Monday, October 15, 2007

Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day, so we're all supposed to blog about what we do to help the environment and get everybody else to do that too. Well we both were raised by hippies in Hippieville, Iowa so we've always been pretty environmentally conscious (I have used recycled toilet paper as long as I can remember). But since we moved to Seattle, and my Studly Hubby got on the Live Earth project, we have picked up a few new habits:

1. Buy local, eat local to reduce food transportation energy. This means lots of local chocolate and local wine (yum!).
2. Support the companies that support the environment by buying their products. We are still figuring out which companies these are, but so far the list includes our local co-op, organic farmers and environmentally sustainable foods like bison, Honda (Honda and 9 other commended "green" Fortune-500 companies can be found here), and countless small or local companies that are putting out that extra effort to be green.
3. Unplugging our entertainment center and anything else that sucks energy.
4. Getting on the National Do-Not-Mail List to reduce our daily junk mail.
5. Paying bills and receiving paychecks online.
6. Changing out ALL our lightbulbs to fluorescents.

What we're working on for the next year:

Reducing our trash output by composting more and buying less packaged goods (this is tricky but speaks to #2 above).

And now I ask you, my dear readers, for your ideas. In particular, does anyone out there know of any other environmentally concious companies or have new ideas for how to reduce trash output?

4 comments:

Uncle KT said...

Here's an idea that was brought to my attention in a magazine. A ten min shower with an average flow shower head uses 25 gallons of water while the average bathtub takes 40-50 gallons of water to fill. So they recommended taking quick showers to conserve water! They also gave the stat that for the ladies that shave their legs in the shower--if you turn off the water while you do this you will save on average 10 gallons of water.

Anonymous said...

Here's one I remember from years ago: "Save water -- shower with a friend!"

tom said...

Or, skip the shower altogether.
-Hippie, Hippieville

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