I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but sometime over the past couple of years, we’ve turned into total Earth-loving hippies. No, I don’t have long shaggy hair, wear Birkenstocks, and listen to Phish bootlegs (although my hair is pretty long at the moment and I have done the other two at various points in my life), but we have made many small changes in our lives to make us a more earth-friendly household. It wasn’t as if we woke up one day and decided to change everything, but over the course of time, it occurred to us that many small changes could add up to a larger impact.
I suppose, like most things, it started with food. We obviously care greatly about what we put into our body, and for a number of years, have sought to support local, sustainable, and humane producers of pretty much everything we eat, from fruits and vegetables to chicken and meat and seafood. Not only does the food taste better, but it’s better for the land it’s produced on, the farmer that grows it, and the community that supports it. It’s a total win-win situation for everyone. Of course, because these products aren’t coming from the mega-farms that have taken over the American landscape, they can cost more, and they’re harder to find. You’re not going to find a lot of these products at your average grocery store, so it takes a visit to a farmer’s market or a specialty grocery store like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s to stock up. Luckily, we chose to live in a location with easy access to all of these stores, and this was not a coincidence. We know how we cook and how we eat, and it’s extremely important to us to be able to shop the way that we do. As we looked at houses a couple of years back, we literally mapped the house locations to see how far away they were from our stores. Anything more than 15 or 20 minutes was out. We know that we’re lucky to have these things nearby, and it’s not something that we take for granted.
Of course, the next question that is asked is “paper or plastic?” For us, the answer is neither. We’ve been using our own canvas shopping bags for a couple of years now, which wasn’t necessarily an environmental decision at first. It was just easy. The bags are big and easy to carry, so you can just throw it over your shoulder. Also, they’re big enough so that a week’s worth of produce fits nicely in only 2 bags. They’re so much easier to carry in from the car now, and we don’t have to deal with a pile of plastic bags overflowing from cabinets or closets. Without the bags, we would easily gain 5 or 6 plastic bags from a single trip. Over the course of a week, this could add up to 12 or 15 bags. Of course, we could have just been using paper bags all of the time, but in many grocery stores, that’s either not an option, or they’ve made the paper bags so small that they’re pretty much useless. See, just another small step.
Next, comes the lawn. Like every other proud American homeowner, I want a nice thick, lush, green lawn. All perfectly manicured and the envy of the neighborhood. Last year was my first year with our lawn, and I was excited to maintain it and keep it looking beautiful. I overseeded, fertilized, used weed killers, watered often, and kept the grass nice and trimmed. Still, while I was spreading fertilizer, it never sat well with me that the stuff was basically poisonous. It warned to keep pets and pregnant women away, and warned not to get it on your hands or clothes. Hmm, is this something that I really want to spreading around my yard? Once George entered the picture, the chemical fertilizers were out. He eats pretty much every stick and leaf he can find, and with him being so low to the ground, it would be impossible to keep using the stuff. It was time to move to the organic stuff: basically chicken poop. It didn’t quite smell so nice, and the aroma pretty much drove George nuts as he ran around trying to eat it all, but it did a decent job of keeping the lawn well-fed and green. This year, I’m going to attempt to go 100% organic with this guide. I’m even considering ditching my gas-powered mower and move to an electric one. We’ll see what happens.
On a recent trip to Home Depot, I went to check out what sort of organic products that they carried, seeing as how the answer last year was pretty much none. Well, thankfully, they’ve changed their tune and are carrying the line of organic products from Scotts and Miracle Gro. The only problem? This. Guess which poultry company they’re getting their chicken waste from? Tyson: One of the worst mega-farms and offenders of pollution, poor labor practices, and awful treatment of their animals. Not to mention all of the synthetic feed and hormones that they pump into their chickens. OK, so maybe this is actually helping them be a better company by finding an alternative outlet for their waste, but by buying these products, am I supporting their other actions? Yes, quite a moral dilemma. I may just have to find another brand of organic lawn care products instead.
Speaking of recycling, we’ve become recycling freaks. Every piece of paper, plastic, cardboard, and glass that we dispose of gets recycled. It used to be that we’d just recyle our bottles and cans and newspapers, but now it’s our junk mail, cereal boxes, every plastic food container, and beauty product that gets disposed of. So much that our weekly “trash” is down to a single 13 gallon trash bag. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a single light bag to bring out on trash night. OK, so on recycling night, it’s a little more work, but not much. It doesn’t take any more effort to throw something in the recycling bin than it does to throw it in the trash. Once again, we’re lucky to have curbside recycling in our town, and we take advantage of it. Of course our next step to reduce the amount of household waste will be composting, which will start in the spring.
With the imminent arrival of a baby, we know that we’ll be spending plenty of time crawling around on the floor, and of course babies love to put everything they can find into their mouths. What exactly are you cleaning the floor with? Well, more chemicals, of course. An easy switch to using Method products for all of our cleaning supplies takes care of that one. Not only are they Earth-friendly, but they also smell very nice. They cost no more than other cleaners, and I like knowing that I can lick the floor if I want. Of course, you can’t talk about babies and earth-friendliness without talking about diapers. It would be nice to be able to use cloth diapers, but without a diaper service nearby and the fact that the baby will be spending a lot of time at daycare, it just doesn’t make sense. At the very least, we can buy diapers that have less of an environmental impact, despite the fact that we’re disposing of them. Again, the price difference is minimal, and it will give us that warm fuzzy feeling inside. Or at least until we give up and just buy whatever’s on sale.
Recently, we’ve swapped out many of our normal light bulbs with compact fluorescents, bought an insulated wrap for our water heater, weatherstripped and caulked every hole and crack in sight, and taken other measured to reduce the energy usage in our home. Again, they’re all simple things that don’t cost much money or effort, but when you add them up, they make a big difference.
I’m not trying to sound like some sort of saint or claim that we’re better than everyone else because we’re doing these things. It’s not about that. I just sort of stopped and looked around the other day at how we had transformed the way we live one baby step at a time. It wasn’t some sort of radical life-altering experiment, but a series of choices to do the “right thing”. I know that there’s more that we can do and some things that can’t or won’t do. But when given the option of buying a product or supporting a company that helps the environment or one that knowingly hurts it, it’s hard not to make the right choice. I guess the biggest difference now is that we actually know that there are choices to be made. Might as well make some good ones.
