oh, such an important day for me. of course, i think we should all make earth day everyday, but april 22 serves as my personal check-in on our family's environmental goals and status. i do it each year, as can be seen here (posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and here (1, 2).
last year, we made a list of things we wanted to do for ourselves and our environment. we have done them all! additionally, back in early october, i had several posts (1, 2, 3, 4) about making changes in our health and beauty routines to be more eco friendly to ourselves and our environment, while still striving to be frugal. a check in on these? nearly 7 months later, we are still using all of these products. the same bottles and everything, except the body lotion, which finn and i used up over the course of 6 months and just replaced. in fact, that expensive kid shampoo is only half way gone. $9/yr for safe kid shampoo is so worth it! i purged a number of our less safe free-after-rebate shampoos and soap. (via freecycle, not down the drain!) the remainder, mike and i are using until they are gone (which tells me that before the purging, we had at least a 5 year supply!).
so where do we go from here?
we are ~4 months into a no-buying-new challenge ( = the Compact, more or less). we want to continue this for at least 8 more months, but so clearly to me, at least, it has already changed the way we shop and think about our purchases. i think and hope we are committed to this for the long haul. our state is in a severe drought, so we continue to be conscious of water usage. i hope that this year, we can set up some sort of water collection and storage system. perhaps even a grey water set up for our washing machine, too. "new" cars (plural!) are becoming a reality for us soon, too. we have always bought used cars and our no buying new challenge would dictate this as well. however, we are doing our homework, and it may be more economical and ecological for us to purchase a new, high efficiency vehicle. regardless of whether or not we break our challenge for this purchase, we will make our decision highly based on environmental factors as well as use needs.
i hope today you, too, pause to think about what it means to live on our planet. we are here for the short term. i hope to leave it as intact as i can for my children.
i hope you have fun in the process. here are some green links to keep you occupied! (this week marks TV turn off week so some of these activities may need to wait!)
- cute kid crafts to honor earth day
- gorilla in the greenhouse
- a less individually-centered take on earth day. although i am not religious, i agree this is an individual issue more than it should be a political issue.
- rhian's fact and tip filled post on why earth day should be every day
