A Month of Earth Days - Entry 1

Earth Day is this month so I thought some entries of easy things to do or change in order to become a little more green was appropriate.

I think the issue with becoming Green and the whole movement is that people think it is expensive and that it takes a lot of effort. For some things this is very true - an organic apple is just going to be more expensive compared to a conventional apple. But I think there are a lot of other areas that can be cheaper and some only require a little more effort.

Just think about recycling today. Most people I know recycle, maybe not as much as they could/should, but they still recycle. If you think about recycling and trash it is much easier to just throw everything into your trash can instead of having separate cans for trash and recycling. I think one reason is works so well is that it has become so mainstream. If you are over at someone's house for a beer it isn't odd to ask where you should put recycling.

I think the recycling piece of the reduce, reuse, and recycling is very accepted. Those other two pieces are ones that are a little harder for some. A lot of people don't like consignment stores - my husband was part of that, until we had kids. Most of my kids clothes come from consignments shops - this helps us save money because it is so much less expensive, and we are helping to reduce by not buying new clothes which would increase the demand to produce more and we are obviously reusing because we are reusing other people's clothes. In this case if you can get over the whole other people's clothes thing - by the way I find plenty of clothes at these stores that still have the original tags on them - I think this could go a long way and it is saving you money.

So as you go throw your day looks for ways that you can help reduce your intake of things and reuse them in original and new ways. I wash all of my plastic bags and use them several times before I throw them out. Again - this is saving me money because I don't buy as many and it just takes the effort of washing the bag.

Let me know what you are doing to help reduce, reuse, and recycle this month.