Saturday 21 November 2009

Green thinking

Michelle of Rambling Woods--Taking the Road Less Traveled has given out Green Thinker Awards. She asks everyone to pass on the message to think green.

There's been a lot in the press about global warming - is it caused by man's activities or is it a natural phenomenon? My view tends to be that it won't hurt to try and be greener, just in case, as seems likely, that it is down to human activity. And if it's not because of us, then being greener now may help prevent problems in the future.

So, we do what we can by recycling as much as possible. The local council collects garden waste for composting, as well as paper, glass, tins and tin foil. We take plastic bottles, drinks cartons, cardboard to the dump, along with other recyclable/reclaimable articles. We donate unwanted items to the charity shops, and buy from them when appropriate. We belong to a book swapping library; use our own bags when shopping; wash and re-use plastic bags; compost food waste; grow some of our own food and get vegetables we can't grow through an organic local food box scheme. We're pretty good at turning off electrical items at the socket, rather than leaving them on standby; we don't leave the tap running when we brush our teeth; we shower rather than bath. We use long-life light bulbs and donate used printer cartridges to charity.

It sounds like a lot when listed like this, and I suppose we could stand back and pat ourselves on the back. But actually, it's not that big a deal, because it's easy. The only thing that takes any real effort is taking stuff to the dump, everything else just slots in to a normal day once you've got the hang of it. And I know that there's always more that we could do. And more and more people are considering this to be normal behaviour, so we're not doing anything out of the ordinary.

My next challenge is to use the tumble drier less. It's easy in the summer, but in the winter it's a different proposition altogether. I ought to make the effort to hang the washing outside on those rare days that it isn't actually raining. It won't matter if it takes several days to dry, or we could always hang it in the garage or the spare room. And it's not that difficult to put on a coat when it's chilly. I'm trying to convince myself that it will work, though it's difficult when we have the amount of rain that we've had recently, and when even the dry days are damp. But I'll give it a go.

So, why not grab the award, and tell us about how green you are - I bet you'll surprise yourself when you start to make a list of the great things you're already doing.

4 comments:

maria said...

Re-cycling is great as long as the stuff is re-cycled and not just piled up in storage somewhere. I agree with not using the tumble drier too much. The washing smells lovely when it's been dried on the line - I must put some out today is it's bright and windy today.

Amelia said...

You have a long list of excellent "green" activities. We have some - we try to burn as much of the paper trash as possible...of course, living in the country we can do that.

We all could do much better for this world of ours.

Lynn said...

You are green, we recycle, because if we didn't it would be too much in our trash cans. Besides our town has made it very easy to recycle now, we just throw it all into one giant wheeled bin and there is no seperating for us. We also compost which helps our garden tremendously. And my favorite - I hang much of my laundry outside. We also have a wood stove and have yet to turn our heat on this year!

Tanya said...

Japan is making a huge effort to go Green! Eco is the in thing right now from eco appliances to eco bags. Watch out for the stinkbugs when you hang out your laundry! They are still falling out of my clothes!