Happy Earth Day! Wherever you may fall on the climate-change political continuum or what your personal carbon footprint is, we can all agree that we're called to be good stewards of the earth. We are by no means experts in that area, but here are our top five tricks that help us be earth-friendly.
1) Breastfeed. Not only is that importantly from an eco-friendly standpoint, it also conserves mom (or dad's) precious energy from not climbing stairs in the middle of the night to prep a bottle. Or buy formula. Check out our friend Karianne's recommendation of a cool nursing cover with an even cooler name here.
2) Buy resuseable bags for carrying groceries. I think they sell for about a $1 each at most stores and we got ours free at Whole Foods a few years ago on Earth Day. They also make for far less trips from the car to the house.
3) Plan out your eating habits. Again, this is a work-in-progress for us, but I've found if we plan our weekly meals ahead of time, we can eliminate extra stops to the store, use up the food we make, and overall eat better. We do try to eat vegetarian at least once or twice a week for the health/financial/environmental benefits. We also love our summer CSA produce delivery. And we never, ever, pass up our leftovers from a restaurant.
4) Drive green. No, we aren't cool enough for a hybrid, but we do love being a one-car family. We sold our second car before we moved to Pittsburgh, and I remember a co-worker at the time telling me that doing so would make us closer as family. He was right--it truly is a lifestyle choice as you learn to adapt to each other's schedule. Admittedly, this is much easier to do in urban Pittsburgh than in other places. We're so grateful for the reasonably priced and accessible bus transportation that allows Jonathan to get to work every day while I get to have the car for errands and socializing. And having a van does make carpooling easy. (We didn't buy it just for the looks!)
5) Have a baby. (We tend to do this every year or so) Save all of the gift bags from the generous presents you receive and use them for gift-wrapping throughout the year. Obviously, some occasions do call for more appopriate and thoughtful wrapping, but for the past two Christmas holidays we've used only those baby-gift bags to exhange gifts with all of the Shunkwilers.
(NOTE--as there are no babies expected in this family before Christmas 2008, we do plan on purchasing gift wrap this year. Or maybe we'll just use those Whole Foods bags)
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