Happy Earth Day

Print by LizzyClara

Happy Earth Day! Although we are celebrating the earth today, we try to incorporate conservation into our everyday lives around here.

• We recycle everything we can! We are lucky to live in a county where almost all plastics are recyclable; in addition to paper, glass, and metal.
• We reuse. I save all kinds of things for the kids' crafting projects. Tubes, jars, Styrofoam, you name it.
• We grow some of our own vegetables. Our yard gets lots of sun and despite the disaster that our yard once was, we manged to have a nice little vegetable garden last year. This year we are growing zucchini, cucumber, tomato, beans, sage, rosemary, and basil.
• What we don't grow ourselves we try to buy from local sources. We are lucky to live within walking distance of a great farmer's market.
• We conserve water. We have a high efficiency washing machine and we recently installed a rain barrel in the garden. Our water bill also shows us how we compare to other households (average use per person). I am proud to report that we use much less than the average.
• I even try to work conservation into my crafting. I am committed to not buying any new supplies for the Iron Craft Challenge (with the exception of peeps).
• We also buy used. Most of the furniture in our house was found in thrift stores, at garage sales, etc.

Could we do more? Absolutely! After reading about this family, I was inspired to to cut down our house hold waste. I use way too many paper towels, we buy lots of snacks with individual packages that can't be recycled (such as granola bars and juice boxes), and then there's the issue of disposable diapers.

We won't change overnight, but I think we are on the right track. How about you? How do you incorporate Earth Day into your everyday?