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Map of Stanley Park

Close-up Map of Stanley Park (with driving directions to SPES)

Small Steps to Stewardship

The Globe

Stewardship is about taking responsibility for your own actions.

Take these SMALL steps to make BIG changes in your personal impact on the Earth.

Around the Classroom or Workplace

  1. Think globally, act locally. So if you are concerned with deforestation then recycle all your paper products.
  2. Turn off lights and computers when they are not in use.
  3. Use both side of the paper. Use recycled paper products.
  4. Pack a garbage-less lunch (use plastic containers). A plastic beverage container on the side of the road will have a longer life then the person who threw it there.
  5. Ask your school/workplace to buy enviro-friendly cleaning products and unbleached paper.
  6. Cut up flyers and notices to make note pads from their blank side.
  7. Proof read rough copies while they are in the computer instead of printing them on paper. The paper industry is the single largest user of fuel oil in the United States. It is the third largest energy consumer.
  8. Save household items (like egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, baskets, etc.) for crafts.
  9. Have a swap meet or flea market at your workplace or school to help reuse everyone's old stuff instead of throwing it out.
  10. Start a class or school project that supports an environmental cause, like endangered species, air or water pollution prevention or anything that you feel is important in our environment.

What Kids Can Do Around the Home

  1. Take showers instead of baths.
  2. Decide what you want to take out or put in before opening the fridge.
  3. Turn off the tap when you are brushing your teeth and lathering your hair.
  4. Cut up ragged clothing and turn it into napkins and dust-rags and use sponges instead of paper towels for cleaning up spills and counter-tops.
  5. Create your own wrapping paper (use newspaper or be creative), or save wrapping from your gifts to re-use for someone else. Every ton of recycled paper saves 4100 kilowatt-hours of electricity- enough to heat the average home for six months.
  6. Use rechargeable batteries.
  7. Give gifts that help the environment (i.e. gardening tools, flower boxes, bird houses, etc.).
  8. Use a hot water bottle or extra blanket to stay warm at night instead of turning up the heat. If every household in the United States lowered its average heating temperature six degrees for 24 hours we could save 570 000 barrels of oil.
  9. Before buying something, ask yourself if you really need it.

What Adults Can do Around The Home

  1. Start a compost (collect organic waste and leave it to decompose into soil) or a vermicompost (put worms into a bucket with organic waste).
  2. Put a yogurt or other plastic container filled with water in your toilet tank to prevent wasting water when you flush.
  3. Turn on the dishwasher, washing machine and dryer right before bed so they heat the house. In one year, people on the earth use up the amount of fossil fuel it took one million years to produce.
  4. Use a bucket instead of a hose to wash the car.
  5. To conserve heat leave your curtains open during the day and close them at night.
  6. Only do laundry and dishes with full loads.
  7. Keep a recycling box next to garbage cans, so it is easier to recycle things like little scraps of paper. To collect and recycle paper provides five times as many jobs as to harvest virgin timber.
  8. Cover cracks under doors and around windows to keep cold air out of your home.
  9. Insulate your hot water heater.
  10. Try not to put fruit with peels in a plastic bag, put it directly into the shopping cart and use cloth or recycled shopping bags. Out of every $11 we spend on groceries, $1 goes to packaging. One third of the weight of waste in urban landfills comes from packaging.
  11. Buy fluorescent light bulbs instead of typical electric light bulbs, they last ten times longer, and use less energy.
  12. Bring your hazardous waste (car oil, spray cans, paint thinner) to appropriate disposal facilities. The amount of motor oil dumped in the US each year is more the amount of oil that leaked from the EXXON Valdez.
  13. Carpool, walk, bike or bus as much as possible. In China there are 540 bicycles for every car.
  14. Plant trees in your yard and have plants in the house to help absorb carbon dioxide.
  15. Save the water from leaky taps to water flowers with or do the dishes.
  16. Water the garden in the late afternoon or early morning so the water doesn't evaporate in the heat of the day.
  17. Try to use appliances that do not need electricity (i.e. a clothesline, hand operated can-opener).
  18. Buy locally grown foods to cut down on transportation.
  19. Make snacks or buy bulk instead of buying overly packaged individual snacks.
  20. Use baking powder and vinegar dissolved in water instead of abrasive chemical cleaners for counter-tops, bathrooms and sinks.
  21. Learn about your local environment and local stewardship opportunities. A good place to start is with the Stanley Park Ecology Society - check out our Calendar of Evients.

Information Sources:

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