Going Green

Assignment (from Neilochka): Ask five of your favorite bloggers to do a “Green Meme.”

Ok, I realize that Earth Day has passed me by and Earth Month is just about over, but that’s me. Always late to the party.

Anyway, since we should think about the planet all year round, I’m squeezing my post in under the wire with the promise that these are things I’ll be doing even after April 30.

1. Using less energy. I shut off lights when I leave the room. I won’t turn on the air conditioner until the heat is really uncomfortable. I sometimes drive the Captain nuts in the winter because I wind up using our living room coffee table as my office. “You have your own home office!” he complains. “It’s a nice room with a view of the lake. Why won’t you ever work in there?” Well, when being in my office would require turning on a few lights plus the electric heat, it just seems to be more sensible to stay in the living room. Why use up all that energy for two rooms when I could be perfectly happy on our couch? My next step is to plug “vampire electronics” into power strips and shut them off when not in use.

2. Recycling. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s a foreign concept to the Captain. I try to save the recyclables from the trash and put them into the correct bin. I also reuse plastic bags whenever I can (my next step is to get a couple totes to use for shopping) and use the envelopes from junk mail for scrap paper. Eventually I’d like to train HIM to recycle as well.

3. Testing out my green thumb. This is really more of the Captain’s initiative than mine, but we’ve created a garden and we’re trying to grow our own vegetables. While we’re out there, I do my best to convince him we don’t need to cut down any more of our trees.

4. Going paperless. I use online bill pay and try to opt out of receiving paper. I have receipts and confirmations emailed to me so I don’t print out unnecessary pages. My printer hasn’t been used in so long, I’m not even sure if it works anymore.

5. Conserving water. On the weekends we always team shower rather than run the shower twice. It’s a habit left over from when we had a tiny hot water heater and only one of us could have warm water for our shower. Even though we now have plenty of hot water, I know that if I shower alone I’ll linger much longer than when I’m getting clean with someone used to soldier showers. Needless to say, this is my favorite green effort.

Not the most impressive list, but I hope by next Earth Month I’ll have new initiatives to add. I don’t want my future grandchildren living on the kind of planet Earth WALL-E inhabits.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but feel free to blog about your green efforts as well. Rules are below:

Post five things you plan to do for the environment over the next month on your blog. At the end of your list, tag five of your favorite blogs, and include a link back to this post using the hyperlinked text “FilterForGood Blog Meme Contest.” Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs, or on their Twitter accounts (using the hash tag #FFGBlogMeme). Also, be sure to include these rules at the bottom of your post.

An Extra Bonus

At the end of Earth Month, FilterForGood will choose a few lucky bloggers who posted their five things to win some Brita/FFG gift packs to help you go green! Be sure you link back to the original meme post [http://www.filterforgood.com/blog/?p=1407] to enter the contest!