking anyway.

Instead, you can plan for a sustainable and energy efficient new home, which will be affordable and environmentally friendly to build and to run. You can do this by:

• Choosing a passive design. If you can get the design of your home to work to heat and cool your home, then you can save yourself turning on the air conditioning and heating. For example, using glass in measured architectural designs can mean warmth is admitted in the cooler months, and kept out during the summer months with modern glazing methods.
• Heating and cooling ratings. When you purchase the heating and cooling system for your new home, look at its energy star rating as the more stars it has, the more energy efficient it is to run. Another environmentally and financially friendly option is to choose a ducted system, with individually controlled vents, which allows for the system to be turned off in any room which is not being used.
• Solar or gas hot water. Solar and gas hot water systems are the two most energy efficient systems to heat the water in your home, and you can make your unit even more efficient by insulating around your hot water pipes – the first two metres from the hot water system in particular. You can also choose a hot water system based on its Renewable Energy Certificate which determines the performance of the system – the more RECs the better the system.
• Lighting. In your new home, make sure you install energy saving light bulbs, and choose the lowest wattage you can for an area to save power. Also, while down lights have become very fashionable in new homes, try and avoid them when building as you will need a lot to light up a room, and a lot of heat can be lost through the holes in the ceiling where the lights are housed.
• Solar power. When you build a new home, consider running it on solar power from the beginning as panels on your roof can collect enough sunlight and convert enough electricity to power your home, and have power left over to send back into the grid to power other homes and businesses.

6 – Your free time is free

If you are looking for ways to save the environment, and some money, start by looking at home – and staying there. Spending time with your family at home or around your neighbourhood can reduce your carbon footprint, and save you money in fuel and long distance family holidays. Consider the emissions you would produce going on long road trips or towing a caravan around the state, or even towing your boat down to the shore. Instead, find affordable holiday destinations closer to home, or rent a caravan at a caravan park when you arrive, instead of using gallons of fuel to tow your own, or fish from a jetty or the beach instead of towing your boat to the ocean, and then burning fuel all day out on the water.

7 – Creative clothes shopping

Have you ever looked at every item in your closet and thought about how many times you’ve worn it? Chances are that while you have your favourites, there are dozens of pieces which you’ve only worn once or twice, and others you haven’t worn at all. So the next time you see a skirt on sale, or a pair of shoes you think would be perfect for your son, think of all the clothing, materials, time and money which have already gone to waste in your wardrobe, and consider whether this really is a smart purchase.

To reduce the impact of your clothing purchases, look for more creative ways to expand your family’s wardrobe. For example, if you get together with friends to swap hand-me-downs, it doesn’t matter if your daughter doesn’t like the top you chose for her, because it is being reused, not wasted from new.

8 – Stop using your car

This doesn’t mean you have to start walking everywhere – although you would certainly be able to save on a gym membership – but instead, simply consider whether you really need to drive to where you’re going. With a little planning and organisation, you can cut down your vehicle usage, and save on the wear and tear of your car, fuel costs, and fuel emissions.

For example, make a list before you go shopping so you don’t have to go back to the supermarket for forgotten items, wait to go to the post office until it is time to pick up the kids from school so you can make one trip.

Your family may even be able to look at getting rid of a second car with some organisation and timetable scheduling. For example, if the family left earlier in the morning, you could drop off the kids at school, and your partner at work, rather than you both taking a car each to work. You can then organise a car pool home from school for the kids.

9 – Switch your car’s fuel

Petrol is one of the most expensive and environmentally damaging fuels you can be running your car on, and if you are able to convert your car to gas or to run on bio-ethanol, the financial and environmental savings can be worth the investment. If you are already looking at buying a new car, consider the fuel it runs on as a priority, right up there next to power windows and Bluetooth, and look for vehicles which produce less harmful emissions running on alternative fuels such as ethanol, hydrogen, electricity and even diesel.

10 – Save your paperwork

Whether you run your own business, work from home, are part of a corporate office environment or are just looking at the contents of your home filing system, you are probably surrounded by paperwork. Curbing your paper use is just one way you can save money and the environment in your office and you can start by:

• Printing double sided when you print documents, or reusing old printed pages.
• Having bills sent electronically, rather than posted as paper printouts, you also often save several dollars for receiving electronic bills and bank statements.
• Making notes electronically on your computer desktop, your email manager or your smartphone to save on note paper and Post-its.
• Think twice and three times before you print a document or email.
• Organise the files on your computer for easy access to electronic documents as this will retrain you to search electronically for the information you need, so you can avoid printed copies of your work.

Alban is a personal finance writer at Home Loan Finder, a home loan comparison site.

Since I wrote on Monday why I think big, polluting jetliners are actually a good thing, I thought it might be nice to balance it out with a word on staycations.

For those of you that might not be privy, a staycation is exactly the same as a vacation except for one major aspect – you don’t go anywhere.  At least, you don’t go very far.

I’m a huge fan of staycations and take advantage of them on a regular basis. They’re a great way to get away without the hassle and expense of actually getting away, never mind the ecological benefits of a vacation close to home.

However, the staycation is a bit of an enigma.  When I tell people how much I like them, I usually get an eye roll followed by something like “Why would you use your time off to sit at home?”

This is how most people look at the staycation, so it continues to lack the respect it deserves.

Enjoying a a truly gratifying staycation is an art form.  It takes practice and, believe it or not, an adventurous spirit.  When done right, it can be a really lively and refreshing experience.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can experience a truly awesome vacation in your own backyard.

Be a tourist

When people from out of town come to explore your city, what do they do?  Where do they go?  Do those things and go to those places!

When you’re living your every day life, you probably overlook a lot of the things that people find really fascinating about your home.  A staycation is a great way to reconnect with your city or rediscover the things that drew you to where you are in the first place.

When I staycation here in Portland, I might go to the zoo, have a picnic at the rose garden, or go for a hike in our famous Forest Park. These are things I vividly remember  falling in love with when I moved here, but rarely take advantage of anymore now that I’m settled.

What is your place known for?  How can you reconnect with it?

Find a new hole-in-the-wall

Life at home can really become routine with your day to day responsibilities. Does your typical day looks something like this?

• Wake up and go to work
• Eat the same lunch you did yesterday
• Go home and eat the same dinner you do every night
• Distract yourself with the same thing you do all the time
• Go to bed, wake up, repeat

If it does, take the time during your staycation to slow down and open your eyes to the places you pass by every day, but never notice.  When you’ve got a routine down, every day becomes getting from Point A to Point B with fewer and fewer interruptions.

This kind of efficiency can be great for productivity, but you’re likely missing out on some great stuff that is right in front of your face.  Spend a day biking or even walking your commute to work or other places you commonly go.

The slower pace is like turning up the resolution of life. There are likely all kinds of shops, restaurants, and cafes that you pass by all the time and today is the day to discover them.  Take it slow and enjoy.

Is there some interesting place you pass by all the time, but you’ve never been inside?

Reconnect with friends and make new ones

Life is all about relationships and a staycation is the perfect time to nurture them.  Just like all the things at home you miss during your day at work, there are people you probably miss, too.

Take a second to give them a call and let them know you’ve got some free time coming up and would like to spend it with them.  You’ll probably have to work around their busy schedule since they’re still working, but that’s OK since you’ve got your free time during the day to take care of other business.

Also, don’t pass up an opportunity to strike up a conversation with some new faces at your new favorite hole-in-the-wall. You never know who you could meet.

Quick.  Who’s just a hop, skip, or jump away that you’ve lost connection with?

Explore a new neighborhood

A staycation is a great time to get outside the comfort of your neighborhood and see what other parts of your city has to offer.  Sure, you probably make your way around town once in while, but do you really know what’s going on in other neighborhoods?

When I was in college, I took a few courses in urban planning and one in particular required that I acquaint myself with a different neighborhood each week and report out in class.  In just ten weeks, I had learned more about my city than the previous 2 years that I’d spent hanging out on campus.

Don’t forget that learning a new neighborhood is a great opportunity to find that hole-in-the-wall cafe and meet interesting people. Better to not miss out.  Double up wherever you can.

Where’s the one part of town that you keep hearing about but never get to?

Finish a project

This is probably the most highly contested piece of advice for a staycation, but I firmly believe in it.

Critics say that to make the most of a staycation, you need to do all you can to leave your daily life behind.  That’s fine for some people, but not for me.

I take on all kinds of projects in my free time (this site is one of them) because I really like them and want to spend time doing them.  Most of them get finished, but some of the harder, time consuming ones end up by the wayside when work and responsibilities get in the way.

A staycation is the perfect time to focus your energy on that project you started but haven’t made time to finish yet.

A word of warning, though – I do not recommend you use this time to work on projects you started because you had to.  Use it on one you started because you really wanted to.  This can be extremely liberating and fulfilling.

Those projects you still have to do?  Don’t worry, you’ll still finish them because, well, you have to.

Which project have you been dying to finish? If none, which one have you been dying to start?

Perfecting the art

It should be noted that your perfect staycation might look completely different from mine.

Before you embark, take some time to think about how you can really make the most of it.  The perfect staycation is more of an art than a science.  It’s very subjective, so try not to worry about what your friends think of your plans.  That’s why they’re yours.

What does your perfect staycation look like?

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If you think hanging out at home is as cool as I do, leave a comment, or subscribe get free updates.

Connect with me on Twitter: @tylertervooren

Image of backyard playground by trbpix

This is a really, really, REALLY important lesson.  Anytime you decide to take on a challenge, you should spend some time up front identifying the tools you need in order to succeed.

I’m not going to lie to you.  If you fail to take this step upfront, you may very well still succeed.  The problem is, you’ll be so exhausted and annoyed by the time you reach it, you may not care anymore that you made it.

Heed my warning, for I know of what I speak.

I am writing this post at 10:00 PM on Tuesday night, furiously pounding the keyboard to create something useful, insightful, and witty for you to read when you wake up in the morning.

I’ve got a big smile on my face because I love writing, but damn it, I’m grumpy.  I’m grumpy because I decided to install a new dishwasher in our house on Saturday. By install, I mean rip the old one out and then wander around town looking for a new one.  When I finally found the right one for us, it wasn’t available until Monday.

“Oh, that’s fine,” I told the salesman as I clenched my teeth.  That was a lie.  While pulling the old dishwasher out, I damaged the water line, making it impossible for me to reconnect it while I waited for the new one.  The shut off valve is old and wouldn’t close all the way so my girlfriend, Jessie, and I spent the weekend bailing water out of the kitchen with a well placed plastic tub.

I picked up the new machine Monday night only to find that the fitting was different than what I had existing.  A 10:00 PM trip to Home Depot fixed that.  What it didn’t fix, though, was the fact that all of my tools are currently at a friend’s house, 50 miles from home.  Glad I remembered that before I got started.

Refusing to be deterred, I completed this daunting task thanks to a pair of pliers, a kitchen knife, a wrench I found in my driveway, and several youthful summers spent watching reruns of MacGyver.  If I had taken a second in the beginning to compile a budget and a schedule, I can assure you I would be well over on both.

So, you see, the task is complete – a success.  But is it really?  Jessie and I are irritable because it took a long time to finish, I cut my finger pretty well, and you have to listen to me ramble on about a dishwasher because I didn’t give myself the time to write the post I really wanted to (next week, of course).

Do you have an urge to change something about your life right now?

Maybe you want to build a compost tumbler. I’m all for jumping right in and getting dirty, but don’t forget to think for at least a few seconds before smashing your thumb with a hammer about why you’re going to smash it and what you’re going to need to smash it with.

Want to save $10,000?  Sure, you can do it without much planning, but with an average 3% rate of inflation, how much is it going to be worth when you finally get there at retirement age?

We green frugalistas are always looking for another project to complete that will boost us to the next level of enlightenment. Well, we can do any damn thing we want without much thought, but doing it well and doing it happily are more difficult results to come by.

I’m no rocket doctor, but even I could have taken five minutes to get out a note card and jot down the tools I would have needed and the order of operations to follow to make this project a happy success.

No doubt about it, my dishes are now impeccably clean.  My language over the last few days was not.

Have you ever found yourself in over your head due to poor planning?  How do you make sure you’ve given yourself the right tools for the job you want to complete?  What’s your favorite swear word when everything goes wrong?

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Want to get even more out of Frugally Green? Share this post with your friends, leave a comment, or get free updates.

Connect with me on Twitter: @FrugallyGreen

Image of woodworking tools by Robert S. Donovan

One of my favorite blogs right now is Naomi Dunford’s Ittybiz.  She writes about ethical marketing for small businesses without marketing departments.  She also has a buzzed haircut and swears like a sailor.  Awesome.

Go ahead and take a second to ask yourself what the hell that has to do with Frugally Green and then I’ll continue.

OK, enough postulating. The answer, interestingly enough, is “everything.”

I’ll prove this by asking you a few questions:

• Do you enjoy saving money and improving the environment?
• Do you sometimes wish that other people enjoyed saving money and improving the environment, too?
• Have you ever had someone ask you what this “green movement” is all about?

If you answered yes to those three questions then, whether you realize it or not,  you’ve had to market your frugally green lifestyle to someone else.  If you’ve ever stumbled over your words and left them with a puzzled look then, unfortunately, you’ve marketed poorly. But that’s okay, we can fix that.  I know you never wanted to be a marketer, but as long as you have to be one, you may as well be good at it, right? That’s right.

On the other hand, if you answered no to those questions, I’m not quite sure why you’re here.  Maybe you aren’t, either.  Hmm…awkward.  Feel free to stick around anyhow.

Anyway, I know a lot of us hanging out in the anti-consumerism camp have a strong distrust of marketers.  We think they’re constantly conspiring to find new, slimy ways to convince us to buy junk we don’t need. Well, yeah, a lot of them are.  But some of them aren’t.  Some of them find a deeper meaning in connecting people with ideas and products that will truly change their lives.  That’s the kind of marketer Naomi is and I know that’s the kind of marketer you want to be.

The other day, Naomi taught me about the difference between selling features and selling benefits.  As environmentalists, I think this is one of the most important lessons we can learn about getting and keeping others interested in the movement.

Features

We care about our environment…a lot.  Sometimes we care about it more than we care about other people.  In fact, sometimes we create an adversarial relationship between our environment and other people because we’re so passionate about it.

That’s why, when people ask us why we “sort our garbage” (sometimes also called recycling), we answer with something like, “Because we’re running out of space in our landfills.”

That’s why, when someone wants to know why we ride our bike around town instead of driving, we retort with, “Because it emits less carbon dioxide into our suffocating atmosphere.”

That’s why we say, “Because it clears our mind of the consumerist culture,” when someone asks us why we don’t watch TV.

These are all examples of selling the features of environmentalism.

Benefits

Technically, they’re all true, but the problem is that all these “other people” we’re trying to get our message out to don’t care about features.  They care about benefits.  Benefits are what they get out of making the changes we want them to make.  Benefits are more compelling to people than features because they can tangibly relate them to their personal life.

Ideas like landfill depletion, carbon emissions, and the consumerist culture are too psychologically far away, too disconnected from the every day goings-on of normal people.  They can’t relate to them in the way they can relate to the benefits they see when they make a change that affects these ideas.  Does that make sense?

So, the next time your neighbor asks you why you sort your trash, instead of going on about landfill depletion, kindly inform them that you call it “recycling” and doing it can save them a bunch of money each year on trash hauling that they can use for something else they care about.

When your co-worker wants to know why you would ride a bike instead of take a car to the grocery store, let him know it’s because it’s fun and the exercise you get saves you money on a gym membership.

If your sister wonders why you got rid of your TV, tell her it’s because you’ve found that it allows you to exercise your creative mind by finding new ways to spend your time and the money saved from the cable bill helps fund your new hobbies.

As backwards as it might sound, true environmentalism is about people before it’s about the environment because, well, what good is a clean, beautiful world without anyone to appreciate it?

What do you think? Is marketing an important part of our “job”? Are people more important than environment?

~~~~~

Want to get even more out of Frugally Green? Share this post with your friends, leave a comment, or get free updates.

Connect with me on Twitter: @FrugallyGreen

Used car salesman image by bonkedproductions

How would it feel if you found out that you were wasting 80% of your time doing things that weren’t getting you any closer to your goals?  What if you learned that you could stop, or at least quit focusing on, 80% of the things you do on a day to day basis and still enjoy the same success you do today – still live the same life you’re living? What new and exciting challenges could you add to your life if 80% of the time you spent managing your money and your eco-footprint were simply gone?

What a crock, right? That’s what I thought, at least at first, because that’s what comes to mind any time I hear anything earth shattering (I don’t necessarily recommend this life perspective, by the way).  But guess what?  It’s true, and it works – at least to some extent.  If you don’t believe me, and I wouldn’t expect you to since this post intro is already playing out like the first 30 seconds of every Sunday morning infomercial you’ve ever seen, just take it from some of the richest and most successful businessmen in the world, greatest leaders of all time, and various instances of math and science.  That’s right, math and science.

The Pareto Principle

Enter the Pareto principle. A long time ago, in a land far, far away (think Italy in the late 1800s) there was a gentleman by the name of Vilfredo Pareto who happened to notice that 80% of the wealth of Italy was owned by only 20% of its people. After further research, he found that the same balance applied across many countries and, cumulatively, the world.  Fast forward to the 1940s and we find a business management consultant by the name of Joseph Juran who, fascinated by Pareto’s findings, decided to apply it to his field, finding that 80% of the success of businesses comes from 20% of their efforts.

Juran found that many of his clients could experience substantial growth and success by reorganizing their priorities to focus more on the 20% of things they do that have the biggest impact on their bottom line.  Microsoft has reported that, when they release new software, they’re able to eliminate crashes 80% of the time by focusing only on the top 20% of the bugs that users report.  Many businesses today have learned that 80% of their income is produced by only 20% of their customers.  This is why they offer lavish incentives to their top clients; they know just how much they depend on them for continued success.

What’s in it for us?

If so many others have been able to find success by applying the Pareto principle to their situation, why the heck can’t we? In my mind, there’s no difference between what we’re doing and what the business world is doing.  We’re all trying to get the most bang for our buck and make the biggest change we can with the time and resources we have.  When I analyze everything I’m doing, its pretty easy to see where I’m making the biggest difference.

I know that by eating less meat, I am helping to make a huge dent in the conservation of the environment by reducing the amount of space needed to raise animals and reducing the number of them that are emitting methane into the air.  I also know that by winterizing my home (something I’ll be posting about soon since it’s starting to get cold) I can save a bunch of money on my energy bills since the furnace doesn’t have to work as hard to keep me warm. But these two things are only a small fraction of all the things I do on a daily basis.

In terms of personal finance, I’ve found that by spending just minutes a week using an online account aggregator (Mint.com), I have considerably more control over my money by being able to visualize where it’s all going on a regular basis.  This has been a huge benefit to me since spending countless hours trying to develop money saving systems for myself before turning to Mint proved relatively ineffective.  For me, the secret was in being able to easily see a snapshot of my finances at any given moment.

What about the left over 80%?

So, now I’ve whittled down my list of “really important and meaningful tasks” that deliver far more value than all the rest of the things I do and I’m going to spend way more time working on them.  But what am I supposed to do with this giant pile of waste that comprises the remaining 80%?

I guess this is the part of the infomercial where, just after becoming entirely sold and actually picking up the phone to order, you realize that there’s no way you can actually  get fit drinking beer and watching infomercials all day with your Mega Ab Buster 4000™  stuck to your gut while you lay on the couch.  But that’s a tad over-dramatic because the Pareto principle actually does work, you just don’t get to entirely throw out the rest of your commitments.

When you start to put this rule into action in your own life, you’ll find that you still have to do a bunch of the things that don’t have a significant impact on your success.  This is a reality of existing.  There will be at least a few things on that list, though) that you’ll notice you were spending way too much time on for how little you were getting out of them (this was a bit of an embarrassing revelation for me).

While implementing the 80/20 rule into your life could certainly eliminate a number of no-benefit tasks you were fixated on, the whole point is to reorganize your priorities. By focusing on the 20% of things that are really effective for you and your goals, you should start to see more success in your progress towards achieving them.  This makes dealing with the remaining  80% of the sometimes necessary busywork in your life a whole lot more bearable.

Final Thoughts

If you ever wondered before why you were working so hard but achieving so little, this might be at least part of the answer.  Hard work and determination are amazing characteristics, but if they’re aimed at the wrong targets, the wheels are just spinning. Put the rubber to the road by nailing down what’s really important. Exclude the rest until life forces you to deal with it.

What are you trying to achieve and what’s the 20% that you need to focus on?  What’s some of the background noise that seems to get in the way when you try to do this and how can you deal with it?

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A few years ago, a gal named Crissy Trask noticed that everywhere she went, people she met were excited and interested in the green movement.  Everyone was talking about how important it is to live responsibly and be mindful of the earth.  Then she realized that all these people that seemed so gung-ho about an environmentally friendly life weren’t actually doing anything about it.

After a bit of research and asking around, Crissy realized that the people in her life were excited and interested in the prospects of a cleaner, more sustainable world, but didn’t really know what they could do to help or even where to go to find out what they could do.  That’s when she decided to write It’s Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living.

Who should read this book: If you’re relatively new to the concept of sustainability, need some help navigating the lingo, or looking for some help figuring out what types of pursuits might fit your lifestyle, this book can offer some guidance as well as references that you can continually look back to.

Who shouldn’t read this book: If you’re looking for a matter-of-fact guide to tell you what to do, then this book isn’t for you.  Also, if you’re looking for playful storytelling, this book won’t be a good fit – it’s very middle-of-the-road in its presentation.

It’s Easy Being Green is just what it says it is, a handbook.  In fact, I prefer to think of it more as a reference manual as it is filled with definitions of commonly heard (but often misunderstood) terms from around the greenoshphere (I just made that word up so no, it’s not included in the handbook) as well as tons of external resources to get you going in the direction you want once you’ve read it and decided what that direction might be.

The real value in this book, in my opinion, is the 59 page list of tips (organized by topic) that allow you to define a roadmap of things you will do to improve your eco-footprint.  At 59 pages, it’s a bit cumbersome, but it’s really comprehensive.  Here’s how you use it (This process is also described in the book):

1. Read through all the tips, one at a time, making a check in the 3^rd box next to it if it sounds interesting to you.
2. Go through the list again, looking only at the tips you identified as interesting and place a check mark in the 2^nd box if you feel it’s something you’d actually like to pursue.
3. One by one, go through each tip and begin to accomplish them, giving yourself a time frame to complete each one.  To avoid overload, don’t focus on more than one item at a time.  Give each your full attention.
4. Using the 1^st box next to each tip, give yourself a rating of 1-5 to identify how you feel you performed implementing it.
5. Start over at step 1.

This section of the book has the ability to turn into a living document as you fill it out and pursue the tips you identified.  Once you’re done, you might find it useful to go back and look over all the ones you chose, implemented, and scored yourself on.  You’ll probably find that you performed a lot better in certain areas than others.  It might help you to prioritize your green pursuits going forward.

I should also mention that Crissy understands that her audience likes to buy stuff as she includes 2 chapters in her book titled Buying Green and Green Shopping Online. Personally, I prefer the Don’t Buy Stuff method to getting through life, but that’s not exactly realistic and it’s important to know how to make the best choices when you need to purchase something, so I’m glad she covered it thoroughly.

Crissy also writes a chapter titled Getting Involved where she provides numerous tips and resources for easy ways to connect with organizations that promote sustainability in areas you may be interested in.

Overall, I can’t say that It’s Easy Being Green was a great fit for me.  I feel like I’m slightly beyond the level of material that was presented, but I do appreciate all the external references provided.  I’ve written down a number of them that I will eventually check out to see if they could fit into my pursuits. But like I said earlier, if you’re just starting out or need help finding direction, you might find a lot of guidance from this handbook – especially from the 59 page worksheet.

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