Packing for college can be a lot of work. In the face of the many pre-college activities, it’s easy to fall into old habits and fall amiss to living a sustainable lifestyle. With a little planning, the move to college can still embrace eco awareness and keep you on course with your personal sustainability plan.
In our eco friendly consulting, we advise clients to employ the sustainability concepts reduce, reuse, and recycle whenever possible. Moving to college offers a great way to revisit old moving habits and replace them with choices that get the job done as well as reduce the impact on the environment. Here are some tips:
- Reduce the packing load by minimizing the items you bring with you.
- Make use of your empty suitcases to pack up items and accessories.
- Look for used boxes on Craig’s list, local liquor stores and grocery stores.
- Put storage crates from around the house or boxes used for bulk purchases to good use.
- Ask neighbors and friends for bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, padded envelopes and other packing materials instead of purchasing them new.
- Newspaper and towels as great packaging material.
- Consider the use of a greenbox.
- For new purchases, make them at the destination to avoid additional transportation cost of moving it. Good sources include: Goodwill and Salvation Army stores.
- Evaluate your moving options: is a hybrid car or biodiesel-powered truck available?
- Once moved in, take eco action to reduce moving waste by re-listing boxes and material on Craig’s list or Freecycle and recycle the boxes beyond repair.
Keep in mind, that while at college, you are building a new life of sorts for yourself. From life-long friendships and relationships to jobs, classes and internships, the college years of a person’s life are sure to be memorable. As a green living consultant, I can't think of a better time to begin a lifetime of good habits embracing eco awareness and eco actions.
John V. says:
If you are going to loft your bed, find a company that makes eco-friendly wooden loft beds. Do a google search for "college loft bed".
Liz A. says:
Great tips, I'll be passing along to my college bound friends. Also, enjoyed learning about the "green box". Thanks !
Jeff S. says:
College students use allot of toilet paper and the costs add up fast. I know a way to save more on toilet paper than any coupon or special. This covers all the bases = saves you money, helps the environment, helps your health, makes you feel better, it's so easy to do and it costs less than $50.00; Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: "if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn't wipe it off with paper, would you? You'd wash it off” Available at www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won't even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without feeling guilty. It's cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You'll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but remember the water use of industrial users far exceeds the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways.