I thought it might be nice for all of us to list ideas that we have implemented, simple changes that made our lives a little more green, and sometimes simpler and better. and best of all, they can save money too, and be done on a tight budget.

Off the top of my head, here's some things we do :

-Change your light bulbs to CFL's (compact florescent light bulbs).

-If you live in a neighborhood that is walkable, consider walking to errands instead of driving (we recently down-sized to a one-car family and we are now in a neighborhood that has many walkable options, so we're able to do that a lot now).

-Try to do as many errands in one trip as possible, rather than going out several times (and starting your car each time). Hey, this also saves time!

-When you can, use delivery! - the delivery truck is making more stops for many customers, so the carbon footprint of your shopping is reduced by combining the transportation with others

-When you do run errands, call friends and ask what they need - save them time and the trip to the store. (We do this sometimes with friends, especially when I go to the special stores, like the price club or trader joe's - we pool errands and trade that for playdates, making everyone's lives a little easier.)

-Consider putting a lower-flow aerator on your faucets and showerhead. The aerators don't reduce the water-pressure, you get a nice shower but use less water.

- Fill a bottle/jug with rocks and put it in your toilet tank. This reduces the amount of water used with each flush but doesn't reduce effectiveness of the flush

-Don't do partial loads of laundry or dishwashers loads.

-If you can, don't use the air conditioner unless it gets really hot. Use ceiling fans - they work wonders!

-If possible, try not to use so many paper goods or disposable pans (I only use paper goods for/before pesach. If I'm washing pots from dinner, how long does it really take to wash a couple of plates also? It takes us more than a year to go through one package of paper goods!)

-For pesach, we bought "picnic-ware" dishes, which were really inexpensive (4/$1 and such). This is much cheaper than paper goods in the long run. Even if I need to replace them in a few years, because they're not as durable as china, its still less $ and less waste.

-Use natural cleaners like baking soda (w. a bit of water is a great scourer) and vinegar. Less poison around the house is good for the kids too.

-Try composting (okay, we don't do this yet, but we plan on doing it when we live in a house with a yard). You'd be surprised by how little garbage you have when a lot of our food waste and such gets composted. And its good fertilizer.



Okay, that pretty much covers what I can think of for now. Keep 'em coming!

Great suggestions!

We compost and it's great! We purchased a compost bin at BJ's last year for $30. We have some beautiful soil to plant our garden in this year and I'm pretty sure we have enough for ourselves and our neighbors as well.

When we garden, Dylan's job is to take the worms and put them into the compost heap. He'll tell them - here wormies, eat and poop! lol

I invested in a steam cleaner (shark) and then was given a free professional steam mop. I love them both equally and I clean clean and disinfect my house without using any chemicals at all! I have hardwood floors (sealed) and it does a fantastic job of cleaning them. You just have to make sure they are sealed by putting a little bit of water on the floor - if it beads, they they are sealed. I use it in the bathroom, the bedrooms, etc. I love to use it in the spring/fall to clean the gunk out of the windowsills.

We are very fortunate. We have a fantastic program in our community called recyclebank. You can check it out and, if you have any pull in your community - maybe get it implimented.

Basically, everyone is given a huge blue recycle bin. Each bin has a computer chip and it's assigned to your home. No need to separate your recycling. Everything (paper, plastic, aluminum and glass) goes into the container. Then, every week this really cool truck comes for it. Mechanical arms pick up the container, it's weighed and then dumped. For every pound you recycle you get points. Those points are redeemable for coupons for products and services. I got just a coupon to the local museum (free admission), $10 off $100 or more at the grocery store (easy one), free products like Kashi cereal or organic cleaners (ha!). I love love love it. www.recyclebank.com.

Our municipality has mandatory recycling and composting. Some of it is a bit suspect (we are supposed to recycle sposie diapers complete with their solid waste, and feminine products, too - I prefer reusable, washable products!).
We recycle/compost most plastic, all paper/card, all food scraps, glass and much else. We have seasonal garden waste pickup, too. We have very little in the actual garbage.
I switched to vinegar and baking soda for most cleaning, and no longer feel totally wiped out after doing the cleaning!
I use eco-friendly detergent.
We try to use less processed food, which isn't just good for our health, but also, I think, reduces packaging and processing.
We usually use very little paper plates, etc, but I know we need to get better about this (after Pesach and baby!).
We don't use those thin plastic tablecloth covers any more.
Most stores in our area charge for plastic bags now, so we routinely use reusable bags or the cardboard boxes available at one of the supermarkets.
We keep the house cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer, and now that we got the windows replaced, we should be using even less energy for heating/cooling (plus, now the windows and screens work, we can open windows instead of running the a/c!)
We bought the biggest capacity he washing machine we could afford, so that I can do fewer loads of laundry - all 3 kids bedlinens are washed in one load!
We use a regular broom, and old-fashioned mop and bucket, instead of swiffer, etc. And, the same bucket of water is used for more than one room, whenever possible.
Boys shower together to save water (and our time!).
We paint with low or no voc paint.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of what, right now. I think so much of it is a habit by now, so that we don't even think of it as being eco-friendly.

another one: Use a diva cup or other menstral cup! Aside from making things less messy and simpler, it also makes less waste.

Foxx, that program sounds amazing! I seriously recycle more than everyone on my block put together even though I hardly use any processed food and proportionately have a lot less waste than they do - the recycling trucks zooms down the alley and often I'm the only stop. But I make it worth their while, lol! Gosh, to think what I could earn if I lived somewhere else! :grin

Happy, it's an international program. It can't hurt to reach out to them and have them reach out to your city. While it costs money to implement (obviously), our township has seen a dramatic drop in landfill fees, less litter in the streets, etc.

I just started to notice that our town has put up solar panels on the street lights. They have replaced the existing lights with solar lights. I know we are supposed to be getting a solar farm at City Hall too.

I love my city :)

Recycle
Plant your own veggies
Washable menstrual pads
If you do half wash or half dishwashing do it on the half programe
Wash on max 30'
Reuse plastic bags or purchase some fabric bags for shopping
As Chavale said walk and shop, thats when I got/get really good use of the pushchair lol
Dont leave tv or computer on
Dont flip the lights on and of every time you leave the room
Dont flush everytime you blow your nose
Dont let the water run when doing dishes
Dont leave the lights on all night
Get energy saving light bulbs

Use dish towels, rags, etc, instead of paper towels. I still use paper towels for some jobs, especially when it comes to cleaning toilets, etc, and for draining fried foods, but I try to use a kitchen towel or rag for wiping down counters, and towels or rags that are ready to go into the wash for wiping up spills on the floor, etc.

It drives me bananas that my cleaning lady uses so many paper towels. I try to tell her to use rags, but it's :banghead .

My mother tried this with her cleaning lady too, and stopped buying paper towels, but then the cleaning lady just brought her own :duh .

I also use more towels and rags but like npl, like paper towels for certain jobs.

Also, I have a hard time switching to the recycled toilet paper! My bottom is delicate!

Also, keep in mind that just because a product is recycled - doesn't mean it's really green. Some of these so called "environmentally friendly" companies actually cause more damage in manufacturing than a non-green company. It's good to research the companies that you buy regularly.

There's a cloth solution to that problem, too!
DH thought I was crazy, but it wasn't hard to do. Not that I always do, as I don't always react, and I can't see asking anyone else in the family to use it, though they will all use it on a baby's bottom without questioning it!

Yeah, that would be pushing it to far for me, I would not want to do the laundry with that lol.
I actually find that I use less toilet paper when I buy the more expensive one and yes, I prefer soft to. (theres a lot of info for everyone)

TBH - I use cloth (did I really admit to that?!) when I'm already washing that kind of stuff - mama pads or diapers. Then, it's almost nothing extra and doesn't seem so different from what I'm already washing!
As for the better quality - made a huge difference to me, and we also found we were using up less of it (though it's hard to figure out how 3 kids can get through so much so quickly, but I'm so glad they are all independent in the bathroom now that it's not a high priority to teach them to use less!)

We don't do cloth diapers (I don't have my own washing machine). I have my babysitter do our laundry (thank goodness!) but I would never ask her to wash mama pads or family cloth...the yuck factor is just too much when it's not your own family.

So that's not really an option for our sensitive bottoms :blush

Understood!
I did do cloth diapers when we were in an apt building using a communal laundry room, and it was OK, though I was very very careful not to cause a situation where anyone would find something objectionable.
And, if for some reason the new baby isn't using cloth diapers at the beginning and there is any chance of someone else doing our laundry, I'll hold off on the mama cloth pp, too. Just like I wouldn't ask anyone else to wash our diapers, and I don't take cloth when we travel and are using my parents or mil's machines. I don't even ask dh to do my mama cloth or family cloth, and he does wash diapers when he has to (we have a prenuptial "agreement" that he would deal with taking out garbage if I dealt with diapers!).

:haha :haha :haha :haha

It might not make much sense, but to me there is a difference between blood and pooh, and when it comes to nappies there isnt usually so much pooh on them because of liners but if there was (and I know this doesnt make a huge amount of sense) grown up pooh is just so much more disgusting then my 2 year olds pooh. It makes no sense, but I can deal with my own kids pooh but NOT my own and no, no, no dh!

Yeah, Foxx - it was a bit of a joke when we made the agreement, but we've actually stuck to it pretty firmly. I have this issue with garbage, and will only deal with garbage/composting if I really have to - it gives me this awful feeling to deal with smelly garbage though I don't know why. If he's away, then I'll put the garbage cans out by the curb for collection, but if he's coming home in time to put them out, I leave them for him! And, although he will change diapers if he needs to, he really prefers not to. And he was totally supportive when I suggested we try cloth diapers (although he sensibly suggested we wait till dd was about 6 wks old, to get over the initial learning-curve of being new parents), and has been known to throw a load in the washing machine if I needed him to (he seems to have no issues throwing clean wet diapers into the dryer for me, either).
But, pretty much that's our division of labour. We share cooking, dishes, childcare, etc pretty evenly. This is basically the only two chores where we have clearly defined roles!

I think family cloth is way easier and has a much lower gross content than cloth diapers.

With family cloth, every individual thows what they use into a covered garbage can lined with a pillowcase, and the person who does laundry takes out the pillowcase and just dumps it all in the washer. You're not looking at it, touching it, or smelling it - unlike cloth dipes. We've been doing it a long time and not a single person in the family minds, though most of the kids don't like cloth diapers, and we don't do cloth menstrual pads.

It's funny to me how many people do mama cloth and cloth dipes but think cloth tp is too gross - because it's the easiest and least involved of them all!

There is nothing like the Cup.

From the "green" point of view, rinsing it out uses a great deal less water than laundering cloth.

And it's the best solution ever from the point of view of comfort, discretion, sanitation, smell, cost, etc, etc.

I had read somewhere (can't rem where) that you could compost sposies (w/o their solid waste) - anyone ever hear this?

In your home composting?
The joke about our municipal "composting" collection is that the disposable diapers are collected as composting, but the plastic in them gets caught in the machines, just like the plastic bags we are supposed to collect all the composting in (they suggest you might want to buy biodegradable composting bags, but they are even more expensive than the grocery bags we have multitudes of, that now cost us 5c each when we need to use them at the supermarket).
Strangely enough, we are told to put the complete diaper in the composting (aka green bin) with all the organic matter (don't they have a nice way of putting it!). I'm guessing they are trying to reclaim the nitrogen compounds for the compost?

We're hopefully getting a water system that redirects the used water from the washing machine into the toilet tank.

Line dry. No need for a dryer, especially in this heat.

Reusable shopping bags. The cashier at the makolet thought I was nuts the first time I brought my green canvas bags for them to pack up the groceries I wanted delivered. :)

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned handkercheifs yet! I still buy tissues for the kids, but I don't need to buy nearly as much since I no longer use them.