Happy Springtime! It's sort of weird, having St. Patrick's Day, the first day of Spring and Easter all jumbled together this week.
I, of course, have accomplished but little of what I had hoped to do - both practically and recreation-wise - during this lovely, restful break. I have met my green goals, though. I am generally appalled by how complicit even my breastfeeding, vegetarian family is in the destruction of the planet. It is so hard for me to try to make substantial lifestyle changes when our lives are so unbearably harried as it is. To combat that feeling of being overwhelmed, I tried to set three manageable goals for action that we could take without too much disruption of our family life to treat Mother Earth a little better, starting this spring:
1. We have switched our household cleaners to green products. We mainly used green multipurpose cleaner already, but for this spring we have made sure our detergents and other cleaning products are green as well - we are mainly using Seventh Generation products, but have found some other good ones also.
2. We have gotten back on the ball with our City's recycling program. We had let our participation lapse and had gotten out of the loop as to when our proper recycling day was. We have gotten a new bin and we are putting all of our recyclables in it, now. We know what our every-other-week day is to set the bin out and have marked the calendar and are eagerly waiting for it.
3. We are switching our electricity service to a company that offers a green plan using renewable energy to power its customers. I am told the switch may take a month or more, but we are setting it in motion now.
I know that these are small steps, but small is what we can manage right now and I feel good about taking real, concrete steps in the right direction. Yay, us!
4 comments:
Good small steps!
As much as I appreciate recycling, I'm a bigger advocate for reducing and reusing. At one point, the Center for a New American Dream featured spotlights on reusing existing things for other things, but I don't see it now...
Anyway, I'm thinking I should start a list going. One of the reasons I make my own yogurt is that it seems the cardboard containers for milk are more recyclable than the plastic containers yogurt comes in. I wish I could buy cottage cheese in bulk.
Yes, it is my horror at how hard the reducing step is for us that got me to looking for some things we really could/would do. Please share your list, though - I want to do better. Making your own yogurt is some hard-core eco-mom stuff - you rock. I am a long way from there. We are bad about yogurt containers for sure - yogurt is a staple for the child-who-eats-very-little and we get the most amusing single serving containers with the most noxious colors and nasty sugars that she wants - whatever it takes to get the calories in. I am grateful that our milk containers and shampoo bottles at least are recyclable. And almost all of our cardboard and paper products. Our city doesn't recycle glass anywhere so that's a problem, but we don't really use much glass. A friend of mine used to save her detergent boxes and turn them into cool goodie boxes for birthday parties - I think I'm a long way and a bunch of formative years away from being that creative, but every idea reminds me to try to do better in some way.
Huzzah for you! i want to try yogurt making again sometime ( my one failed attempt soured me-ha! I need to start buying green laundry soap- I have been hardcore on the dish soap for years.
Yogurt-making is really easy with an electric yogurt maker. I got my first one at a yard-sale, and got so much into making yogurt that I gave away my 1 liter maker in order to buy a 2 liter maker. The three products I use are: the Yogourmet 2 litre yogurt maker, Yogourmet starter (you can use existing whole milk yogurt for starter, too, but it will be more sour), and for yogurt cheese, the Donvier yogurt strainer-- though you could use cheesecloth for that.
If you ever want any tips, please let me know-- it really comes down to heating the milk until the bubbles form, letting it cool down to 41-45 degrees C (what's that in Fahrenheit? I'm terrible at conversions), mixing the starter in gradually, putting it in the container to "yoge" for four hours, and then letting it cool in the fridge for eight.
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