Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Okay so we have heard it before, so many times and you would figure that we undersstood it.  Well most of us do:  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Most of us are very good at the recycle part.  For me that is the easiest... Recycling.  But then on todays like today, I stop and think and complain a little:  "Why are my recycling cans so small for everything I am trying to recycle; I am trying to be green here and how can I when I can not fit all my recycling in the little bin provided...etc."  BUT I forget or more correctly find it a challenge the reducing part.  I really need to stop and think about the reducing and reusing portions of the cycle.  I think for the week that will be my goal:  REDUCE!!!

Have you mastered the reduce aspect - share your success through your comments.

Mother's going GREEN Day 83 - Green Printing 101

Green printing...it seems so simple but on the weekend when my husband wanted to print something (17 pages long) I gave him a quick course on printing green which I have decided to share.

-- First off - do not print everything save the website or document as you favourite and refer to it (my husband loved to do this so I hid a paper on him - which prompted our lesson)

-- If possible use recycled paper

-- Select to print in "draft mode" this will use less ink. To do this for most printers go to print settings and select draft. Using less ink will save you money make the 'plastic' cartridges last longer so you do not need to discard of them. When they are empty look at using the ink you can refill these with ( I tried it once and was not really happy with my results) otherwise take it back to the store were you purchase your ink from and they will recycle.

-- Print on both sides of the paper. With some printers this is an easy option. You can select it on the printer settings (most offices are equipped with this sort of printer.) Our home printer does not have this option so I find out how many pages I will be printing. In my husbands case as mentioned above 17 pages so then I only insert 1/2 the amount of pages in the printer 9 pages for this example and then print. The computer/printer will alert you that you are then out of paper. I take the paper and turn it around and run it through the printer so that it prints on the other side. Okay, so your page order is a little out of the ordinary but does that really matter in the "green" scheme of things?? Some people may disapprove of running printed paper back through the printer as it supposedly is not good for the printer. I have been doing this for sometime now and see no negative effects on my printer.

-- Also, reuse paper that has been printed o one side only.

That concludes our green printing lesson...quite a simple change to implement.

Mother's going GREEN Day 46 - Children's Eco-Craft

Today's Eco-craft was crafted without my children . Their dad had the day off so they spent some quality time with him, and I according to my husband I was "sticking garbage together to hang on our door." Today I made a wreath out of recyclables.

Go Green Wreath

You will need:

-- Twigs (flexible ones) We collected ours the other day from the woods near our house

-- Recyclable items. (It can be anything) I used: Cardboard egg carton, pop bottle caps, milk jug lids, plastic bag from fruits, large yoghurt container lid, milk jug & the shower scrubby.

-- Paint and paint brush

-- Glue

-- String

Instructions: (with adults help if required)

-- Bend twigs into circular shape to create a wreath (tie as required)

-- Using the glue (glue gun works best) decorate wreath with recycled materials.

I used:

-- The shower scrubby for the 'ribbon' on the wreath

-- The yoghurt lid painted with the recycling sign

-- Colourful circular accents are the milk jug lids

-- The 'Go Green' sign was painted on a plastic piece cut from the milk jug

-- To make the 'pop top flowers' we cut 2 sections of a cardboard egg carton, painted the inside green. Glued a circular piece of clear fruit bag plastic to the centre to create a petal effect and then glued a bottle top in the centre as the flowers center.

Voila - we had our wreath. Be creative there are limitless possibilities to creating a wreath with a recycled theme.

Enjoy displaying your wreaths so everyone will know that you are 'Green'.

Mother's going GREEN Day 34 - Miscellaneously Green

Was it ever hot today. 32 Celsius (89.6 Fahrenheit)!!! But it was a day of many small successes.

No energy wasted on indoor cooling systems: I have never been a fan of air conditioning. Not even in my car (it has always felt very artificial) In my car I prefer to have all the windows down and just let the breeze blow though. The same was true today. My husband wanted to plug in the electric fans to cool our house and I said no lets just open the back and front doors of the decks and let the very slight breeze blow through. It did the trick and kept the house cool.

Reused Water: Because it was so hot, and even though we are trying to live a greener life, I did want my children to enjoy splashing about in the cool water of a 'wadding pool'. We filled the pool a little with water - enough for them to cool down in and have some fun. What we did do with the water once we were done was water all of our garden plants (which we would have done anyway since it was such a hot day). This way the children could amuse themselves for a while as they filled their buckets (and thier watering cans) with water and watered our garden. Picture shows our daughter watering the small tree we planted on earth day.

Reduced waste and recycled: I am not one to feed our pets 'human' food. Although I have heard that it is better for them than 'pet' food. No additives. So today I made the decision that our dog could now eat the left over 'human' food that our kids do not eat. In doing so we throw away less of the food waste and our dog can eat a little treat too. Because I did not have an extra dog bowl for this delicious snack - I thought - mmmmm what can I use..... my green friends at Our Green Year spoke about recycling yoghurt containers, so I went off to our recycling bucket and dug one out. Cut it a little shallower (since we are buying the larger containers and not the individual containers - so we can reduce packaging) and presto I had a little dog bowl.

Organic Food: Food has never tasted better and tonight we enjoyed a 100% organic meal. Chicken with carrots and tomatoes with organic dressing. Even organic ketchup for the kids. Hats off to my husband who is getting into the 'organic food' thing.

No Plastic Bags: Further kudos to him as he also purchased another canvas bag when grocery shopping today after he realized that he would not have enough and to avoid the plastic ones. I believe my earlier post about his plastic pitfalls has put a little fear in him.

So all in all a great "going green" day in this household. Living green is becoming a habit, almost second nature. Which make this mom really happy.

Mother's going GREEN Day 31 - Computers and Such

I have been having some computer problems for the last several weeks. Finally, today a technician was out to have a look at the problems..... After a few hours we got it fixed but he did mention to me that it was probably time I got a new computer. "What a new one, this is only 5 years old" was my response. "Yes, but a computers life is only about 5 years" he said.

That got me thinking - if everyone has a computer which pretty much everyone does have that's an awful lot of computers being replaced every 5 years give or take a few years, and an awful amount of computers being made each year. I made a decision to hang onto this computer for much longer. Okay so it gives me problems, sometimes it can be slow, but it does the job I need it to do. When the time comes I will get rid of it the environmentally friendly way. My friends at Our Green Year speak to this (http://ourgreenyear.blogspot.com/search?q=e-waste). However, I also found a website that suggests much of the E-Waste is then just simply sent off to China, Nigeria, India and Pakistan (usually illegally) where it remains in toxic piles waiting to be recycled, poisoning the residents. http://www.greenlivingonline.com/HomeGarden/stop-e-waste-by-recycling/

So when it comes time to reinvest in another computer (I will try and make this one last another 5 years - by fixing it) I will ensure that the company I buy it from will also offer a good recycling program for it, when it's time comes. Here is another interesting site on all the hazardous chemicals in ones computer: http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/story.html?id=e8def77a-3a8f-420b-ad29-a9e08d03fca0.

Moral of this story: Don't throw out your computer or any electronics for that matter and be sure to recycle it ethically. With an E-Waste company that has ethical practises.

A side note on plastics: One of the comments I received recently was that their organic produce was packaged in an 'unsafe' plastic. This prompted me to check mine. What I had, all seemed to be in the 'safe' plastic. But what I did note though was my milk and juice are packaged in 'unsafe' plastic; whereas my old cleaning detergents (I had to blow of the dust and search the back of the kitchen cupboard for them) are mostly packaged in the 'safe' plastic. How ironic - I guess the cleaning companies just don't want any more poisons to leach into their already toxic product.

Mother's going GREEN Day 30 - Let's talk Trash

On Day 2 of my blog, I spoke about our families 6 bags of garbage and how I needed to get that down, especially since on a whole we produce way to much garbage.

So today, Wednesday, garbage pick up day - I am proud to say that we only had 2 bags of garbage to throw out - a big drop from the 6 bags we originally had which was the norm. My husband even said "Hey, we do not even need to put the garbage can out for pick-up." And we didn't - but I put it out anyway as I want an empty garbage can for my next challenge - which is "One Can a Month". I know our family can make this challenge, we pretty much have with our 2 bag a week - but now that I have accomplished that - I want 1 bag a week. Lets see if I can do it. Can you do it? Join the challenge and find out.

Some of you may ask how did I do it? Simple really. First off I got rid of the disposable diapers, then we have our worm compost and we feed it lots. We feed it so much we needed to get more worms to eat it all - but in the end we are going to have great fertilizer. I also took more notice of what I was throwing into the garbage, simple things like plastic candy wrappers, paper clothes labels, the plastic do-hickeys that hold the clothes labels onto the clothes, paper receipts, the plastic that the bread comes in, the plastic do-hickey thing that holds the bread closed and many more small things that can be recycled. It is by doing this that I became aware that I was throwing away stuff no matter how small could that could still be recycled and now that is what we do. We recycle a lot more.

Word of the day in case you did not notice "do-hickey" and "recycled" .

Join the challenge of one trash can a month and to get more information visit: http://www.enviromom.com/enviromom/join-enviromoms-one-can-a.html

Mother's going GREEN Day 21 - Shopping the eco-friendly way

Yes, there can be an environmentally way to shop.

• Shop less (do we really need everything that we buy - lets think how quick the excitement of the product you buy will wear off - especially when it comes to children's toys)
• Shop locally - support your local businesses in your community, often the business in our community in turn support the community we live in. Also, it will help foster relationships which is also a good thing.
• Locally made - Shop for locally made products. Support your country's economy.
• Shop online (my personal favourite) - when you shop on eBay or Craig's list you can choose to buy second hand items (recycling) "one mans junk is another's treasure" and many of the warehouses use much less energy than your conventional store.
• Packaging - try to purchase items with minimal packaging. Today, I was so excited to buy my infant a baby rattle (made no less with the environment in mind) it is made with wood and natural fibres packaged with recycled paper and none of those plastic ties which you land up having to pry from the toys with some sort of sharp object. This toy had natural string holding it on the board - a simple knot to untie and toy was ready for enjoyment. (pictured on right)
• Bring your own bag - always bring your own bag or try to anyway.

References for this post was from a book I have on hand "Green for Life (200 simple Eco-Ideas for Every day)" by Gillian Deacon

Mother's going GREEN Day 18 - Childrens Eco-Craft

Today (Friday) is Mother's going Green craft day and today's official craft is "Watering Cans" but as it turns out there was a surprise second craft "One-of-a-Kind Gift Wrap" - I was in need of some wrapping paper for our Fathers Day gifts.

Watering Cans

You will need:

- Empty Milk Jug (saved from the recycling bin)

- Sharp instrument to make holes (I used one of the handy dandy tools on my Swiss Army Knife)

- Paint

- Paint Brushes

- Sheet of paper or Newspaper

Instructions (with adult help if required – you probably will need it for using the sharp instrument):

- Lay down the newspaper or craft paper on your work area.

- Set the empty clean milk jug down and make some holes on the top side of the milk jug opposite the handle (see picture).

- Make anther hole on top of the handle which will allow for air to go into the bottle as water comes out.

- Paint the jug (be as creative as you can be – anything goes) – allow the jug to dry.

Once dried fill with water screw the lid back on and you have a one of a kind watering can. (I found having the lid on was great for my younger kids as with a normal watering can they tend to pour all the water out from the top – with the lid this stops all of that and the water comes out in a nice ‘sprinkle’

Enjoy watering your flowers and plants.

One-of-a-Kind Gift Wrap

Take the paper that you painted your jug on and use it to clean your brushes by brushing off the excess paint – allow to dry – you have instant gift wrap.

In fact you can use this idea with any painting craft you do. Instead of throwing away or recycling your “drop” paper just turn it into gift wrap. The excess paint will add some colour to newspaper and a truly unique piece of gift wrap.

A little 'reusing' history on our "drop paper":

We received it in a package, the items were protectively wrapped in it. Then it became our 'drop paper' for our craft project, acted as our 'paint brush cleaner' and finally our gift wrap. Talk about reusing!!!

Mother's Going GREEN - Day 17 - Involving the Children

Going green for our family was partly inspired by my children. What kind of world are we going to leave them? Whatever world it is I want my children to look back and know that I tried to do something for the world and for them. I also want to teach them the value of the earth and how important it is to our lively hood.

Our family's journey of going green most certainly involves them. The small ways that they help out is:

• cutting newspaper for the worms (our worm compost) each time we feed them we give them a little fresh newspaper.
  
• feeding the worms.


• taking care of the vegetable garden.


• ensuring lights are turned off in the rooms and are not turned on during the day. (my son noticed one deary grey evening, that I turned on the light for dinner and he questioned it as it was not quite dark enough for lights. Way to go son!)


• helping out with the recycling (sorting out the glass from the plastic and the corrugated cardboard from the paper)

I am seeing after only 17 days that my behaviour toward reducing, reusing and recycling is rubbing off on them. "Monkey see, monkey do."

Thank goodness for little children, thank goodness we have the opportunity to do right for the world for them.

Mother's going GREEN Day 6 - Simple things CAN make a difference

I was reminded today that simple things can make a difference....

In my on-going journey to reduce our family's ecological footprint, I am looking at the what I am throwing out without much thought. One of the items is receipts. Paper receipts from stores. While it may not be a big thing it all adds up. A statistic I posted earlier says that 1/3 of garbage is paper products. These can be reused and recycled and not tossed out.

Recently I had to run to a store to purchase on item and left with a receipt of 11inches long (photo to the right) for one item. I have never been one to keep receipts, If I buy it I usually want it and don't plan on returning it, but I also usually just throw them out.

Today, I have decided to keep them and reuse them. Our family keeps a pad of paper stuck on the fridge where we write our grocery list. It is a running list as when something runs out we just note it on the list. From today on I will be using the back of my foot long receipts. I have a nice magnetic fridge clip that will keep them together nicely and who knows now if I ever do need to return something I will have the receipt.

This way I will reuse the paper and then be sure to recycle it.