Opting for Green Jobs

by Barry James

If you are looking for a change, and if you want to build individuality in the field of jobs, you can always resort to green jobs. So, what exactly is a green job? You are not required to wear something green for this job! The job will deal with the environment and such jobs are known as green jobs. Taking care of the environment and advising the ill effects, which are caused to the environment, fall in this bracket. In this article, we shall be looking into some of the most commonly known green jobs in the current generation.

Solar power is one if the best-known renewable source of energy and what if you decided to make a career out of it. Many apartments and buildings are switching to solar power, because although the initial costs may be on the higher side, the long-term effects are greater and much more feasible than any form of energy source. You can always find a lucrative career installing solar powered devices in the apartments and the offices. It should be better if you start this as a standalone business and advertise about it, so that people may come to know about your service and resort to solar installations.

By now, you must know about the money interior designers are making. This is touted to be one of the hottest professions around and yes, you can make some dough using this field. Of course you will be dealing interior designing with a twist, green interior designing. Homes and offices can be designed such that they can be kept warm naturally during the winters and cold during the summers. This is the basic job function of a green interior designer. The rising costs of electricity are driving more people to green interior designing and hence this is one of the most lucrative jobs around.

If you think you have teaching capabilities, you can always opt for an environment educationalist. The job is nothing but preaching (as well as practicing) about the harmful practices, which are being implemented by humankind, which is ultimately resulting in the destruction of mother earth. Do not jump into this profession just to make some easy money, you will have to resort to much straining advocating the practices. In these days of recession, it is always better to opt for such jobs, which always has a strong hold over the future.

One of the most feared jobs (feared by large corporations) is being a sustainability manager. The job entitles you to roam around and make notes of the carbon foot print and the toxic waste materials which are being released in the environment by these corporations. Usually government agencies routinely conduct surprise visits to test the carbon footprint of a factory and you can always enlist your service. Beware that you might need appropriate qualification in the niche to be selected for the job. You can also make a career out of the exact opposite field, by advising corporations on the ill effects of carbon release.

About The Author

Visit reed.co.uk and find your perfect job on the UK's biggest job site. Discover the jobs that are listed in your neighborhood and industry and start applying today.

http://www.reed.co.uk

Sometimes the Student is the Teacher

A few days ago, my five-year-old daughter Peyton asked me what our carbon footprint was.

I wasn't aware that she knew anything about carbon footprints, or that it would ever have occurred to her to THINK about a carbon footprint.  But, I  don't know how she found out about Hannah Montana and High School Musical, either, as we don't have cable or satellite TV.  Clearly the girl has resources.  Vast, hidden resources.

Truthfully, I didn't know what our number was anyway. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, because in all honesty, we're new to this whole "Green" thing.  Most of our green initiatives around our household have not been specifically tailored to saving our environment, but rather for providing us with a better quality of life. For example, we eat almost completely organic and we're working on moving all of our dietary needs to only things that we can find locally, farmed in a place we are welcome to visit if we'd like, in a sustainable manner. That means we're going to be joining a CSA, we're moving toward eating only grass-fed, hormone and antibiotic free beef, cage free eggs and raw dairy. But none of that was to protect the planet, it was to protect ourselves. We also cloth diaper, but not because it lowers our donation to the local landfill, rather to prevent bleeding diaper rash. We use reusable food storage not to eliminate waste, but because it's cheaper. Cheap is the reason why we have Energy Star rated appliances, turn off lights and televisions and unplug things when they're not in use. It's just cheaper! We reuse a lot of our potential recyclables and have turned a lot of them into creative and beautiful Kindergarten craft projects. (My favorite one is the bath tub scoop. But I also enjoy a little milk jug bowling and nothing beats a milk jug for pool floaties) Really, we should just move to returnable glass bottles, but the toys we can make out of milk jugs are too fun.

At any rate, we went to The Nature Conservancy and used their calculator to find out our carbon footprint. As I explained to Peyton, a carbon footprint is a number that indicates how large our greenhouse gas emissions are. (Of course then I had to explain greenhouse gasses and why they were bad, but that's a whole 'nother Oprah.) While it's not the only measurement of our environmental responsibility, it's a good start. I was a little apprehensive, because we drive a minivan and aren't really good consumers of our local transit system. I know we could do better in that arena, and I hoped that some of our other initiatives would help balance that out.

I blogged the results in my personal blog, Mom and Machine. You can go there to read the rest of it, but the whole event got me to thinking: if she's this interested in the environment now, what can I do to make that a lifelong passion? How can I work this into the things we do as a matter of our everyday activities in a way that recylcing becomes second nature, that reusing and reducing become things that she just does without thinking about them.

And then it occurred to me that we teach Kindergarteners every day that they ought to clean up their messes. We tell them to take care of their toys, their backpacks, their clothes. So, why SHOULDN'T we be teaching them to take care of their environment as a natural extention of the "clean up after yourself" rule? I spend a lot of time trying to convince Peyton that if she doesn't take care of things, they will be ruined or they will go away and we won't be able to replace them.

Isn't that exactly what will happen to our planet if we fail to take care of it?

So, for my first Student Saturday blog here at Blog on Smog, I thought I'd take some time to write down 10 things we do to teach Peyton about the environment.

1. We read stories and write our own. We've checked out some great books at our local library, here are a few:

The Lorax (I know, you thought I was going to get all preachy and only post boring books that nobody would really want to read, didn't you?)
Why Should I Recycle? (There's a whole series, Why Should I Save Energy?, Why Should I Save Water?, Why Should I Protect Nature?)
Where Does the Garbage Go?
The Three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle: A Story About Recycling
The Earth and I
Recycled Crafts Box (This was my favorite. I'm a craftaholic.)

We like to do more than just read stories, though. We like to write our own. So, we'll take something that we see outside or read about in a news story and we'll write a story about it. For example, if we see some litter on our walk to the park, we'll write a story about where that came from, or where it's going. Or we'll turn the litter into a character for a story and make it tell what it thinks about being left in the dirt.

2. We take "Five Can Walks". We take a walk through our neighborhood with a canvas shopping bag and collect discarded soda cans we find on the way. We make a rule that we can't turn back until we have five cans. Then we put those five cans in a bag in our garage and when we have a whole bag full, we take them to the recycling center. Peyton gets to keep any money we make. Sometimes, if it's a really beautiful day or we're feeling particularly bold, we'll make it a Ten Can Walk. We do other things, too--Five Page Walks (paper), Five Bag Walks, Five Junk Walks.

3. We use whatever we can for crafts. Egg cartons make great "crap collectors". We use them to store buttons and beads and brads, as well as glitter that's been hopelessly mixed up. We make paper dolls out of things like cereal boxes and Webkinz storage houses out of the sturdier cardbord boxes. I use toilet paper and paper towel rolls for ribbon, and we make container gardens and pencil holders out of tin cans.

4. We learn about the weather. Climate change is a reality, so we talk about things as they happen--for instance, as I'm typing this, Colorado (my home state) is in the middle of a major spring snowstorm. In contrast, we had a winter with almost now snow and very little other precipitation. So, we're talking with Peyton about what this means for the summer--how our low amounts of rain and snow will mean that we won't have as much water to water flowers and grass, and how we'll have to be careful about what we use in our house, too.

5. We minimize water waste.  We turn off water when we brush our teeth, take short showers and baths in not much water (but lots of bubbles). We all have cute water bottles that we fill with filtered tap water instead of buying bottled water. We do BIG loads of laundry instead of a lot of small loads.

6. We visit our local library.  We check out books instead of buying them (unless it's a beloved story or a book with recipes or craft instructions/ideas.  We check those out first, and then buy them as necessary.). We give away one toy whenever we get a new one. We have a lot of clutter in our house (we live in less than 1000 square feet!) so not only does it help our environment to not purchase more things we'll eventually have to throw away, but it reduces the chaos in our own home.

7. When we go to the grocery store, we talk about packaging. We count cans and boxes on the shelves and then talk about what goes into producing all of those cans, and how much space all of that trash takes up. We try to buy things with minimal packaging--so we buy products in bulk and then package individual portions in reusable containers.

8. We don't buy any more tupperware containers. We reuse the packaging from cottage cheese, tubs of butter, condiment jars and cream cheese tubs. The yogurt containers that have the foil lids make excellent paint/water containers for craft time. When we can't reuse them, we put them in the craft pile to use creatively some other way.

9. We use our public transportation system for drives into the city, we walk to the park, and we mostly use our vehicle only when we have to. We talk about how using our car puts a lot of emissions into the atmosphere and how those emissions are causing the problems with climate change.

10. We practice what we preach. Isn't this the thing every parenting expert dictates? Do what you want your kids to do. I can't reasonably expect Peyton to want to recycle, to use less water and to conserve energy if I'm tossing a can over my shoulder, taking half-an-hour long showers and leaving the TV on all night. Kids love to emulate their parents, so the easiest way to teach them to be good custodians of the environment is to just be one yourself.

by Amber Dubois