Earth Day Resolutions

Once you have kids it becomes even harder to be green. I do small things that ar eco-friendly as much because I am cheap as anything else:

• We don't run the a/c until the weather is too hot for leaving the windows open (or the city starts gassing our street for mosquitoes).
• We have replaced the back door and put a good storm door on the front to reduce our winter heating bills.
• I use reusable bags whenever possible, even keeping 3 or 4 small nylon bags in my purse at all times.
• We recycle newspaper.
• I reuse the little plastic containers from baby food (they are excellent for keeping snacks or knit markers).
• I reuse (the rare) plastic water bottles, and usually use sippy cups for juice for Arabella instead of juice boxes. We also use commuter mugs when we go to Starbucks or other coffee places, instead of getting the paper cups.
• Most of our garden, aside from things that provide food, are native and/or hardy, requiring little maintenance, including water.
• I breast-feed Sabine, which cuts down on the water wasted washing countless bottles and throwing away formula packaging.

But we don't recycle our glass, aluminum or plastic -- the City of Indianapolis charges residents to pick up recyclables, and I only learned the location of a drop-off after living in this city for 5 years. I use disposable diapers, instead of cloth. I insist on keeping the hot-water heater turned up to super-scaldingly hot because I can't stand taking tepid showers. The few plastic bags we get for groceries get used as diaper pail liners. And ceramics is a very environmentally un-friendly art form, from the chemicals so harmful they must be specially disposed of and handled, to the massive amounts of electricity (coal-generated) it takes to fire the kiln.

But for Earth Day I am making some resolutions:

• to recycle plastic, aluminum, and glass containers.
• to try out cloth diapers this year. I may not switch 100% but I'll try them out.
• to switch to using cloth instead of paper where possible -- dinner napkins, swiffer cloths, dish cloths, etc.

I figure if we can just do these three little things in the year ahead, it will save us money as well as reduce our trash output. What are you doing for Earth Day?