Go Green

I didn’t do what I wanted to do, which was buy a new trash can and start saving plastic for recycling. (At our center you have to sort things, so I was just going do one thing and not have to sort it.) Sadly, I did not. I probably will in the near future, but for this challenge time frame I didn’t do what I intended to do.

What did I do?

I didn’t litter. I never do, there are just too many trash cans available at any given time to make littering justifiable.

We used cloth napkins and dish towels instead of paper napkins and paper towels whenever possible. In fact we use cloth napkins most nights for dinner.

Run full loads of laundry and dishes instead of half loads. I already did this, but we are still doing it.

I signed up for the opt out thingy to not get credit card offers anymore, they haven’t stopped yet, but it said to give it 90 days.

I still plan my errands to conserve gas. In fact I even ran one errand on my bike one time (pay the baby-sitter). I'd do that more, but the streets I'd have to cross with Landon on the back of my bike make me very scared.

We have 1 reusable A/C filter, we’re having trouble finding one for the 12x36 size.

Every replacement light bulb in our house has been a compact fluorescent bulb.

Small Change Challenge #10

Beth, at Playgroup Dropout, is totally using my challenge this month. WOOHOO!!

I cannot fail at my own challenge, I cannot fail at my own challenge, I cannot fail at my own challenge.

So the challenge is to go green.

This is so super easy to do, pick one or two or do them all.

Don’t litter.

Cut up the little rings on your 6 packs before trashing them.

Recycle.

Put a water saver thingy in your toilet (they have valves now that do this, but you can also use a brick in the tank.)

Use cloth napkins and dish towels instead of paper napkins and paper towels.

Run full loads of laundry and dishes instead of half loads.

Organize or participate in a trash clean-up. Or just pick up trash at your local park or whenever you’re out.

A couple posts ago I posted a couple websites to reduce your junk mail, sign up for those.

Plan your errands so that you use the least amount of gas (do a lot at one time, start at the furthest out and work your way back home.)

Buy reusable A/C return air filters.

Replace any burned out bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.

Use the library for books instead of buying them.

There are probably 100 more things I could list, I’ve only been typing this for 3 minutes and those are the ones I came up with off the top of my head. Feel free to add in the comments any ideas you have.

The beauty of this is that more than half of them, are not only good for the environment, but they’ll save you money in the long run.

Avoid the Noid

I just did the opt-out for this: I look forward to no longer receiving credit card offers on a daily basis. It should reduce my junk mail by 75% - good for the environment and less hassle for me, win-win.

www.optoutprescreen.com

I haven’t done this yet, but for $1 I can stop several other mailings – I believe this includes Valpak coupons, etc. I’d like to see what just the credit bureau business is going to stop and then I’ll move on to the other stuff.

https://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailing

And for the annoying phone calls – if you registered your number when this thing first came out, it’s about to expire, you can check when it expires and re-up at this web-site. I registered mine 6/30/2003, it wasn’t going to expire for another year, but I thought, why risk it, and re-registered it.

www.donotcall.gov