I am proud to admit that I am one of those tree-hugging environmentalists.  For years now, I have recycled every single thing I can, tried to minimalize my water use, conserved energy whenever possible, purchased a composting bin for all of my organic waste, and even encouraged others to do the same.  I am pretty sure that the people closest to me, although they also love the environment, find my antics a little bit annoying.  It’s ok with me because it is what I like to do and it makes me feel that I am doing my part to pass this world on to the future generations.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that each of us do or consume or purchase each day that has a large environmental cost that we don’t even think about.  Think for example about bottled water.  There are millions of bottles of bottled water that are purchased each and every day in our country alone.  Over time, this adds up to a huge amount of plastic worldwide.  Think also about all of our phone chargers.  How many times in a day or a week or a year do you leave the charger to your phone or your computer plugged in without your phone or computer hooked up to it?  Even though your device isn’t hooked up to the charger, it is still pulling energy into it.  Over time, this adds up to a lot of energy.  That energy is produced somewhere, that usually takes a large amount of energy in itself and also a large amount of water.

Another example of things that we purchase without thinking about the environmental cost are home care items.  Blinds for windows are a great example of this.  Although when we purchase a set of blinds we intend to use them for a long time, there are millions upon millions of people around the world doing the same thing.  Over time, just like the water bottles or phone chargers, this adds up to a lot of material and energy and probably, once again, water.  Fortunately, there are companies out there, like Colorado Shade and Shutter, that have already thought about this and acted on it in a positive and environmentally friendly way.  They purchase all of their wood for their window shutter and blinds from sustainably managed forests.  What this means is they get all of their wood from forests that are managed by people who know what they are doing.  They only select trees that the environment does not depend on.  Rather than clear cutting forests, which accounts to a large percentage of global warming emissions, they selectively log forests.  And the great thing about it is Colorado Shade and Shutter still offers a huge selection of products, from Roman shades to window coverings.  If a company like them can protect the environment that we all depend on while not sacrificing the quality and productivity of their business, why can’t everyone be doing that?  The answer, of course, is that they can be.