Category Archives: Environmentally Friendly

Life Beyond Green Guilt

It’s ridiculously easy to feel guilty about your buying habits. It pretty much comes with the whole environmental awareness bit. You always just know you could be doing more.

But that’s why I found this post the other day on Green Options so good. It’s about coping with green guilt.

The challenge is to simply learn how to determine the true cost of the things you do buy. You’re always going to have to balance transportation with other environmental impacts, but you do the best you can.

One of the suggestions is something I really want to work on, and that’s trying thrift stores before buying items such as new clothing. It’s a way to improve on the entire “reuse” section of being environmentally aware, and it’s also very much cheaper than buying new.

My younger sister and I have agreed that the next time we need to go shopping for things, a thrift store day is very much in order. Fortunately, neither of us is a big shopper, so I expect it will be some months in the future. On the other hand, an awful lot of my shirts are pretty much hitting the “thrashed” or “too stained” stage of their lifespan. I will have to give in eventually.

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Going Retro-Progressive

I love this term! I think it really describes the habit so many people are developing to be more like their grandparents and making things like cookies and bread at home, and air drying laundry.

There’s a lot more than homemade cookies, air-dried clothes and free-range children that are making comebacks. Farmers’ markets, car-free days, 100-mile diets and counter-consumer movements have all grown in popularity.

I just love it. My mother tells me I’m too protective of my kids, yet I give them more freedom than a lot of parents I know. I’ll readily admit that it is very, very hard for me to let my son go at times, but that stems more from the rough start he had (near miscarriage, surgery on his skull at 3 months), than anything else.

There are a lot of things I look forward to being able to do when we can afford a place of our own. We are fortunate enough to be able to garden in our yard; never thought I’d be so grateful to the extremely unusual freezes that killed off the landlord’s landscaping, allowing us to garden freely.

But I would love to be able to hang a clothesline. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to hang one, but the fence is cinderblocks with rebar and filled with concrete, then stuccoed. Yes, massively overbuilt, but it also makes it really hard to find something to attach the clothesline to. No trees in the yard either, &$*#. That one frustrates me on so many levels.

There’s more I would like to do on a retro-progressive level, but some things make it tough. Having access to a car only when my husband is home from work means I can rarely get to a farmer’s market.

I don’t know at what age I’ll let my kids do some of the things I used to do. I’ll probably try letting my kids play out front with only minimal supervision within a few years. It should be interesting to see who calls me nuts at that point. I know my sister was chewed out by other neighborhood parents for letting her 8 year old play in the front yard alone a few years ago. Yet I know my sisters and I did so regularly at that age, no problem.

There’s a lot to be said for a lot of the old fashioned ways of doing things. Some really don’t take that much more time, many are great for family bonding and raising children who are competent to take care of themselves for a while, without a television or computer. And of course much of it is better for the environment and healthier.

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Being Greener When You Rent

Renting can be frustrating when you want to go green. There are a lot of things you just don’t have control over. You generally don’t own the appliances, can’t install solar panels, etc. It gets annoying sometimes.

I deal with this a lot as I do still rent. We’re fortunate enough to be renting a house rather than an apartment, but there are still a lot of limitations.

Start By Saving Energy

Even when you can’t replace that cranky old refrigerator, you can still save energy. Start with the light bulbs. Switch out to compact fluorescent lights, or CFLs. In many areas you can find them at a discount through your local electric company. I’ve seen them under $2.50 for a 3-pack in my area due to discounts run through my power company. Take advantage.

apartments

There is one catch to CFLs if you have a lot of closed fixtures. The standard spiral bulbs don’t work as well in closed fixtures. According to energystar.gov, you are best off using a reflector CFL in these areas. Similarly, if you have dimmer switches, you will want to be sure that your bulbs will work with these.

Also try to find out about recycling these, as they have a small amount of mercury and should not be just thrown in the trash. In my area Kohl’s recycles them.

You should also think more about when you are using electricity. Power down the computer if you won’t be using it for a time. Unplug appliances that don’t need to be plugged in all the time. Unplug the cell phone charger and other chargers.

Power strips can also be a big help. Use them to shut off all power to multiple items at once. This takes care of the “phantom load” that many electrical items have where they use electricity even when off. Often this is to run a clock or other nonessential. If you don’t need it to have electricity 24/7, find a way to make shutting it off all the way easy. Continue reading →

Office Depot’s Green Tips

I was reading over at TreeHugger about the work Office Depot is doing to encourage people to be more green. I’d noticed the campaign before, but hadn’t looked at it much. I buy office supplies so rarely.

They have a pretty good guide for buying green on their site, as well as other information for those wanting to consider the environment as they shop.

No matter where you do your shopping, having an idea as to how to keep it greener is nice. So much comes down to simply recycling and using recycled items, along with knowing how much you really need to buy.

At this time of year, I’m more interested in how to green my school supply shopping than anything else. In some ways that’s similar to how you shop for an office, especially as the kids get older. My daughter is entering kindergarten, however, so there aren’t too many similarities yet. She just has so few needs.

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Take Little Steps Toward Being Green

Going green can sound intimidating. There are so many things you should do to be green that even getting started is difficult.

But that’s why taking little steps makes so much more sense. You don’t need to be thoroughly environmentally sensitive in a day. If you take it a step at a time you can get to where you want to be with less of a struggle.

lightbulbs

Pick something simple to start with, perhaps as simple as turning on fewer lights in the house or replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.

Another easy place to start can be recycling. This is easier in some areas than in others. Depending on where you live you may be able to recycle paper, metals and most plastics, or you may be more limited. Many areas only take plastics numbered 1 or 2, for example. You may be able to throw it all into a single bin or you may have to separate your recyclables.

The thing to remember is that recycling does not take you significantly longer than just throwing things into the trash. Just a moment’s thought as to whether or not the item needs a very fast rinse and where should you put it? Continue reading →