Earth Day 2015

Hap­py Earth Day! It’s a great reminder to sit back and think about our impact on Moth­er Earth. You might think, I’m one per­son, what can I do that will have an impact? As one per­son, hon­est­ly, not a whole lot.  BUT. When we all do a lit­tle bit, the impact mul­ti­plies into some­thing amaz­ing! In just a few short min­utes of brain­storm­ing, I’ve come up with sev­er­al ideas for inside and out­side the house:

1. RECYCLE

With just a few short sec­onds of effort, you can recy­cle and help the Earth. It helps reduce our impact on our plan­et’s resources as we reuse the mate­ri­als, not to men­tion the reduc­tion in schtuff going to the landfill.

2. CLEANING PRODUCTS

I think we can all agree that things like bleach and Scrub­bing Bub­bles aren’t the best for the envi­ron­ment. Instead, look into clean­ing with vine­gar mix­tures, or prod­ucts like Bar Keep­er’s Friend (bud­get friend­ly too!). If you’d like to open a (fig­u­ra­tive) can of worms, you can always see if one of your friends on Face­book has been sucked into, I mean sells Shak­lee prod­ucts. They’re effec­tive and Earth friend­ly, but slight­ly more expensive.

3. LAWNCARE

Instead of giv­ing mon­ey to Mon­san­to for a con­tain­er of Roundup, try mak­ing your own weed­killer. I also rec­om­mend start­ing a com­post heap to get rid of your food scraps and pro­vide real­ly great dirt. If you’d like to go real­ly extreme, con­sid­er get­ting rid of your gas lawn­mow­er and using a push­mow­er! I used one as a kid to cut the grass, and while I hat­ed it then, I’d be much more like­ly to use it now.

4. COMMUTING

Hope­ful­ly you don’t live to far from work so all of this is a moot point. If it’s prac­ti­cal, try tak­ing pub­lic tran­sit or car­pool­ing. I hear big­ger cities usu­al­ly have bet­ter tran­sit options. I don’t know about that, as I’ve lived in small Mid­west­ern towns my entire life. If you can’t car­pool or take the bus/train/tram/ferry, con­sid­er rid­ing your bike! I’ve done it a cou­ple of times here, but will be doing it much more often when I relo­cate for work and don’t have to court death on a dai­ly basis (peo­ple in my town can’t dri­ve and I’ve seri­ous­ly almost died a few times). Not only will you reduce con­ges­tion, you’ll also reduce the amount of fuel being used and exhaust being belched back into the air. I con­sid­er that a win for everyone!

 

How are you observ­ing Earth Day this year?