In honor of Earth Week this week, I'll be focusing on some tips and thoughts on how to help your health while helping our planet, too.
I'm a huge go-Green advocate - I recycle, turn the lights off as I leave the room (or use candlelight!), and am constantly reading up on the newest ways to help save our environment. But I know that the health of our planet won't matter if our own health issues that our bodies face everyday don't get solved, first.
My first tip shouldn't come as a shocker to any of you - if you haven't been advised to do this already, you must be blasting your car radio too loudly. But listen up!
Instead of driving to work, or to the park, or to the gym - RIDE A BIKE. Take a walk, grab a Razor scooter, throw on some roller blades, get your kids to teach you how to skateboard - do anything but get in your car. Sure, it's nice to be able to get to your destination without having to break a sweat, but you should be sweating the consequences that our Earth is facing by you driving to and from places with short distances.
On average, your car can emit up to six tons of carbon dioxide - the leading cause of greenhouse gasses, which is adding to the global warming issue. Now, if you rode your bike those 5 miles to work, you can burn serious calories - 150-lb person would burn 545 calories (according to the Calories Calculator)!!
Now this doesn't seem like much - in fact, it probably seems more like a hassle than anything else. You're probably asking, "Why would I walk/run/bike to work when I can just hop in my car and be there in less than two minutes?" Well I answer your question with a question. How could you not ride your bike or walk to work, when you know you're shedding pounds while helping the Earth at the same time?
So get out and get healthy - all while saving our globe.
Is walking/biking/non-car modes of transportation an option for you in your everyday life? What are other ways that people can burn some calories while saving the planet?
(By the way - The League of American Bicyclists Bike-to-Work Week is May 11-15, with Bike-to-Work Day is May 15th!)
Comments (18)
If I was a better cyclist I would but I tend to walk or take mass transit more often.
Screw bicycles, I want one of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiNr2plofKE&feature=related
I don't care how bad it is for the planet.
Everyone, watch The 11th Hour. When I read the title of this entry, that was the first thing I thought of.
I live in the bike capital of the world!
Being on flat land and having a mostly college student population helps though. Plus over 100miles of bike paths.
I walk to and from school, but take a car everywhere else. D:
Granted, I don't go anywhere... public transportation is my soon-to-be-best-friend, though.
On average, my car can emit six tons over how long? It's all very well throwing scary stats around, but it needs a context. What kind of car on average; engine size, petrol type, distance travelled, etc?
A lot of advocates of global warming forget that the Earth has natural cycles of heating and cooling that last decades at a time anyway. Don't get me wrong, it's good to cycle at any opportunity you get. I'd cycle to work if I could. But things can get blown out of proportion somewhat.
@SolarisPhoenix@xanga - I doubt all the scientists that are warning against global warming being a huge threat to the Earth and it's organisms are simply "forget[ting] that the Earth has natural cycles of heating and cooling."
I do bike some places, but I know I don't do it nearly enough.
@watchthe_xsky@xanga - I'm not meaning to suggest scientists do 'forget', but it's widely ignored in most of the global warming publications I've seen. And, to be cynical, it allows governments to implement extra environmental taxes on citizens to the effect of 'contributing to environmental welfare', in potentially harmful processes.
The biggest study into global warming, the primary one that thrust the issue into the limelight several years ago, actually omitted the globe's temperatures during the entire 16th century because they conflicted with the results they wanted to prove; everything was actually half a degree colder than they had been the preceding century and created all sorts of bizarre weather patterns.
I'm not trying to say global wraming is a myth or that it's not a problem that we could be aggrovating; and certainly measures like planting trees and having green areas to live are things I've always appreciated anyway. But as things go we're sitting at the tail end of an 11 year cycle's warm peak anyway, as it were. So these studies which say 'the temperatures are rising and it's our fault' aren't always as transparent as they might appear. I'm more raising an issue about weasel words and statistics that don't actually lead anywhere than the matter itself.
In where I am living, all I need to do is walk to the place where I want to go, it's easy. If I really have to go too far, I would have to go for public transport, there is no underground that goes throughout the UK except train, maybe train is a good idea, either coach or train.
@SolarisPhoenix@xanga - I don't own a car, and I don't think I will. I have not decided whether I would go back to where I was born (HK) or stay here in my village. I have a laptop, I use electricity, but Sutton Bonington is a village (so please don't think that I am some sorta village maiden lol). I can get to places by many other means, and I don't always go further than where I can walk. If I am lucky enough, I may raise a horse of my own lol~
@laytexduckie@xanga - I've watched it too! It's good!
@SolarisPhoenix@xanga - Thanks for the kind reply because after I posted my comment to you I realized it seemed a bit rude when reading it online. I do agree that it is ignored that the Earth naturally goes through cycles of heating and cooling, but I think a lot of this is in order to not confuse people because I do think that we are contributing in a big way to the degradation of our environment at this point in time. I suppose that is my opinion though.
@watchthe_xsky@xanga - Yeah, that's fair enough ^___^ (and you're welcome, hehe- I didn't think your reply rude at all; I thought I was being rather blunt myself, to be honest
) I think we're damaging the Earth in a lot of ways too, but the focus needs to be constructive in order to mend it again. Riding a bike doesn't save the earth nearly as much as planting trees or growing your own food does, after all. But it's a good idea for health and wellbeing anyway.
@nowayout001@xanga - That sounds really cool. I'd love to live somewhere you wouldn't necessarily need cars like that. I went to America not so long ago and there was nowhere for pedestrians to walk, and everything was so spread out... car was pretty much the only safe way to get there, ironically enough.
@SolarisPhoenix@xanga - Oh...
@nowayout001@xanga - hehe, yeah, it's really bad. Coming from a smallish village in England where there are horseriders, sidewalks and cyclists everywhere, it was quite a shock.
oohh
ya~y bikers!