In honor of Earth Day, I thought I’d spread a little green.  First of all, the concept of going Going Green is nothing new, it just took a few decades to go mainstream.  Better late than never, right?  For all the dooms day predictions we’ve been hearing, many of these same scientists are assuring us that if we get our act together maybe, just maybe, we won’t destroy ourselves and the planet with us.  Believe you me, I’m hanging onto that hope with both hands; not for myself, but for my children.  I happen to be rather attached to this planet, and I’m teaching my children to love it as much as I do.  My daughter happens to be interested in science and she asks questions constantly about the environment, what we can do to help and why aren’t we doing more.  She has seen An Inconvenient Truth and has read the book.  By the way, if you haven’t seen it, you really should. 

Living in an apartment has produced some challenges to change our lifestyle to Be Green.  Our complex is into making money and nothing else.  In fact, I called our front office to find out why recycling was not an option in our complex.  The answer I recieved was this:

“We appreciate that you are eco-concious, and we did provide recycling bins up until a few months ago.  But be assured that waste management seperates recyclables from regular trash, so you can feel good about being green!”

WHAT?!?!?  Oh wait… I forgot, I’m gullable and stupid!

First of all, there has never been recycling offered to residents as long as I’ve lived here the past oh, three years.  And second recycables are not seperated from trash by waste management, I called them just to verify that for myself.  But I’m getting off track here. 

For all the resources available, many eco-friendly suggestions are not geared towards apartments, but rather houses.  With a little creativity and some extra work, it is possible to Be Green in an apartment. 

Recycle: Sure, anyone can recycle.  But we have to take our recyclables to a plant ourselves, no one picks it up for us.  Convenient?  No.  Worth it? Definately!  Not only do we feel more involved, but our children know what happens to the recyclables and they are more concious about it rather than feeling like it’s something they have to do it.

Reduce:  With rising energy costs, we want to save money just like everyone else.  However, we can’t replace our windows, air conditioning units, water heater and appliances.  So we adapted. 

  • Just like my mother told me, I tell my family to turn off lights when they leave a room. 
  • We use energy efficient light bulbs in our light fixtures. 
  • I replaced our original shower heads with water saving shower heads. 
  • We turn off the faucet while brushing our teeth, washing and shaving rather than leave it running.
  • We rinse dishes after eating, rather than waiting until later (we have a crappy dishwasher, so not rinsing isn’t an option) and we switched the dishwasher to Energy Saver
  • In the winter we cover our windows with weatherproof plastic to reduce heating costs and energy.
  • Our entertainment unit and office equipment are plugged into power strips so at the end of the day, we turn off the power strips and eliminate emissions caused by electronics.
  • We keep our small appliances unplugged, such as the coffee maker and toaster, unless we use them.
  •  We use green cleaning products and detergent
  • Living close to my husband’s work reduces our need for gas and we only have one car, so over all we use less fuel and emit less emissions.  The kids and I walk to where we need to go, such as the park and school.
  • We purchase produce from local farmer markets in-season.  It’s less expensive than produce in chain stores and taste great.
  • And a great idea I found on a website was to put 1-liter bottles filled with rocks in the tanks of our toilet bowls, it reduces the amount of water used and wasted.

Reuse: Rather than throw away ink cartridges, old electronics and cell phones, we donate them to the school and local charaties to be reused.  A lot of schools collect ink cartridges and cell phones donated to the police department are given to domestic violence victims for emergency situations.  Old electronics can be refurbished and sold for charity.  We also donate the kids outgrown clothes and household items we no longer use or want to Goodwill and the Salvation Army.  DVDs, books and CDs you no longer want can be swapped with others at the following websites:

You can even save money and the environment by renting toys instead of buying them at http://www.babyplays.com/.  Talk about a great mom-friendly idea!  I wish I’d thought of it.

With retailers listening to their consumers, there are so many ways to go green and still contribute to the economy.  Some more ways to Go Green:

  • You can shop at stores that support and offer green products.  Office Depot has products specifically for the environmentally concious office. 
  • You can purchase recycled checks and make an impression with design and wording; we did. 
  • You can switch to paperless billing, either arranging for automatic payments or using online bill pay with your bank.  Talk about saving money, there’s no postage!
  • You can also opt to receive paper bank statements by mail, but rather online. 
  •  And something I just learned this week; you can shop for eco-friendly clothes by choosing 100% cotton (a renewable source) and shopping vintage (reuse!).  And rather than throw old clothes away, you can turn them into something new (recylce!).

So with a little thought, some research anyone can Go Green, no excuses!  We may not have compost heap, grow our own food or invest in energy saving appliances, we still care enough to do our best.  For more information on how you and you’re family can Go Green check out these websites: