Go Green. Just Do It!

Go GREEN!
Do it for yourself, your family, the earth, your future, or just do it for Cannon!

When I became pregnant, Brett and I became more conscious the things we could do to be more earth friendly.

We recycle! This is an EASY thing to do to make a difference. This doesn't take much effort. In Savannah we bought 3 white trash cans, put them in our storage room outside and loaded them with our sorted recycleables and Brett took them to be recycled twice a month. Once we moved here it got easier. Now, we just fill up a bin with everything (glass, plastics, tin and aluminum) and the city picks it up for us. They do not pick up our cardboard which we have a lot of but we have not let that stop us! For a while Brett would take it to work and put it in a recycling bin that was near his office, they have since moved it. On Sunday, he loaded up our cardboard that we have been saving since January and decided we would find a place to take it. Even though the recycling places were closed. We ended up taking it to a school and placing it in their recycling bin. I was a little nervous about this. Among our cereal boxes were mailing boxes with our names and address. Would they notice on Monday that the container was full and report us for illegal "recycling". There were no signs posted that said, "Private Use", etc. We assured ourselves that we could not possibly get in trouble for recycling! Could we?

Okay, back to the subject at hand.

We use cloth diapers most of the time (there are occasions like outings, trips, etc. when disposables are just a little easier). I mop my floor with vinegar and water. (Smile, Cheryl). We use reusable shopping bags and if we forget them, we recycle the plastic ones! Although, you should see the amount of bags in my garage right now, just waiting to be recycled. I have a hard time remembering my shopping bags. We stopped buying bottled water and use a Brita (this was a big thing). we used to buy sooooooo much bottled water.

Amendment: I forgot to mention a very important thing: Compact FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS! We use them in EVERY light in our house and convinced it lowers our bill tremendously! (FYI: every American home replaced just one light bulb with a qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars).

Anyway, we do a few things to help reduce our carbon footprint. We could definitely do more (like get rid of our SUV).

Basically, the reason for this post is to 1) encourage you to think about how you could be a little more green and 2)to tell you about my new friend and this new challenge.

I use waaaay to many paper towels. I have been thinking a lot about how I use cloth diapers and then use an entire roll of paper towels preparing one meal. Hum. Should I do something about this? This has been a thought that I mentioned to Brett, but never did anything about.

Well, my friend decided to challenge herself to see if she could stop her obsession with paper towels and Clorox wipes. She succeeded...and she is trying to encourage me to do the same.

Can I do it? I am not so sure. I read her blog challenge and still went out and bought a huge pack of Bounty Select-a-Size to replenish my stock. Should I finish this pack before I begin the challenge?

I am not convinced yet, but I am really excited to have a new friend to challenge me to be more green.

Do you think she will have me giving up toilet paper next? (Do not get any ideas, Joy!)

To be continued...