Today, November 1, is being marked as Public Transport Day by Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), with free metro, bus and water taxi rides on offer for Nol card-holders. In addition, the agency will credit Dh100 to the account of the emirate’s 50 most frequent public transport customers.

The initiative is aimed at raising Dubai’s profile in supporting programmes that contribute to sustainable development, but is just one day enough? We have all been made well aware that the GCC’s carbon emissions are notoriously high, and that the UAE has one of the largest carbon footprints per capita in the world.

And no, we can’t hide behind the construction-companies-are-the-biggest-culprits excuse anymore – most construction is at a standstill in the country, and we still are the leading polluters, folks. In the UAE, it has been estimated that 57 per cent of the carbon emission comes from household waste.

On an average, residents of Gulf nations produce up to 10 times the carbon as the average global resident does – that’s 10 times the garbage, 10 times the pollution, and 10 times the misuse.

And if you think that you are not among those on the wrong side of sustainability, why don’t you find out for sure by clicking here, the Dubai Municipality’s carbon footprint calculator (in English and Arabic) to help residents track their green and not-so-green behaviours. It may not be the most sophisticated carbon calculators around, but it’s a start – and a noble one.

Let us make a start too – travel via public transport on November 1, for instance. Or (rather, and) how about going and depositing your waste plastic bottles and aluminum cans in the Reverse Vending Machine (RVM) showcased at the Future Green 2011 exhibition, in Dubai Marina Mall? Averda, the company behind this machine, has pledged to pledges to plant one Ghaf tree for every plastic bottle or can deposited in its machine tomorrow – so if you’re s starter at recycling to go green, consider this as joining bonus!

The RVM is the latest recycling technology recently introduced in the Middle East. The machine aims to deliver a simple message of ‘Recycle, Redeem, Reward’ and is a means to motivate the community to recycle. RVMs are user-friendly, enabling consumers to drop their recyclable plastic bottles and aluminum cans into the machine, to be rewarded in return for an output of points that can be redeemed in various rewards. Rewards may include discounts from participating retailers or donations to charities or environmental causes.

With Planet Earth now officially home to seven billion (and counting) humans, and now that you know how many ‘earths’ would we need to sustain our wasteful behaviour, we can take some simple and small yet effective steps to prevent our children from fighting for a breath of fresh air or a patch of non-toxic land.

- Travel Sustainably. Start with one day a week – say, Sunday. Leave your car in the garage and travel by the public transport. Or have a colleague pick you up and drop you to and from office. You may return that favour another day of the week. Don’t wait for ‘someday’ – start now.

- Be a Green Consumer. Supermarket shelves are now lined with labeled organic produce. And most of it isn’t much more expensive than the other stuff – try it. If you can’t simply afford it, try buying fruits and vegetables that are locally/regionally produced than ones that have to fly a million miles to reach your table. Go for Omani grapes, for instance, instead of those sourced from Latin America.

- Switch it off. When you’re the last one to leave a room, or house, or office, remember to turn the switch off. It all adds up. Moreover, invest in sustainable lighting and cooling – it may be a bit more expensive to install, but the savings in electric bill over their lifetime far outweighs the initial cost.

- Influence Your friends, family, and community. A green ‘you’ is a great role model for your friends, family, and colleagues.

Living greener isn’t as difficult as you might have thought. It starts with thinking greener and then acting greener – steps to conservation, as they say, isn’t rocket science.