What Small Green Steps Have You Taken? Ready for More?
Apr 22, 2010 Environmentally Friendly
A few months ago I joined the One Small Change challenge. Today being Earth Day, I thought I would share how things went and where to go from here. Plus I’ll share some Earth Day tips from around the web.
How Did One Small Change Go?
My ability to stick with my changes for One Small Change were pretty varied. Getting to the co-op for fresh, mostly local and/or organic produce has been difficult to say the least. Saturday mornings just have not been the right time for that to be easy for me. But I’m determined to keep doing it when the schedule works out. I love the variety available.
Washing my hair with baking soda and vinegar is actually working pretty well now. I’ve used shampoo every here and there, but it’s maybe every 3 weeks. My hair seems to be adjusting pretty well. So far no complaints from family members. The baking soda and vinegar do a very nice job of keeping my hair clean.
Eating at least one vegetarian meal a week has been very challenging. The month I chose to do it in had a lot of disruptions to my routine, which meant more meals were put together as fast as possible, too little spare time to find new recipes. But once again, I mean to stick to this.
I didn’t even come up with a new resolution for this month. Those schedule disruptions continued in too far. Things are easing up now.
Each of these changes sounded pretty easy, but it’s amazing how hard it is in real life. The ones dealing with food require pretty serious changes in my routine. The hair care routine isn’t really much different from washing my hair more conventionally, so it has been easier to do.
From here, of course, I’ll just keep trying to live as eco friendly a life as I can manage. How easy that will be I just don’t know. But this is Earth Day, and that means people have spent all week posting suggestions.
More Ways to Go Green – Earth Day Blog Posts from Around the Web
Green and Clean Mom offers 10 Ways to Make Earth Day Everyday with tips such as spending less money, using post consumer recycled toilet paper and eating local.
Mother Nature Network of course has plenty of posts on the topic of Earth Day, but I like the reminder to do things, not just attend local Earth Day celebrations. I especially like the reminder to not eat meat for the Day. The guerrilla gardening tip is fun too. My husband loves making seed bombs. And don’t forget the great reminder to let your representatives know you care about our planet!
Mashable isn’t a site focused on green topics, but they get into the act with
5 More Ways to Go Green for Earth Day. I rather think kids will enjoy their link to Green My Parents. Could be a good tool for helping your kids learn about the very real financial and environmental costs of your lifestyle.
Blisstree shares 10 places to volunteer during Earth Week, and they share links to Serve.org or Volunteermatch.org just in case none of the opportunities they list are near you.
Read, Read, Read!
Books are wonderful for learning more about what you and others can do for the environment. If you know you’ll only read the book once, try to get it from your local library. If you’re like me and reread just about everything, your own copy isn’t that bad a deal. If you already own a Kindle
Here are some books to consider. I haven’t read all of them, but they look promising, whether by being good for the environment or being good for your family.
I have to start out with two of my favorites, Free-Range Kids and Last Child in the Woods. They aren’t specifically about the environment, but how else are we to get kids to care about the environment if they don’t experience it? That includes giving them the freedom so many of us had as kids.
More titles to consider:
Girls Gone Green
Green Guide Families: The Complete Reference for Eco-Friendly Parents
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It
Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—Our Ride to the Renewable Future
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet
Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution
Tags: earth day, eco friendly, Green Step By Step, one small change
Being Eco Friendly Despite the Disapproval of Others
Apr 21, 2010 Environmentally Friendly
There are many things that makes being eco friendly challenging for individuals. The lack of support they often face can be a big one.
This is something my husband and I deal with at times. His parents aren’t precisely fans of the environmental movement, although they’re very good about recycling. But they also make disparaging remarks about environmentalism.
Sometimes what it takes is showing how much more effective being eco friendly can be. They weren’t too sure about our choice to cloth diaper our youngest, but they are certainly enthusiastic about the likelihood that she will potty train at a younger age than the other two. They can get behind that idea easily.
In many cases, that’s what it takes. Don’t just phrase it all as being better for the environment when people say they don’t see the point. Show them how it benefits you or them personally. Most people can get behind that.
It doesn’t always work, of course. The value presented has to be one that appeals to them more than the convenience or comfort of doing things the usual way.
It’s also a simple fact of life that not everyone will approve of every single thing you do. It doesn’t matter what you do. Someone is going to find something to disagree with or disapprove of.
If you’re trying to bring people over to your way of thinking when they disapprove of your environmental beliefs, don’t start a ton of arguments with them unless that’s what works with that person. Many people do better with being given the information regularly until it works its way into their thoughts as their own idea. Pushing isn’t always the solution.
That can be hard to face, especially considering the urgency of many environmental topics. But if it works better than shouting at each other, you use the tools you have to.
The topic of global warming and climate change meets disparagement from many people, for example. Even if they agree that the planet is overall warming, many say it’s not human caused and that we’ll cope with what happens. The very real human costs aren’t real enough to them to make a difference, and the future is too vague.
In this area I often change the focus. See what they know about ocean acidification, pollution in general, the problems farmland has due to overuse of fertilizers, the problems with pesticides, and so forth. These are topics you can get into that may be concrete enough to get some agreement that action in that area is warranted. It’s better than no action.
Sometimes you just have to face that some people will never change. For some it seems like practically a matter of personal honor to disregard the environment. They’re not going to change their minds easily and they may be vocal about their refusals.
You may not be able to change everyone’s mind about even the simplest of environmentally friendly choices, but you can try to work with people to help them see where they are willing to change.
Tags: climate change, disapproval, environmentalsm, global warming, ocean acidification, pollution
Green Your Personal Finances and Cut the Hassle
Apr 20, 2010 Eco Friendly Home
I don’t know about you, but I hate getting both bills and bank statements in the mail. Even when they’re relatively good news, they probably come with various ads or inserts that do nothing more than add to the recycle bin.
Not to mention, you know, having to keep track of when everything’s due. There are many other things I’d rather think about. With so many companies having websites, there are few companies where I can’t avoid getting statements in the mail.
Go Electronic!
Getting electronic statements is much nicer than getting paper ones. Sure, they still throw ads in, but they’re easier to ignore, even if you have to click past.
But my favorite part about electronic bills is that most companies will let you schedule your payments. You don’t have to remember the due date; just make sure the bill is reasonable and the funds to pay it are available in your bank account. You can have an automatic payment take care of the rest.
More and more companies are either simply stopping paper statements once you go electronic or repeatedly requesting you to go all electronic until you do so that they can stop sending paper statements. They like saving money, both in terms of not having to print and send all that paper mail, and by not having to pay people to process payments that come in through the mail.
Tags: bills, mail, personal finance
Support Women’s Education Worldwide to Help Fight Overpopulation
Apr 19, 2010 Environmentally Friendly
The size of the human population on this planet has much to do with how much damage our species does. There’s a lot of us, and while in some countries the population is shrinking, in others it’s still growing.
There are a lot of reasons for this. In many areas, a large family is still needed to ensure that the parents will have enough support. In many areas, too many children still die at young ages.
I’m no fan of telling people how many kids they should have. That’s a very personal decision. But I am a firm believer in doing what we can to help people choose to have smaller families.
Educated Women Choose to Have Fewer Women on Average
This isn’t a blanket statement saying that all educated women choose to have a small family. Some choose larger ones. But there are a number of studies that show that giving women more education results in smaller average family sizes.
Other factors have an impact too, of course. Women who marry young have larger average family sizes. Some cultures push much harder for large family sizes. Access to any sort of family planning effects family size. And you can’t forget the many who believe that having as many children as God gives them is the right way to live.
Is a Smaller Family Size Good for Everyone?
I hope the answer to that question is as obvious to you as it is to me. Of course it isn’t the best solution for everyone. Different situations mean people have different needs.
But it is a good thing for many. Fewer children means the parents have fewer expenses related to raising them. It may be easier to educate them. The mother has more chances to earn money, whether at home or at a job.
It also is easier on the mother’s body. Pregnancy has its risks, and these are higher in poorer countries. It may be a wonderful risk in many ways, and most women undertake those risks willingly, but the risk is still there.
How Does Education Help?
The more education a woman gets, the more likely she is to know what resources are available to help her control how many children she bears. She’s also more likely goals beyond bearing children, and more likely to be able to work toward those goals.
It’s not all easy, of course. If the culture she’s in is not accepting of smaller family sizes or of contraception, she’s going to face pressure. But in most cases acceptance increases over time.
Women who get an education marry later on average. I don’t mean “get a college education,” I mean even a few years of school. This means they’re more likely to start their families a little later, and so probably have fewer children.
She may also be better able to provide educational opportunities for her children. Much depends on what is available, but also an educated mother is better able to help in her children’s education.
More educated women also have more options open to them in how they can contribute to the economy. They can speak out for their community.
How Do We Help?
The best way to help women worldwide get more access to education is to support organizations that help make schools that are open to girls. Central Asia Institute for example, works to create community-based education in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a focus on girls.
Wanna Go Camping Sooner?
Apr 16, 2010 Going Green
Well, you don’t have to go camping necessarily. I suppose you could just make a day trip of it. From April 17-25, 2010, all National Parks are offering free admission. Sounds like a lot of fun to me, and visit the link to get all the details.
The various parks may have different activities. Saturday April 24 is for kids to learn to be Junior Rangers at certain locations. There are a variety of projects for volunteers and other events. you’ll have to check to see what’s happening in parks in your range.
Even if you don’t decide to go camping, this is a great chance to head out to one National Park or another. For some parks this is a pretty significant savings; others are normally pretty inexpensive to visit, but free is free!
Tags: camping
