Recently we set up a TerraCycle collection program for my son's school. We collect certain items and for each item TerraCycle donates 2 cents to the school. Its a little money and great big feeling of happiness that our world is going to be a cleaner place.
Recently, Barbara picked up a new clock for my nightstand. It wasn't new-from-the-store, but it was new to me, and looks the same as any new-from-the-store clock would look one month after you took it out of its package. The clock it replaced was purchased used and then donated to a charity.
Greg really wanted our son to have a lawn to on play in the summer. When we bring out the sprinkler in the summer for some relief on the hottest days, our back yard just turned into a mud bowl so he finally got me to agree on putting in grass.
We went back and forth and back and forth reading all the articles we could find about weather its better to have a synthetic lawn or a natural lawn. Most of the articles concluded with, "Well, it depends. . ." but none dared to offer even a faulty set of standards to help us make a decision.
Next to food, climate control is usually the next largest area of energy consumption. This includes heating and air conditioning. These are the things that keep us comfortable in our homes, workplaces, shopping mall, gym etc.
Now I can honestly say I have done this one and its really enlightening.
I first recommend that you stop throwing food scraps in your garbage if you havnt already done so. Its a minor adjustment if you are already composting your scraps. You will need to come up with something to do with your meat & bone scraps for the week. Ask your kids to bring home their lunch garbage from school for the week and you bring yours home from work.
We used stopjunkmail.org
They have a number of different methods you can use to eliminate junk mail depending on what type of junk mail you get.
This is from their front page:
"It takes 17 trees to make a ton of paper. That means nearly 100 million trees get used for junk mail every year in the U.S. Let's keep the trees in the forest, and get the junk mail out of your life."
Like many Californians we shop at our local farmer's market, turn off the lights, maintain our home, buy recycled goods and commute.
My husband and I put all of our data into the Cool Climate Calculator and found we are doing really well for an American and even substantially better than the average Californian, but our commutes undid a lot of the CO2 we were saving in other areas.
We have 3 basic types for socks in our home. Cotton socks, fancy wool socks and our son's sock which are usually beyond redemption when they go out. Here are two projects to help you reuse both old cotton socks and old wool socks.
Cotton Socks into Rags~
We have been planning on setting up rain barrels in our yard for some time now, but it was the recent weather report, predicting one more rainshower, that spurred us to get moving in time to catch it.