Baby green steps that any family can do…
June 5, 2009 by Jennifer
Some green steps are large, some medium, some small, and some so tiny and simple, it feels like nothing to do them. The super baby green steps below are so easy that anyone can do them and yet they all add up to a healthier, happier planet…
- Use your shower towel twice to save water, energy, and money; not to mention time doing laundry. Bonus points if you use it all week. You’re clean anyhow after a shower.
- Ditch your ATM receipt. One little slip of paper is nothing, but if you lined all those ATM receipts up (from everyone in the world) imagine how many that would be. It’d be a long old line of new paper.
- Put a pitcher of water in the fridge vs. waiting for the water to get cold when you want a drink.
- Stop idling already. Make a goal to turn off your car if you sit still for 15-20 seconds or more. Like at the school, or waiting for a pal to come out of their house.
- Clean the long rubber seal on your fridge door. When it gets all crusty and gross, the door doesn’t form a tight seal and energy is wasted. It takes mere seconds to wipe down with a cloth.
- Buy recycled toothbrushes. Preserve makes inexpensive recycled toothbrush that are sold most places now.
- On your next walk in the great outdoors pick up one piece of trash and put it in a garbage bin.
- During daytime hours pull up your blinds. I can’t tell you how many homes I’ve been in where the lights are on, the shades down, and it’s daytime! Crazy – yes, I thought so too.
- Carry a reusable lunch sack vs. a paper bag.
- The next time you go grocery shopping, buy two items in bulk vs. two items in over packaged boxes and bags. Bonus points if you take your own reusable bulk bags to put the items in.
What baby steps are you trying at home?
[image via stock.xchng]
We put a bucket in the shower to collect the water that runs while waiting for the hot water. It also collects some of the shower water while we’re showering. We use this water to flush the toilet. It only saves a flush or two a day, but saving 2 flushes a day is the equivalent saving over 700 flushes a year! Let’s not waste water!
I knitted dishtowels and wipers (washcloths for the kitchen) this saves us on paper towels and buying towels and cloths from the big box retailers. (I bought the yarn at a mom and pop store. I also knitted washcloths using cotton and nettle (for exfoliation) for the bathroom which means we don’t have to buy those plastic lufa things! Little steps are the best!
Right along with turning of the lights … unplug things that you aren’t using. Our coffee pot and our microwave both use energy when they’re plugged in but not actively running. So do our (many) chargers, DVD players, etc.
On the blinds thing, just be sure it’s not so hot a day you’ll heat the house up enough to need the air conditioner on. We live in an area that gets pretty hot during the summer, and if the blinds were to be open all day we’d be even hotter in the house than we get with them shut.
In the summer, our focus is mostly on keeping the house “cool”, which for us often means letting it get to 85 or so before even thinking about the air conditioner. It can easily get hotter in here. We find it can save more energy to keep the windows well covered, even using old cardboard boxes to block still more heat.
As soon as the day cools enough, our blinds and windows are open for that wonderful evening air flow.
I have found that I can use the family sized fry pan that came with my cookware to make a complete meal. In the past I thought it was only to fry or cook a really big meal!
Place a couple tablespoons of natural butter or canola oil in the pan. Open frozen packages of whole kernel corn, green peas, carrots and drop them in three separate pile in the pan.
Add a couple teaspoons of water and cover with the lid. In 7 minutes the vegetables are steamed and do not absorb the taste of the one next to them.
I have found they really require no additional seasoning…they are sweet and tender!
I serve this with sliced turkey.
I have saved on electricity, clean up and effort!