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 23 - Books and Litter

Well you may be asking what books and litter have in common - not much really except for today.

My son is to start kindergarten in the fall and they had sort of an open house this afternoon. The school is fairly close so we walked as when he does start school we will be walking. It is a route we seldom walk now and the sidewalk is unfortunately strewn with litter. I made a mental note to take along a bag to collect the litter in the future (my son always wants to pick it up to examine it anyway - so we might as well pick it up and get rid of it properly.)

At the school they were giving away some older library books so of course we grabbed a few. My kids love to read stories and hey why not pick up some books and reuse them. There was one book in particular that was just left behind after the other parents collected the books and I figure I would grab it since no-one else seemed to want it. It is titled "The Wartville Wizard" by Don Madden.

When we got home it was the first book that my children wanted to read, strangely enough the book is all about litter and how one man (the wizard) tries to clean it all up and eventually discovers he has magical powers over the trash and can send the trash back to the person who discarded it - it then sticks to the person. Some of the characters have shower curtains, bed linen, cigarette butts all stuck to them. The story ends when the people of the town decide not to litter anymore and throw their garbage in garbage cans where it belongs. If only 'real life' could be like that.

It does send children a message about not littering, also about one mans struggle to care for the environment and how in the end he won. I enjoyed the book and I am glad we picked it up. Great for kids and great to reinforce our family's ideal of going green.

Moral of the story: Pick up litter. It is what you can do to live greener.