Wellness #41 - Going Green - Part 2

The first thing I did before I even read what the exercise was going to be was to follow the link to sign up to stop junk mail. For Val-Pak Coupons: it tell you to "click the link and fill out the form - easy, but don't give them your email address" - The only way to do this is to put in a fake email address - I used the infamous trashcan@email.com

As far as things we have done at our house just this year that contribute to a greener lifestyle, we purchased a new furance and airconditioning unit for both upstairs and downstairs complete with programmable thermostats, a new hot water heater, and I purchase the compact fluorescent light bulbs as often as possible (when the light fixture will accomodate the bulb and shade without problems). I thought when I first started purchasing these bulbs that they lasted longer in addition to saving energy however it doesn't seem to me that they are lasting significantly longer than a regular bulb. I do like the cleaner Simple Green and have used baking soda to clean my cooktop for as many years as I've been cleaning. I still prefer Windex to any window cleaner you can make yourself. Speaking of making things yourself though I did make my own baby wipes and used cloth diapers for both my kids which even then was almost unheard of. All these things were relatively easy to do (except for paying for the new furnace and air conditioning units, that was expensive).

As far as the activity that may take more commitment but that I'd really would like to try I would like to recycle more but I just don't like all that stuff around nor do I want to have to pay for the recycling service, I think it should be included in your trash services. I can remember when I was little my parents recycled everything before you even knew about recycling. We used to go take our recyclables to a recycling center and although they didn't pay you for them you didn't pay them to take them either. We would take all sorts of things, paper, clothing, metal, glass and plastic. I remever finding something that someone else brought to the center to recycle and my dad let me keep it - I thought it was a treasure box and I kept my "valuables" in it for years, in fact I may still have it. It really was a German cookie tin which it turns out that many years later my mother-in-law who is from Germany receives these tins with cookies every year at Christmas and she has a house full of these tins. I have since started a collection of my own.