Go Green... or Go Home!

I suppose this post would have been more timely if I had posted it a few weeks ago (Earth Day!), but I guess there's really never a bad time to talk about "going green," is there?

Within the last year or so, I've become more and more conscious about "being green." Thankfully, I live in a county that has always had recycling, so it's not that I was ever ungreen. But I've started to realize that we can definitely do more.

As far as recycling... we have always been extremely diligent about recycling every single thing we possibly can. All paper, cardboard (including cereal boxes, pasta boxes, etc.), packaging, plastics, etc. All of that has always gone out to our blue recycling bins to be taken away by the recycling collectors. The nice thing is that we don't have to sort. All recyclables go in the same blue bin and for us, there is no fuss.

In addition, we have to pay a $0.05 deposit on soda and beer cans/bottles, so we've always recycled those, too. We have to return them to recycling centers at our local grocery stores to get our $0.05 deposits back! The $0.05 on every can and bottle really adds up over time, so it's so worth it to return them--not only is it green in terms of the environment, but it results in a bit more green for your wallet, too!

When we moved into our house in 2005, we installed a programmable thermostat right away. In the winter, we keep it at 68 degrees when we're at home, but drop it down to 56 (yes, 56!) when we are in bed (under our nice, fluffy, cozy, completely warm down comforter), and also while we are gone to work. The thermostat timer bumps it back up to 68 degrees about a 1/2 hour before we wake up, and again 1/2 hour before we come home from work, so we are never freezing waiting for the temperatures to come back up.

In the summer, we do the same for the air conditioning--keep it at 78-80 degrees when we're at home, but let it get up to 85 degrees while we're at work. I'll admit that the main reason we installed the programmable thermostat was for money savings, but it's certainly good for the environment as well.

OK, so those are things we've been doing for years. Now onto the changes we've made more recently.

We have started using reusable bags almost exclusively--for groceries, trips to Target, BJ's, etc. We have four of them, and it is the perfect number for my weekly grocery trips. The groceries for the two of us always manage to fit inside the four bags (aside from gallons of milk, bags of apples, cartons of soda, etc. which we never bag anyway). We bought the reusable bags probably a year ago now, but we weren't always great about using them. We've recently become really committed to it, and I feel great about that--especially after seeing a special on TV about how horrible plastic bags are for the Earth. I was actually quite horrified by it, to be honest.

Related to the plastic grocery bags... for several months now, we've been buying biodegradable bags to clean up after Tessa outside. I know, I know! Paying for bags to pick up poop with! It sounds crazy, but we have to use SO MANY bags for this. Previously, we were using the plastic grocery bags we collected, or the plastic bags that our newspapers come in. But again, I learned how absolutely horrible those are for the environment, so we wanted to stop using them. Not only that, but with the reusable grocery bags, we don't even have enough of them on hand anymore to do the dirty job.

Since we live in a complex and we don't technically have our own yard, we are required to pick up after Tess immediately after she goes--every time. We don't have the choice to conserve bags by only doing the clean-up every couple of days. SO we're doing what we can by using the biodegradable bags.

Currently, I'm on the hunt to "green" our lunches. We already use reusable lunch bags, but we are still guilty of using ziploc bags for sandwiches, baby carrots, grapes, chips/crackers, etc. This week, I've been researching reusable containers for these items so that we can stop using plastic bags for this, too.

I know what we're doing isn't much, but we're trying. Unfortunately, a lot of the eco-friendly stuff is more expensive than the norm, and we don't exactly have a lot of extra cash to be throwing around for this stuff. Therefore, budget friendly options are always well received in this house!

So, I've told you what we've been doing... what are the things you do that are green? I'd love to hear other ideas that we can perhaps add to our routine.

I challenge all of you to look at ways that you can make small changes in your lives that will help make a BIG difference.