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For the past year, our family has been on a mission to reduce our household garbage and recycling.

We have examined our shopping habits, made many changes, and are proud to say that our family now throws out the equivalent of one medium size bag of garbage per month and we have cut down our recycling from four large bags to two large bags per month.

How’d we do it? Read on and I’ll show you, it’s easy! (more…)

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Energy is a hot topic these days. There is much talk about how to conserve it, or produce it with less environmental impact. So often these topics are weighty and we walk away feeling overwhelmed because the global problems seem insurmountable.

However, at the end of the day, it’s the individual that holds the keys: to the problem, or the solution. If each person, each family made the choice to use differently and use less, it really could change the world.

We could all do better. Here are ten easy ways to change our habits and reduce our carbon footprints! (more…)

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I read a lot of books. It’s an addiction, really. I should probably be participating in some sort of twelve step program. I know my husband considers it a personal victory that he’s moved me away from lugging pounds of paper books around in my backpack and has succeeded in converting me to light weight e-books.

One genre that has long occupied a hefty section of shelf space at our house has been “Green Living, or Eco-Living.” Most of these books were very old ones I stole from my Dad over the years; you know, the ones that were “Green and Eco” before there were buzz words.

There has been an explosion of good books (and a lot of nonsense ones too) in the past  ten years on every possible facet of Eco-Living. I’d like to take a minute to recommend three that are worth the time to read, especially if you’re interested in leading an Uncommon life in some way. (more…)

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I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of hearing about the “Three R’s.”  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Yeah, yeah, we know already. We’ve heard. Our kids have heard.

I sometimes think that the message has become a little cliche, a little passe, and yet, the work is far from done.

The campaign has become a mantra in the past two decades.

• The good news is, it’s working! Recycling is up from about 10% in 1980 to 33% in 2008.
• The bad news is we’re not doing enough, as the amount of trash produced between 1980 and 2008 increased by 100 million tons!

These statistics are for the USA, which lags behind many of the industrialized nations.

The web is clogged with “recycling projects” for kids; crafty things you can do with bottle caps and paper bags. It’s better than buying new supplies I suppose, but that stuff still ends up in the trash; and once it’s been “crafted” its often harder to recycle in the larger sense.

Families who are the least bit savvy to the plight of the planet are already:

• Separating their trash for community recycling programs
• They’ve switched to cloth bags instead of plastic for their grocery shopping
• They’re carrying reusable water bottles instead of buying disposable ones.

This is all good. But it’s not enough. It’s tempting to look at the HUGE mountain of trash we produce as a society, and throw our hands up in despair.

“How can what I do possibly make a difference when the problem is SO big? Especially when I’m just a kid?”

There ARE things that families can do, that kids can do, that make a difference. Read on for three ideas:
(more…)