I thought I'd share a few of my Green Goals for this year. They are mostly simple things that our family can change relatively easily, in addition to maintaining our recycling habits and reusable shopping bags.
- Paper Products - We are working to completely eliminate our use of paper napkins and paper towels. We also buy recycled toilet paper (we like Trader Joe's brand). We also just switched all our bank statements and bills to paperless delivery.
- Cleaning Products - Going natural with my cleaning products. All-natural products can be a little more expensive, though; to save money, I really like this book Clean House, Clean Planet. It contains instructions for homemade cleaning products that save money and are easy on the environment.
- Borrow or Buy Used - Our family rediscovered the library this year and I started using PaperBackSwap.com. I try to buy gently used clothing and toys for the kids. It is great that our community has a clothing exchange twice a year.
- Lowering Waste - I recently encountered this blog Zero Waste. Check out their article on What Is Zero Waste? I don't think I am ready to go this far, but it did get me thinking about how much I throw away. Here are some simple things I am working on: no individually packaged snacks, buy bulk, reuse clean produce bags, lower the number of sandwich bags we use. Basically, I am trying to be more aware when shopping - less disposable, more reusable.
What are you doing to be more "Green" in 2009? What has worked for you and your family?
Posts
6 comments:
Thanks for the ideas!!! Currently, all we do is reusable grocery bags and recycling. We live in a part of the country that in no way makes it easy to recycle and isn't very environmentally friendly. Kinda disappointing...but I can at least do my part, right?
That is hard! I know we were surprised how much harder it was to recycle in Nashville than it had been in Chicago (or here). It's great that you make the effort!
What do you use in place of paper napkins and paper towels? I am assuming that you replace with cloth napkins and hand towels so have you seen an increase in washing and water used?
I do like that book swap idea. Thanks for your post.
Yup, rags and cloth napkins. I haven't seen an increase in water use. I finally decided that it takes far more water in the process of making the paper products than it does for me to wash my few cloths.
The biggest thing I noticed was that we were very careless with our use of paper towels and napkins, and used far more than we needed. Now we are a little more frugal in our use.
i have gone paperless on our banking and billing too. how do you store your records? do you worry that you won't have a hard copy or do you print your records off at home? please do tell.
I store it all digitally. I have been working on a new system to make sure I have everything, without needing hard copies.
I'll have to write another post this week to tell more about my system. I was going to put it all in this comment, but I'm realizing it would be too long.
So, stay tuned...
Post a Comment