Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Recycle, Reduce, Reuse #2: Baby Steps

Baby Steps

It can be really overwhelming to realize all the different issues that can be helped by taking action. Boycott this, email/snail mail a CEO in protest over that, stop using this product, start eating that food. I think if I tried to do it all, I'd end up going crazy. So I'm starting with baby steps and I'll keep adding things in as time goes by. So I don't forget things that I come across, however, I've been copying and saving info and links into a Word document so I can look into them in depth later on.


Treehugger Tidbit of the Day:
www.myfootprint.org - This is an interesting site and very enlightening. I took the quiz to see what my "footprint" is and here are my results as I am right now:

HERE ARE YOUR FOOTPRINT RESULTS:

CATEGORY GLOBAL ACRES
FOOD 4.7
MOBILITY 0.2
SHELTER 1.2
GOODS/SERVICES 1.2
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 7


IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 GLOBAL ACRES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXISTS 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL ACRES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.7 PLANETS.

Scary! And I'm not even that bad compared to most Americans.

I don't know about you, but I have no idea when Jesus is coming back (there's a lot to discuss in that statement alone, but I won't get into that now), and I don't want to leave a worn out Earth for future generations. Some Christians seem to have the attitude that because the Earth is going to be obliterated during Armageddon, we don't really need to worry about environmental issues. I think that's an arrogant way to think and act (and I admit that's been my attitude often, even if it I didn't think it consciously), as well as selfish. Our actions will affect future generations and I don't want to contribute to literally wearing out the earth God gave us.


Getting Down to Business

Here is a list of some things that we or I already do or have just started doing to lower our footprint, be healthier physically/mentally/spiritually, and better stewards in general:

Home:
- Turn off lights every time we leave the room for more than just a few seconds.
- Use natural lighting as often as possible
- Set aside unnecessary items to be sold at a garage sale at a later date
- We only drive one vehicle - a gas-efficient Toyota Camry. While this wasn't necessarily our original choice (we can only afford one car and the good gas mileage was a plus financially),
we really don't need two cars here, or when we move. If I had a choice of a new-to-us car, I'd go for a hybrid like the Toyota Prius.)
- Use cloth napkins (we have 'em, might as well put 'em to use!)
- Re-use paper grocery bags (we use them for trash bags/containers for garage sale items, etc)
- Re-use glass containers
- Started setting aside recycling (while our city picks up commingled recyclables from homes, our apartment complex does not have recycling pickup for some reason - I'm looking into other options, most likely taking our recyclables to the local recycling center ourselves)

Body:
- I use the Diva Cup (and highly recommend it! check out LunaPads.com for other options, too)
- Use a more natural method of birth control (We've used the Fertility Awareness Method since we got married - see www.tcoyf.com)
- Eat more natural, less processed foods

Mind/Spirit:
- Watch less TV/Movies (We don't actually get cable, but I'd gotten hooked on some TV shows that you can watch online. I've limited how much I watch now. We also get Netflix and considered canceling it, but opted to just not use it quite as much as we were.)
- Spend more time doing crafts and other activities.
- Unsubscribe from unnecessary email lists (as they come into my inbox) to limit the bombardment of information

That's all I can think of for the moment...there are a LOT more changes I'm hoping to implement. I'll talk about that in my next post.

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