With earth day approaching this month, it’s time to get some perspective on which generations are actually investing in an eco-friendly lifestyle, not just for one day a year but for the entire year. To do this, High Tide Technologies surveyed 2,000 Americans across three different generations (baby boomers, gen x and millennials) to see which generation is the greenest generation and to see how people are developing better habits over time.
To do this they looked at four major components to an eco-conscious lifestyle:
- Water Use
- Energy Use
- Recycling
- Food consumption
Let’s take a deeper dive into each of the four areas to see how each generation fared.
Water Use
They survey data found that Gen-Xers are most likely to shower 7+ times a week. The found that Boomers showered the least followed by millennials and Gen-Xers. They also found that Millennials rare or never wash jeans making them the generation that does laundry the least. They also found that boomers run the dishwasher the least of the three generations. So in Water Use, Boomers score the best followed by Millennials and leaving Gen-Xers as dead last.
Energy Use
As it turns out Millennials tend to watch more TV than other generations as they were found most likely to watch 5+ hours of TV per day. Millennials were also most likely to charge their phone while sleeping. Gen-Xers tend to have the highest electric bills and were also most likely to drive to work. Baby Boomers were ranked top at conserving energy use while Millennials came in second with Gen-Xers again coming in dead last.
Recycling
Baby boomers were the generation most likely to recycle and also the most likely to recycle old electronics and cell phones. Baby boomers scored much better than the other generations in terms of recycling. Millennials did score well with using reusable bags and being enrolled in paperless billing. More than 90% of all three generations agree that recycling makes a difference. Once again Gen-Xers came in dead last. Hopefully the score better in the last category.
Food Consumption
Millennials scored well in eating the less amount of meat. Baby Boomers on the other hand were most likely to eat red meat 5 times a week. Both Boomers and Gen-Xers scored well with composting and boomers once again scored well with Food waste.
To see the full analysis, check out the infographic from High Tide below.
