1. I use too many paper towels. To help, I bought dish towels for the kitchen:
From Ikea. I have 8 of them now. I don't have a good place to put them. Right now they are stacked next to the paper towels. I have one on the counter and 2 on the stove handle. I wish I had more room for a cute basket. Hopefully these towels will cut down my consumption of paper towels but I don't think I cut out paper towels all together.2. I stopped buying bottled water all together. Since I have my water bottle for work, I don't need to. Tai and I talked about options for home. He's terrible about drinking water, but we bought a huge pitcher for the fridge and he happily drinks from that all day.
3. Trying to buy more enviromental friendly cleaning products. I bought a few different kinds of liquid dish soap. Tai's not really happy with them as much as he was with the non-green option. Still more work to be done there. My friend, Michelle, introduced me to Melaluca. I've been using their cleaner and I'm very happy. I'm working on transitioning to more of their products.
4. Trying to have more meat free meals. Tai and I like tofu but we differ on how we like it. I'm still looking for a good recipe that we both like (ie not a stir fry). I have made a couple of soups with tofu and I think I'll continue to. At least try to do it once a week. Build from there.
So what about you? Are you getting greener or are you as green as it gets?
I don't but the "greener" cleaning product claims. The simple fact is that they don't work as well or if at all. I seem to remember reading that in a Slate article, that none of them actually meet FDA standards. I'm keeping my little stash of bleach when I really need to kill bugs (hell it's what we use in lab, well that or 70% ethanol).
ReplyDeleteWe do have kitchen towels all over the place though. To the point where I think they are slowly taking over every counter space available until one day we'll be swimming in towels. Quite fascinating really.
I think that's true of most cleaning products. I've bought non green cleaners to have them not do the things that they claim. I take all the claims with a grain of salt. I'll try anything once. Sometimes twice if I forgot I tried it.
ReplyDeleteGreat start! I love mrs. meyers dish soap and all purpose cleaner. It works better than anything else I've used.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Meyers is good - I love their scents!
ReplyDeleteI'm trying. Chris doesn't care - he ACTUALLY doesn't really believe in global warming. Yeah, we argue about it and then I just drop it because I just want to strangle him!!
BUT - we use a lot of dish towels, try to recycle all that we can, drink water from the tap, try to eat our leftovers.... all the little things. But I will say that I mop, and have for a while, with white vinegar and warm water. It does a great job cleaning, disinfecting, and is cheap! Also, it is non-toxic to the dogs, which is a big reason I use it. You can also use this combo on windows, with newspapers to wipe.
I am a huge fan of Method cleaning products. I think they work much better than any others. As for laundry soap, I buy whatever Kroger has on sale from the natural section, not the laundry aisle. That can get expensive, so I buy the cheapest. I've never had any problems. I do laundry so infrequently that it doesn't matter much to me as long as it's environmentally friendly and cruelty free.
ReplyDeleteThe two biggest things you can do to almost instantly reduce your environmental impact are to stop driving and eat vegetarian.
On tofu...
It can mimic estrogen, so women with a predisposition to breat cancer should consider limiting their intake. (because of this, I've switched to Rice Dream instead of soy milk)