What does being green mean to you?

ElfinLady27

And what do you do to be green?

SuperGreen

Those are two real broad questions, I could write pages on either one of them!  I'll do my best to be brief.  Being green to me means having the lowest impact on the environment possible.    Everything we do has an impact on the environment, I'll focus on  (1) eating, (2) traveling, (3) energy use in our homes and offices, (4) consumerism, and (5) waste.  I try to limit my impact as much as I can within my monetary limits.

Here's what DH and I have done to reduce our impact on those 5 resources:

1. Eating: We went vegetarian together in July 2009, I did for environmental reasons, him animal rights.  Factory farming pollutes more than all other industrial sources combined.  We eat locally, which includes our backyard garden and the farmer's market.  We also eat seasonally, this prevents fossil fuel waste like having asparagus from Argentina in December. We also eat out much less than we used to, but with us both working full time we're not perfect on that yet.
2. Traveling.  I drive a Prius and DH drives a motorcyle.  While motorcycles may have less restrictive emissions standards than cars, his bike gets much better gas mileage than my Prius.  We also don't fly unless we absolutely have to, like for work, we take the Prius.  I've love to do a vacation by train.
3. Energy use.  We're not in our forever home, so we're not spending money we don't have on a house we don't really care about.  So we've made small energy changes like CFLs and energy star appliances.  Solar panels, a tankless hot water heater, better insulation, low-flow fixtures, stuff like that will be done in our forever home once we get there.
4. Consumerism.  The less stuff we buy the less the environmental impact to mine, manufactur, ship, stock a store, and drive home all that stuff.  We reduce, reuse, and recycle.  We use green cleaning supplies, I use a Diva Cup, we buy used if possible, we donate things we don't want anymore.
5. Waste.  We recycle and compost.  I try very hard and think I do very well at buying items, like food, without packing.  We don't buy any single serving items, like lunch food. These efforts have cut our landfill impact by 2/3.  We use 1 roll of paper towels a month, and we've decided that "family cloth" is going too far.  DH loves his hankies instead of Kleenex.

I also work for an environmental consulting company writing compliance documents for the National Environmental Policy Act (or NEPA).  So I hope I'm making a positive impact on the environment there too.

ETA: LOL totally not brief!

Jen&Joe06

Wow...big questions.

My blog has some of the stuff we are doing to be more green. I also work in the environmental field so I feel like I am making an impact with that aspect of my life.

Basically we are just trying to live our lives in a sustainable manner (which still considering economics). 

Alisha_A

SuperGreen:

 I'll do my best to be brief.

ETA: LOL totally not brief!

Briefness fail!! lol

I thought it was a great answer and very well-organized.

I'd say that for me, being green is about the impact my choices make on the earth - including myself, my family and personal space - and that includes what I spend my consumer dollars on.

So that means I try to support good practices in business, I try to buy local, I try to avoid chemicals and excess packaging, etc.

SDgirl22

Alisha_A:

SuperGreen:

 I'll do my best to be brief.

ETA: LOL totally not brief!

Briefness fail!! lol

I thought it was a great answer and very well-organized.

I'd say that for me, being green is about the impact my choices make on the earth - including myself, my family and personal space - and that includes what I spend my consumer dollars on.

So that means I try to support good practices in business, I try to buy local, I try to avoid chemicals and excess packaging, etc.

I think this sums it up for me. Being "green" also means being educated about every item (which is a constant learning process, I know!) , every ingredient, every consuemr choice...to understand the impact for both the earth and myself. I've got a LONG way on my green journey, but I've learned so much so far!

SuperGreen

Alisha_A:

I thought it was a great answer and very well-organized.

 

Lvneveryminuteofit

I agree with everyone else on the environmental aspects. But being green to me also means what I put in my body. I think these things go hand in hand, if you eat organic food, you're eating food that doesn't use pesticides and is usually grown by farmers who support sustainable agriculture. I try to be as health concious as possible and as environmentally conscious as well. I'm not really a medicine person (unless absolutely necessary and within reason of course), which means I try not to 'pollute' my body with any unnatural substances. The same goes for my husband. We believe in the body's natural ability to be well and to heal. This may take it a step further than some people would but to us the connection just makes sense.

Mrs. K in TX

My husband and I are totally NOT green yet, but we're working to get there. Here are some of the changes we're making right now:

1. We are starting our own vegetable garden, and we've planted fruit trees.  We are starting a compost bin this weekend.

2. Vinegar and baking soda are my cleaning friends.  They're wonderful.  I even did an experiment with my high school Biology classes last year, and our results (from 6 classes, testing different areas in the school) suggest that vinegar kills microorganisms almost as well or even just as well as bleach (taking into account H.S. student error- lol).

3. Recycling- this one can be difficult because our recycling center doesn't pick up paper if it's raining because they gave us those crappy open baskets.  And they don't take cardboard of any sort (cereal boxes, soda boxes, etc).  But I'm trying to save the stuff that our center doesn't take so I can take it to a very extensive recycling center just about 20 minutes away.

4.  Energy efficient light bulbs

5. Turning off the lights when we don't need them.

Things we (or I) want to do:

1. Make my husband stop wasting water while shaving, washing dishes, etc.  He will leave the water in the kitchen sink running while walking over to the drawer to get a rag!  Hello!?!?!

2. Stop wasting water while I'm shaving. I'm so used to shaving in the shower, but all that water is just going to waste. (Yep, gotta point the finger back at myself)

3. Stop using those little paper dixie cups for mouthwash

4. Find a place to properly dispose of all our toxic cleaning products- when we combined our households, OMG- we had so much crap.  Now I don't want to use those products, but I don't know how to get rid of them properly.

5. Collect rain water

6. Install solar panels

7. Hook our appliances up to power strips so they don't waste electricity.  I'm going ot have to fight my husband on this one because he hates that unplugging some things reset their clocks- wait- we don't have cable anymore, so maybe he won't fight me on it anymore.

8. Make my own laundry detergent.  I think I'm going to try this one this weekend.  We are going to need laundry detergent soon.