some things we do for our environment
I wanted to get a list started here regarding our “green”-ness, unfortunately that word is getting a little overused and stale, but if for a good cause, why not.
So, here are some things that Dean and I have been doing for quite some time now to be more friendly to our mother planet:
* Recycling – plastic (what they will take…which is NOT enough), aluminum, glass. Now, where we live, we do not have curb-side recycling, we have to take it to a place out by Nanny Pop-Pops and load and unload ourselves. So, if you have curbside recycling, are you using it?? If not, why not?? Tell me you are not also using paper plates and napkins and plastic forks like our neighbor family….ugh.
* Clothesline – I had Dean hang this for me the second we moved in. I just LOVE my clothesline! It always smells good out there with the wet clothes breezing in the wind. We live out in the country where there are no idiotic restrictions on things like clotheslines….god forbid.
* Work from home – yep, I have not been to a gas station to fill my tank in well over a month. Not only am I saving on gas, but not sitting in traffic fuming the planet up for sometimes an hour each way. And you know what? I am a significantly more effective employee since I have started working from home over a year ago…and why not?
*Composting – this would work better if we have more fruits and vegetables than we currently do (oh, it is on the list..) but nevertheless, we like to compost any matter like this. Doogs likes to sniff the pile.
* Rain-water collection – we have a 305 gallon tank in which we collect our rain water. Why in the world is this not a practice for our water supply rather than sucking it out of the reservoirs??? This makes absolutely no sense to me and really hit home after watching a doc about the guy who built the original EarthShips, who went over to Thailand after the Tsunami and built a home for them out of old tires and sand in which the center of the house was a huge cistern in which the roof collected rain water for them since the tsunami had flooded all of their wells with salt water and they did not have fresh drinking water. In a country in which they have over 200 days of rain a year, they were dependent on the water coming out of the ground rather than the sky, which was more than plentiful. So, we should all take a page out of that book and look to see how we can utilize rainwater collection to reduce the drag on the water table. We use ours only for irrigating our plants at this point, but a plan for whole house rain water usage has been brewing for some time.
Cloth grocery bags – nuff said
* SolaTube lighting– These have been incredible. We keep asking each other “who left the light on?” in the rooms that we had them installed in. Nothing is better than heatless bright natural light for free from the sun.
Here are some things that we would like to add to the list in the near future:
* Solar – come on, we live in Texas. Why would this not make sense??
* Rain water collection for the whole house
* Electric or bio-fuel VW Thing – or other vehicle
So what is on your list?