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Written by Natalya Stanko   
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Thursday, 04 August 2011

Roommate Living

Whether you live with your family, best friends, acquaintances, or people from the classifieds, roommates can be difficult to get along with from time to time. I've shared tight spaces with a roomie who despised fans and open windows in the heat of summer, another who always left the kitchen compost open and smelling, then another who blasted music until the break of dawn. Your living situation only gets tougher when you and your roommates clash over environmental values. How dare they put another soda bottle in the garbage can or leave the bathroom light on! Here are some tips on how to resolve these differences.

BENEFITS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT : Conserve natural resource by getting everyone in your household on board.

Time and effort: Medium

Cost: Low

Tips to Green Living with Roommates:

1) Be positive! Just by living together, you're already helping the environment. Two people sharing a space reduces household energy by about 18% per capita, and three people reduce it by 53% per person.1 On a personal note, living together is also the best cure for loneliness. The same roommates that I mentioned above also loved cooking dinner together, hosting awesome dance parties, and practicing group yoga. No matter how frustrating group living can get, having someone to come home to is most often pretty nice ☺

2) Express your concerns. Don't assume your roommates know that you are bothered by their actions. Once you've calmed down, tell them exactly what the problem is. Never yell. Say something like, “I saw some soda cans in the trash. Would you mind separating the cans from the garbage from now on?” To make sure that you and your roommates are communicating, schedule a monthly house meeting!

3) Don't be annoying. The more you nag your roommates (“Are you kidding me?! You left the light on again?”), the less responsive they'll be. Not everyone has the time or desire to research the most eco-friendly cleaners or lightbulbs or cooking methods. That's ok. We all have different priorities, and it's important that you respect those differences. Do a little self-reflection: Are you annoying to live with? When you express your problems, ask your roommates if they have any concerns they'd like to share. Listen to what they say, and try to understand why they do what they do.

4) Talk money. Your roommates might not think much about global warming or deforestation , but most everyone cares about where their dollar bills are going. Without ever mentioning the environment, you can talk about the economic benefits of using vinegar and baking soda instead of commercial cleaners, drying clothes outside instead of using the laundromat, buying food in bulk, taking shorter showers, and turning off idle electronics… “Wow, our energy bill is $80 per person again! Maybe we should turn down the thermostat a few degrees and see how much of a difference that makes?!”

5) Don't be so radical. You might not think that the army of ants marching towards the kitchen compost bucket is disgusting, but your roommates probably think otherwise. Make compromises. Store the compost outside for now.

6) Educate and entertain. Does your roommate love over-packaged, processed foods? Try to turn them on to whole foods by cooking a dinner together, or ask them if they'd like to watch the film FOOD, INC. with you, or leave a copy of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma on the coffee table. Whatever you do, don't shout facts at them.

7) Do more than your part. Your roomie still forgets to recycle? Place a clearly labeled recycling bin in the kitchen and bathroom. Do they still leave the light on when they go out? Then flick it off for them… that was easy!

8) Keep improving. Your household is now recycling, using ceiling fans, and washing only full loads of dishes. That's awesome! What else can you do? Here are some ideas: Add your own goals to this checklist, and encourage your roommates to do the same!

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1 http://thegroundfloor.typepad.com/the_ground_floor/2009/01/singles-use-more-energy.html




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Last Updated ( Thursday, 04 August 2011 )

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Green Facts

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.