What Do You Do to Live a Greener Life?

Easiest thing you can do to be more green and contripute less to global warming... Go veggie or vegan. Research it animals cause more problems than all the cars in the world. That is just the cows, pigs, etc in the USA! So that is one of the best things you can do. go research it.. it's very interesting. Plus you get all the health benefits and the weight benefits which are all nice in my opinion. Healthier, leaner, and helping the enviro. Sounds ideal to me.

L.,

One area that many people don't think about being green is how to drive less but maintain a normal lifestyle with kids. I plan my grocery list on a monthly basis so that I shop for food once a month, but stop at the store a few other times a month to get milk and produce and requests from the school - but do it when I am driving by anyway. I also plan errand days carefully so I make one efficient round trip. This saves me a lot of money and time as well as being better for the environment.

I never drive around looking to see if stores carry things. I always call ahead and ASK if they have exactly what I want in stock. It also saves me time because I can ask them to hold it at the front desk for me. This week I called Home Depot and told them the paint color I wanted. They had it mixed and ready before I got there so I didn't have to wait.

I order things online a lot. Even the post office will let you request flat rate shipping boxes sent directly to your home. You print off the shipping label from your home computer, pay online with a credit card, and the postal worker picks up your packages with the mail. Moms never have to take a toddler into the post office again. Hooray!

We carpool for violin lessons, preschool, church youth night, etc. I sign up my kids for gymnastics and swimming lessons where everyone goes to the same place at the same time. No dropping off one kid to pick up someone else at another location.

Good luck,
S.

I have a website with ideas - http://www.livegreeneveryday.com

L.

Just an FYI, since you mentioned composting in an apartment-

Consider indoor composting with a worm bin. It's awesome fun. Make sure you get the right worms-red wigglers. Check out Laverme's Worms (google it online) and they will set you up.

I've been indoor composting for a year now. I just LOVE the smell of rich soil in the winter. The worms don't stink and my 4-year son loves to dig in the dirt and go worm hunting. I use the compost with house plants.

Wow. So many things. This is what we do.
- take the bus. Don't drive to work.
- CFLs
- Wash in cold in a HE washing machine and then line dry our clothes (in winter we use drying racks around the house...benefit is that it adds moisture to the air)
- Recyclable menstrual products. Sounds a little out there, I realize, but so much greener than all those nasty plastic applicators and pads in a landfill. Use a diva cup or cloth pads. www.mamaclothonline.com is a great site
- Turn down the heat
- cloth diapers
- no plastic bottles. Buy a water bottle and fill it from the tap
- reusable grocery bags
- turn off lights
- no more magazines
- get books from the library.
- become a member of a CSA instead of buying from the grocery store
- eat foods in season (no raspberries in January)
- meal planning (fewer leftovers or trips to the grocery store)

There are more and more but those might be a good start

1) drive an all-electric vehicle (just replaced DH's ancient home built electric truck with a Wheego Whip http://wheego.net/ ) and a 2004 Toyota Prius for longer trips.

2) Live less than 5 miles from work and school

3) Reinsulated and weatherproofed our 1947 house

4) Use reusable bags at all stores. http://baggubag.com/#Shop These are my favorites because they sell a little "purse sized" bag that can hold about a dozen or more it is easy to carry in the car and bring into the store and still keep hands free for kids and such.

5) All natural cleaners (make my own) and soaps

6) Buy used clothing, toys, books, etc.

7) CFL bulbs and switching over to LED where practical

8) Water saving shower heads and let our lawn go dormant in drought times

9) Recycle everything that is accepted in our community

10) Cloth wipes instead of toilet paper in 1 of the 2 bathrooms. And use clothnapkins, cloth towels, and cloth rags instead of paper towels, paper napkins, etc. The only paper towels we buy are for when we are doing messy construction type work with caulk or other non-washable substances.

There are tons of other little things...power to you in your efforts :)

I buy all of my green cleaning products from a company that was the first in the world to be certified Climate Neutral by the EPA - now that's GREEN! (Shaklee)

No mess, no odors, less expensive than making your own. Work better. Always safe. Always works. Always green.

www.shaklee.net/K./getclean or
http://K..myshaklee.com

Also check out your "body burden" at www.greengoeswitheverything.com

Live Green!
K.

We try to live green too (although we are always trying to look for more ways) at our house. Some of the things we do are: bringing our own reusable bags to the store when we go shopping, recycling all the plastic/glass/paper/cardboard, etc. that we can, only using cold water to wash clothes and not doing any small loads...only full ones or we wait until there is enough clothes for a full one, using compact fluorescent light bulbs in all our lights (they use less energy and they last a LONG time in our experience), keeping the thermostat at 65 in the winter (if we didn't have a baby we'd probably turn it down lower at night) instead of at a really high temperature and only using the central air when necessary in the summer, and I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them right now. Hope that helps!

Hi L.,
I would be interested to know your receipe for homemade laundry soap. I am currently using one I found on the TipHero website, but I am not satisfied with its ability to get stains out. You could check out tiphero website, they have tons of ideas from real people to live green and be thrifty.

Here is what we do:

-Recycle everything possible
-Use cloth diapers
-make our own laundry soap
-use our own ing. for cleaning stuff (lemon juice, baking soda, etc.
-walk instead of driving when possible
-eat organically and locally
-don't buy prepackaged stuff (cuts down on the packaging having to be recycled)
-changed out all of our light bulbs.

Like you we are always looking for ideas too. Hopefully you get some others.

1/19/10

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