First, can i recommend that densely population urban living can be more sustainable than suburban and rural living? With lots of people all packed in it can be more efficient. Your question is broad, so i suggest you check out specific posts on Green Questions and Answers for city specific issues. My basic summary would be to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Reduce-
Take stock of what resources you consume. This requires a disassociated perspective because it’s easy to take for granted things we commonly use. Friends can help us notice this. 2. Consider what resources you need. 3. Discipline yourself to use as sustainable amount as you can.
Living in a city has some green advantages. You can do things in bulk that people living more spread out would struggle with. Example: transportation. In a city, try to avoid being one of the many people struggling through traffic. This has several advantages. For one, it reduces traffic. Public transportation can hold more people than your personal motorized vehicle. So if 20 people are riding a bus, then that’s normally 20 people not clogging up the roads, 20 less vehicles smogging up the sky. (Plus you can read my blog while you commute; please don’t do that when you are operating your own motor vehicle.) If public transportation doesn’t work out, carpooling is a greener alternative to 1 person, 1 car. Of course human powered transportation is the MVP, bikes are a prime example. Plus you can save money on gym memberships by letting your muscles move you there.
Try to find analog, non-electric solutions to everyday problems. For example, dryers use a lot of electricity to do what the sun does naturally Wind through an open window will cool you off for 100% less money than air conditioning. Consider the buildings you are using. Aim to reduce urban sprawl as much as you have the power to influence it. Remember that shopping malls, suburbs, and parking spaces used to be homes for wild animals. If you can compress some of your human space, you leave more room for natural habitat. A few animals do survive well living alongside humans: cockroaches, rats, and pidgeons, for example. However, most animals do not. Look for some ways to minimize the damage of manmade construction, for example, leave or plant big shade trees around to reduce the city heating caused by asphalt and concrete surfaces, reduce some CO2, and provide food and shelter for some organisms.
Reuse-
Obviously you will be filling landfills less if you throw less stuff away. Many items after serving their time looking good and in good condition can still meet a need. Use creative thinking. Old clothing and other textiles can be used for cleaning, animal bedding, patching other clothing to extend its life, or given away. You don’t have to hoard stuff either. Another side to reusing is to plan for reuse. Use a reusable bag when shopping rather than getting a new disposable bag in each store. Re-use disposable bags whenever possible, many people find they work well as trash bags. Put leftovers in reusable containers, instead of single use containers like ziplocks and styrofoam. For instance, i reuse yoghurt containers for food storage.
Recycle-
When you can’t avoid it or keep re-using something, recycle it. Check with your city and find what items they take. Plastics generally have a triangular recycling symbol with a number inside to simplify the process. If they don’t take everything, check around for recycling or collection plants that take the rest. I lived in a town that didn’t have any city-wide metal recycling, so i filled a box in my kitchen and periodically took it to a nearby junkyard and made a small amount of money recycling them. Remember, a 10 minute trip to the recycling center is a lot shorter than the 500 years (and quite possibly some animals’ insides) that it would go through otherwise.
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