- I recycle a lot. I was thrilled when we moved to SA and had curbside recycling (something I had not had before). We have a 90 gallon trash can just for recycling and then a smaller one we keep in the house. I fill that puppy up almost daily (the smaller one). I take out our kitchen trash about once a week (from the kitchen to the larger one outside). Our kitchen is your standard 30 gallon, if that. Anyway, I think that is pretty good considering we are a family of 5.
- I use cloth bags to go grocery shopping. I did buy 2 large ones at HEB that are pretty and I love those because they hold the equivalent to 5 plastic bags. The other ones have been free at one time or another (there is my money-saving side coming out). HEB has promotions every year on Earth Day and if you bring in your plastic bags to recycle, they give you free green bags. This year, I got 5 green bags, a tree sapling, and 4 CFL lighbulbs. I love free stuff!
- Speaking of CFL (compact flourescent), I have pretty much switched out all fixtures using those. When the LED lightbulbs come out, I will probably start switching over to those. They are a little more expensive, but appartenly save $750 in energy savings over there 10 year lifespan! Just remeber, the CFLs due contain mercury, so be careful if you break them and dispose of them properly.
- Love my programmable thermostat! I set my daily temp to 78, sometimes 80 degrees, so our electric bill is pretty low for the most part. When Ryan comes home it goes down to 74 (and I freeze!).
- I am really working on unplugging all electronics when we don't use them (vampires). That is a hard thing to do all the time 'cause I forget, but it does save money and reduce that nasty carbon footprint. Unplug computer, tv, vcr, etc as those draw 25% of the electricity even when they are NOT on. Powerstrips help since you can just hit a switch and unplug everything. Now, they have a special light switch that you can hook up all your appliances to. I won't do it in our current rent house, but definitely going to look into that when we buy or build our next home.
- I use rechargeable batteries. We seem to need AA or AAA batteries often, so having some I can recharge is nice. I got them at CVS one week for really cheap, so it worked out well since rechargeables seem to be more expensive.
- Instead of buying juice boxes and bottled water (bad, very bad!), I use plastic, refillable ones. Eventually, I hope to get some non-plastic ones since it seems to be pretty bad for us when used repeatedly.
There are some things I have not done yet that I intend to do soon:
- Use natural cleaners 90% of the time. I try to use cloth to clean with, but I still use paper towels and my lysol wipes too much.
- Eat more organic. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks on this one. Organic is more expensive, and I am cheap, so that is a problem. I do only buy organic apples and raisins since those require a lot of pestisides to grow, but that is about it right now.
- Once we get a house that we don't rent and I can paint, I plan on using low/no VOC paint.
- I would love to have a garden, but I am too busy at this time to mess with it. I would grow blackberries, strawberries, lettuce, carrots, etc. We eat more fruit than veggies around here, so unless I start planting trees, I am limited. I grew up eating fruit in our orchard for snacks and that was so fun for me as a kid. I remember my mom and dad growing veggies too in their garden. Didn't each much of those though-LOL!
- One of the big things I am going to do is purchase reuseable bags for our lunches. Right now, I am using plastic baggies, but I found some great reusebale sacks that are perfect for chips, crackers, etc. Check out the link HERE .
I am sure there are tons of other things I do or want to do, but I figure I have bored most of you now. I would love to hear what you do that is "green", so please leave your comments. Thanks for reading!
