Posted:
My advice, worth less than 2 cents...
Use your common sense to define "green", and not the common market or madison avenue/pundits. The advice you already got here about saving water, for example, is great: Using less water is almost always a great idea, beneficial in almost every way. less water in landscaping, good idea.
Sometimes, in the rush to be green, we actually can be worse. Lower flow shower heads, normally a good idea, but some people use more water with a low flow than with a normal flow, for example, which reduces their "greeness".
Ripping out existing plants, and redoing the entire area with Xeriscape might or might not be green effective: if you hire trucks and equipment and labor who drive personal vehicles every day, then more trucks to bring gravel, and more equipment to spread it, and tons of chemicals to maintain weed free rocks over the next few years, and leaf blowers with 2 cycle engines every week to keep it leaf free, you lose a lot of "greeness"... But replacing areas gradually, with native species, etc. in a simple, controlled and casual manner is more green. Educating people that a few leaves are beautiful, and a sign of nature, is smart. SPending $5 in gasoline and oil to blow that leaf around for a half hour isn't.
Removing all light bulbs and tossing them in the trash, and replacing with CFL's isn't as green as gradually replacing the bulbs as they burn out with CFL's (and we can discuss the hazwaste greeness of CFL manufacturing and disposal later). You get the same results eventually, but with less waste and cost if you take your time. Gradually educating your residents that they don't need 24 hours of daylight is helpful too, and allowing a light or two to be dimmer, or even out, can be green!
One of my favorite "green" stories is an all organic, "local" pineapple marketed by a famous "green" grocer. It's organically grown in Hawaii (whatever that means), and then, to preserve the green factor, it is shipped to Taiwan, where it is processed organically/by hand, with no chemicals except water (try not to think of all those hands that touch your pineapple that had nothing but water to cleanse them), and then packed and shipped back to the US, for "local" consumption and organic greeness... How much oil was used to ship that Pineapple across the pacific and back that could have been saved by canning it in Hawaii and shipping direct?
It's hard to be green, i guess my advice is to trust yourself, do it smart, and don't believe the greeness of anything that someone wants to sell you.. think about it first, and look at all the sides. We didn't get to be where we are in a week, we won't become guardians of the earth in a week either.