Do you? Do you recycle?
We do..we started about a year ago, not to go green, but to save money...We started by changing out all of our lightbulbs w/the CFLs. They use a 1/4 of the power of a regular light bulb and they last at least 5 yrs! We've had one CFL in the yard pole light for over a year now. It gets turned on every evening and then gets turned off every morning and it's still going strong. Our electric bill has gone down 3 or 4 dollars a month, that is, until the cold weather set in and the heater came out...They say if every home in America put in 1 CFL, it would be like taking a million cars off of the road....WOW!
After that we started w/the scrap metal and cans, only because we could turn them in for cash. We have been saving all of our cans for over a yr, again..we haven't turned them in yet..When we get 2 or 3 hundred pounds of them we will. So far, 2 50 gallon trash bags are filled w/smashed aluminum w/6 or 7 paper bags of unsmashed ones waiting in the garage for Patrick to smash when he comes home from school this Christmas from California.
When we started doing the cans, we noticed how little trash we threw away and decided to go a little farther w/the plan of eliminating our trash pick up bill all together. So, then we started to recycle plastic, paper and now even glass. The only thing left of our trash now is food scraps and some soiled paper and unrecylclable plastics. I don't compost, but, that's in the plan next.
There's a recyling center in Thornville. Once every 2 weeks or so we take our plastic, glass and paper and drop them off and it feels good everytime we do it, knowing that the stuff we dropped off will not be going into a landfill.Every little bit helps, you know. We're just one family, but, when we go to that recycling bin and see how full it is, we know we aren't the only ones.
1% of all of earths water is drinkable...So why waste thousands of gallons a year flushing the toilet? Stick a brick or a plastic bottle filled w/rocks or sand in the tank of your toilet, it will cut the amount of water used almost in half.
When you dry a load of clothes, stick a dry towel in the dryer. THEN set your dryer to HALF the time you usually set it to...Your clothes will be dry! I don't know how or why this works, but it does..I do it myself. You'll save money on your electric/gas and you'll might even help save some natural resources. Don't leave phone chargers plugged in when not being used..they are using more energy being plugged in doing nothing than they are when they are charging your phone.
Stop buying bottled water....If you do, at least recycle the bottle, but, your tap water is just as good, and if it isn't, get one of those tap water purifiers. We have a well and we HAD to get a water softening system...I filled a couple of bottles up w/tap water and put them in the fridge..Old man never knew the difference. If you want to take water on the road w/you, get one of those stainless steel bottles..they hold water, soda, coffee, soup..whatever..Take it w/you when you buy a cup of coffee and put your coffee in that instead of one of those damned styrofoam cups..Those things DO NOT biodegrade in the landfill, they stay there for hundreds and hundreds of yrs.
It started out w/trying to save money when Mike lost his job. Now, it's for the planet and all that we can do to save our natural resources. I am not a "global warming" advocate. I'm not convinced that that is a problem, but, I do think we can do a whole lot more to save our resources by throwing less away and recycling and using less energy to save our fossil fuels. IF we had the money, I'd have solar panels, a wind turbine. geo-thermal...anything I could get to get as far away from "the grid" as I could. But, since we don't, we are doing what we can do. I would love to replace the windows w/double pane windows, I would love to have insulation blown in underneath our siding, but, for now, we can't afford it, but we are doing what we can to lower our dependence on electricity and gas.
It's not hard...give it a try.
