In honor of Earth Day I decided to post things we try to do in our daily lives to help the environment. As I’m trying to think of things, I’m realizing that we don’t do as much as we probably should!
-We have huge bins in our pantry to recycle everything we can recycle: glass, aluminum, plastic, newspaper, and cardboard. Once every few weeks (or when the bins start overflowing) we gather everything up and make a trip downtown to recycle everything. Unfortunately, our apartment complex doesn’t recycle. I’ve asked them about it, but they said it “wasn’t an option.” Whatever.
-We re-use plastic grocery bags for lunches, trash bags, etc, and the ones we don’t use we recycle at Walmart.
-We still seem to accumulate a lot of those plastic grocery bags though! So a few months ago my mom got me a reusable, insulated grocery bag. I try to use it every time we go to the grocery store (Tom looks at me like I’m crazy), even if we’re not getting items that need to stay cold.
-We turn off the air/heat and open the windows if it’s nice outside (although, I have to admit, that is more for the budget than the environment).
-We bought a faucet filter and have a PUR water pitcher instead of buying cases and cases of plastic water bottles (I was never one for the plastic water bottles, me and my PUR pitcher go back a long way)
-Unplugging appliances/electronics during the day when not in use (again, more for budget than for being green!)
-Wash clothes in cold water.
-I dry most of my clothes on the drying rack or hanging up in the spare shower. Although, this is more to preserve my clothes than to save energy from the dryer. I also am working on convincing Tom to use the iron to get rid of wrinkles instead of throwing a shirt in the dryer for 5 minutes every morning ;)
-In public bathrooms I always try to use the hand dryers instead of paper towels.
Here’s some things I would like for us to start doing to stay green:
-Buy produce from local farmer’s markets instead of grocery stores (even though this means getting up early on sleep-in Saturdays!
-Switch to all paperless statements (I have such a trust issue with cc companies and banks, I like having things in writing…..most of our stuff has online statements but some doesn’t….like our crappy bank).
-Do a better job of convincing our apartment complex to start recycling…..a lot of college kids live here. I was one of those once, do you know how many aluminum cans and glass bottles they go through?!?! ;)
I'm sure there's LOTS more but at the risk of being late for work that's all I have time for right now!
Stay green :)
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It is very hard to get apartment complexes to recycle. We also haul recycling to the ghetto recycling center. I think more people would do it if it weren't in a questionable side of town. You should also join us for the farmers market. Very fun, lots of puppies and sometimes we go for pancakes after....as a treat.
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