Kermit the Frog was wrong. These days it IS easy to be green. People were waiting months to purchase the popular Toyota Prius hybrid car, townships are requiring residents and stores to recycle paper goods like never before, and one of the biggest trends in building and construction is doing so in a green way.
My green life actually started when I was a child, when my mother would take me with her to the recycling plant on the weekends. I would help her tear the covers off of magazines and the labels off of mayonnaise bottles before we’d throw them into the recycling machine. None of my friends quite understood what I did on the weekends with my mother–”What’s a recycling plant?” I remember them asking. “Is it for your garden?”
I grew up composting our food leftovers–my mother still does it to this day. God forbid you attempt to throw away a cantaloupe rind or anything else once edible in her house. Do it, and like a silent alarm in the garbage can, Mom comes running to rescue the recyclable food from its potential landfill purgatory. As a kid, if I wanted to get rid of a piece of paper, I was only allowed to to do so once I’d used every inch of it for writing down a shopping list, phone messages, or math problems I needed to solve for homework.
I still refuse to get rid of paper unless it’s been used on both sides, and as a magazine writer and book author, I get a lot of paper mailed to me—in the form of press kits. I will disassemble these kits and “harvest” clean paper that I can reuse in my printer. I recycle our cardboard and cereal board boxes—so much so that the recycling men have actually complained to us from time to time about the amount of recycling we put out. And I have to work hard not to cluck my tongue and judge my neighbors when I see them throwing out with the trash items that could easily be recycled.
Funny thing is, all of my green habits from childhood have saved us money–and I’m sure that was my mom’s thinking way back in the 1970s. Yes, she was being good to the earth but she also had our family’s bottom line in mind. For example, my habit of reusing paper? Well, thanks to it I can’t remember the last time I bought a case of printer paper. I’m sure most Americans go through a case in a couple of months, especially if they run a home office like I do. (According to one website, Americans use 700 pounds of paper per person each year.) Me, I don’t think I’ve purchased a new case of paper yet in 2007.
One thing is about to change in my recycling habits, though. I hope that very soon, I won’t be putting any more water bottles in our recycling bin. Yes, our family is still going to drink water but now we’re using reusable bottles instead.
We’re following a trend, I guess, that folks like San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome have started. He recently banned the use of bottled water in his city, and for good reason: it seems that bottled water is one of the worst things for our environment. Something like only 20% of bottles actually end up getting recycled (the rest go in landfills), and the making and transporting of bottled water uses petroleum like nobody’s business: the bottles are made of a petroleum-based product, and then trucks use gas to get bottles from the bottling plants to the stores that sell them.
I think that this new habit will end up savings us money as well–no longer will I have to spend about $5 a case for water to pack with lunches or take with me on walks. Instead, recently I made a one-time $4.99 purchase (times four for the four of us) for reusable water bottles, with insulation, that I can fill from the tap.
It’s a small step in the right direction, I hope, for green mankind and my frugal budget.
READ LEAH ON HOME GOES STRONG
I really like your blog!
Thank you, Leah!!!!! I thought I was probably the only one in the world who re-used printer paper. Nice to know I have company.
I live in the West. You may have read that we’ve been had unusually high temps–around 100 degrees–for weeks. Something I’ve started doing is turning on the a/c in the house early in the morning and cooling the house down to 70 degrees or so. In late morning, I turn the a/c off, close the curtains to keep the house cool and don’t turn on the a/c until after 8 p.m. when the peak energy usage time is over (I think). The house doesn’t get uncomfortably hot until 5 or 6 p.m. I haven’t seen the electric bill yet, but I’m hoping this keeps the bill lower by using the a/c in off-peak hours. I know the bill is going to be ugly anyway.
Count me as a double-sided paper user…but leah, I admire your energy for dismantling the press kits..that is brilliant…
Marilyn, I’m going to try your AC approach…but don’t tell my husband, it would drive him nuts (he likes it COLD…)
b
I call myself a “scavenger”. I re-use paper a lot, even at school. My students get used to it, just like they get used to me reminding them to recycle, not throw away, anything paper. I even make them tear the spiral off a notebook so they can recycle the covers.
Your post about bottled water in San Francisco is quite misleading and untrue. A mayor just can’t decide to ban something from a city, without going through the proper channels. And I highly doubt that the people in San Francisco would sit back and allow bottled water to be removed from the shelves of their market, per a mayor’s order.
The actual story is that Mayor Newsome is simply banning the use of municipal funds for the purchase of bottled water. That’s it. Bottled water is still for sale and as easily attainable as it ever was in San Francisco.
Roxanne, you’re right. Mayor Newsome has banned the use of municipal funds to buy bottled water. In addition, he has also prohibited the sale of bottled water on city-owned property. You can read a full Q&A with him on the topic here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19378595/site/newsweek/
Barb, Leah and all
Just wanted to update you on my electric bill. It came today and I opened it with trepidation, but our A/C strategy worked! Despite it being 2 degrees warmer on the average this July over July 06, we used an average of 3 kilowatt hours fewer per day and 151 fewer for the month! Wahoo!
Marilyn: That’s awesome that you could see a real savings.
I just received my electric bill today, and I’ll be blogging later about it. But for a sneak preview–we were able to save about $30 this past month. Not too shabby.
What a great story! I really enjoyed this, and it’s inspiring me to seek out more of my own waste.
The A/C idea is good; but in cooler parts of the country, just skip it altogether. We open the windows in the early morning to cool down the house and close them when the inside temp reaches the outside temp. Then we close windows and curtains in unused rooms and that face away from the sun. When the inside temp creeps up to the outside temp, which it doesn’t always, we open all the windows and turn on ceiling fans in the rooms we are using.
In addition, we’ve insulated our home well so it doesn’t rapidly exchange heat with the outside. Trees also play a role in keeping our home cool. The shade keeps the area from heating up as much.
In the winter, we benefit from the insulation and trees as well. The trees help cut down the wind, and the leaves make good winter mulch for our flowerbeds.
Think about doubling up by planting fruit or nut trees you can harvest from when they are full size. Even pines can give you branches for Chirstmas decorating and needles for plants that require acidic soil.