Trying to live green and eco friendly can be really difficult, especially with so many conflicting messages on environmental issues. Many people are left confounded by decrees from some environmental groups suggesting that nearly every aspect of our lives could be environmentally damaging, but many of these claims are either misguided, have not scientific background or are just plain wrong.

Many of these arguments can also be quite damaging to the environmental movement in general as people can be often put off getting involved, buy eco friendly products or attempting to live in a greener way because they believe it requires extreme sacrifices or a lot of hard work.

For instance people often claim that motoring is extremely damaging to the environment and we should all switch to public transport.

Whilst nobody would argue that vehicles don’t damage the environment people still need to get around. Wasteful journeys are certainly not very eco-friendly but a small family car with three people on-board will be certainly better for the environment than a bus with only one or two passengers.

Often public transport can be a better environmental solution but not always and often it is not practical for everybody. And with more and more emphasis by car companies on environmental technology, motoring is getting less damaging all the time. By combining journeys, car sharing and driving economically we can also cut down on the environmental damage we can cause.

Being vegetarian is often cited as being a greener way of life too as the gases produced by intensive farming of animals and the land used to rear them is a reason why non vegetarians could be damaging the planet. But the environmental impact of farming is a far more complex matter than that.

Farming can cause Deforestation

We all have to eat and while growing vegetables produces less greenhouse gas it uses a lot more land as meat is far more efficient a fuel than vegetables. And with more and more rainforest being swallowed up to grow products like soya, vegetarianism can also be claimed to be environmentally damaging

Food should be a matter of choice but when we shop for food we can help the environment by buying organic and local produce. Even clothing can be organic or from sustainable sources like bamboo.