Juice and Soda bottles

Besides recycling your large plastic juice and soda bottles I decided to reuse them. I fill them with water and put them in my food storage. It's always a good idea to have bottled water available in case something happens and you are without running water.

Household batteries

My camera takes up a ton of batteries and I have never recycled them before. After doing a bit of research on it I realized it's not as difficult as it seems. I looked into rechargeable batteries to see if they were better for the environment and it turns out they have more heavy metals in them than regular batteries, BUT if you recycle them then it is worth it and does help the environment, if you don't, you aren't being as environmentally conscious as you thought. I found a great website that tells you where you can recycle your rechargeable batteries, you just enter your zip code. The places you can take them to be recycled are actually stores you already shop at like Best Buy, Target, or Sears! How easy is that? Click here to check it out.

Milk jugs

When I lived in New York, our elementary school sold milk in little bags. It's a great idea! (Although someone needs to at least explain to you that when you stab your straw into the bag to keep the other end covered by your finger or you'll shoot milk a few feet :))



Did you know if we switched our jugs to plastic bags like several countries we could reduce our waste by up to 75%!

Although the U.S. is probably not ready for the milk "bags", we WILL start to see a new design for milk jugs that are more cost efficient (meaning cheaper prices for us) and better for the environment. Click here to read about them and see a picture. So when buying milk, shop at stores that sell the new design.

Do you know..

...your carbon footprint? It's said that each of us would need to plant 4 trees every month to compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide we generate.

Green Dimes

For $20 you can sign up for green dimes, which will help you reduce your amount of junk mail, they will also plant 5 trees in your name with part of the one time fee. If you're too cheap to spend the twenty dollars, (like me) they have a free version. It's a little more work but still can drastically reduce all of that junk mail and possibly help reduce the amount of garbage you throw out and trees being cut down in waste. I definitely plan on getting the premium version in the future. What a great idea! Click here to look into it.

Plastic Bags

This might seem a little bit silly, but I always felt guilty for all of the garbage bags our family uses. I couldn't afford to buy the environmentally friendly bags so I realized I could get a smaller garbage and use my plastic grocery bags as garbage bags and hopefully be more particular about what I was putting in the garbage. Then I could use any extras I still had to recycle, or better yet, use the new reusable/biodegradable bags that most stores are carrying and only get the bags I need for garbage, then I don't have to buy plastic garbage bags at all, which saves me money too! I also like to shop at the "bag your own" type places that way I make sure I'm putting to good use the bags that I'm taking and not taking more than I need.

As a side note, the debate over that all too familiar question "paper or plastic?" comes the answer, either, or better yet, neither! They both leave just about the same footprint.

Composting

So it seems like this would be something way beyond the average persons feasibility, but I realized last winter I created a compost pile without even knowing it. We had a big cardboard box that was sitting up against the back of our shed, after the wind had blown leaves back there, it created a nice area for compost! So since I have a garden spot that is in need of some rich aerated soil I figured I would create a compost from the stuff I had lying around. Now, I'm not so crazy about it that I'm willing to go out and buy worms, I'll just let what's out there do what it wants. So I'm going to cover my garden with the rotten apples that have fallen from my apple tree, plus the leaves we've raked from our huge tree out front, and some shredded portions of the Sunday paper. After the paper and leaves get packed down, it will create a prime spot for compost. You can add pretty much any organic garbage (produce, etc.), leaves, grass clippings, Newspaper (black and white only) and cardboard. The cool thing is you can continue to add stuff all year long! This saves on garbage output and gives you nice lush soil. If you really want to get into it you can create your own composter that can even stay in your home, but you have to buy worms, which I personally don't want to have to deal with.

Parabens, just a thought

Do you know what's in your daily moisturizer? A lot of people haven't heard of these and I was shocked when I heard about them. They are chemicals (nature based) that can be found in MANY shampoos, cosmetics, lotions, deodorants, etc. There are very FEW studies that show they are bad for your health, BUT, they have been linked to BREAST CANCER. Click here for an interesting article on the effects of parabens. If anything they are skin irritants. Growing up I had extremely sensitive skin. Though for most things I buy what's cheapest, for my skin I try to buy daily moisturizers that are paraben-free. Once you start looking, it's interesting to see who uses them and who doesn't (most do even the ones you think wouldn't, I won't name names, you can look for yourself). Choosing companies that are interested in preserving the environment and who choose environmentally friendly products also are likely to create products that are healthier for us and vice versa. Just a thought.

Plastic Water Bottles

Okay this has got to be one of the biggest things you can do to help the environment. Now I'm not saying you should never buy another plastic water bottle again, because that just isn't realistic. They are very handy and it's nice to just toss when it's served its purpose. But, you can drastically REDUCE your out take of bottles which will in turn drastically reduce your garbage. Unfortunately that leaves the problem of purified drinking water. I instead use a water filtration pitcher. You invest about $20 or so for the pitcher and replace the filter about every month. The filters can get kind of pricey, but I figure it's just about the same as I would be spending on buying bottled water. But after doing it for a while now I've figured out that the GENERIC filters do just as good of a job and you can get them for much cheaper and most of them work with the basic BRITA or PUR filter pitchers. On top of that, if you shop WALGREENS you can get their brand of filter FREE AFTER REBATE. See my other blog SLICKSAVER to find out the details on that. So you could actually end up saving quite a bit of money in the end. Now I just use bottled water every so often when I'm going on a trip or something, where I know I won't have access to drinks.

If you still feel like you can't give up your bottled water, you can switch to a different brand that understands the plight of plastic on our landfills like NESTLE, who has created a new bottle that has reduced the amount of plastic in each bottle by 30%.
Just remember that these bottles are for a one time use and really shouldn't be used more than that because if they are exposed to heat they can emit toxins into your water.
If you have any other ideas in this area feel free to leave a comment!

Green Goers Everywhere!

Have you been desiring to change the way you affect the world? As a young stay at home mom of two, I have watched one-by-one the switch to GREEN. I have wanted to be a part of it, but have struggled with knowing the really practical things that I can do that don't cost any money, cuz lets face it - I can't afford to go put solar panels on my roof. So I hope my posts inspire you to do the little things in your life to help our ENVIRONMENT. Because it's true,(whether you like it or not) if we all did a little, we could do a lot.