Green Living
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
new to green living (board & in life)- tell me your ways of being green
i'm starting to try & be more green... what ways are you green? what are simple things that you have changed in your life to be more green?
what alternatives do you use instead of plastic (i'm trying to cut back on our use of plastic in general due to toxins, waste, etc)?
i need an alternative to plastic grocery sacks that we use for 1) garbage cans 2) cleaning our cat littler boxes... any suggestions? i may just use grocery sacks for those....
Re: new to green living (board & in life)- tell me your ways of being green
Planning ahead is one of the biggest ways I try to be green. I try to hit multiple places in one long car trip as opposed to going to several different places at one time. In the same breath, remembering to bring my reuseable bags when I go shopping is something a lot of people struggle with. And a reusable grocery bag doesn't have to be one you've picked up at a grocery store--do you have any old totes from community events or that you've gotten as a gift? Repurpose things you already have in your house.
Depending on how your community is laid out, have a rule that if a place is within x amount of miles, you'll either walk there or take a bicycle.
Though we've significantly cut down on this service, I use our dry cleaning bags to line our garbage cans (bring the clothes to the cleaner in a re-useable bag but they always return the clothing on hangers in a plastic bag). Or, challenge yourself and your family to reduce your garbage enough to only require a little can/bag per week. You can do this by upping your recycling (just check with your city to see what they accept) and by having a compost bin/pile.
Those are some relatively easy things that DH and I have done. Good luck!
As far as your concern for the garbage can liners and cat box liners- I have recently seen a lot of products like these
http://www.surlatable.com/product/id/188913.do?mr:trackingCode=EE6AAEDC-D781-DE11-B7F3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA
I can't remember where off the top of my head, but I have seen other brands.
BFP #2: 8/26/12, EDD 5/3/12, M/C 9/4/12
Living Simple Blog
I don't use liners on our bathroom or bedroom trashcans; I just hose it out when I empty it, if necessary (Diva cup really cuts down on our grosser bathroom waste). I guess that depends on whether your city requires bagged waste or not. The Diva cup is another thing to consider; there are lots of posts here about it (I hated it at first, but after a few months I've come around and wouldn't go back).
I've been searching high and low for a replacement for my Tupperware that will go from freezer to oven to fridge to dishwasher and is also microwave safe and without plastic lids. That's kind of a tall order, so I haven't found exactly what I want (there's one $$$$ Pyrex set with glass lids I'm looking at), but there are lots of glass options out there when some combination of those elements if you're looking to get away from plastic food storage.
My mom is a seamstress, so she made me a bunch of canvas bags for shopping and a bunch of rags out of cloth diaper material, which we use in place of paper towels. We haven't used a single paper towel at our house since Christmas (when she gave them to me). We used to go through a roll every week or so. I didn't like using my kitchen towels for paper towel stuff because I just didn't have enough of them and they were too big for most jobs, but she made me a ton of these small little towels so that I don't run out between laundry days.
I was recently able to clean out a good portion of my attic when I learned that Goodwill will take old textiles that aren't able to be reworn and recycle them into things like rags, insulation, etc. We had way more used textiles than I could re-use as rags myself, so I am excited to be able to keep those out of the waste stream. I didn't previously donate them because I thought that would be a kind of crappy thing to do (who wants my torn nylons or DH's stained and holey old undershirts?), but I couldn't bring myself to send them to the landfill either. Now I don't have to feel so guilty about them! We have a dedicated Goodwill box for all old textiles (clothes, towels, linens, rugs, shoes, etc.), and I just drop them off with Goodwill when it's full along with the things I drop off for donation/tax deduction.
I've tried to stop using commercial cleaners (I still have some to use up rather than dumping them). I bought a book filled with recipes and tips for green cleaning, and I've been happy with the results. In fact, I'm more happy with the book's shower cleaner than I was with the commercial version.
In my gift giving, I'm trying to move towards giving experiences or services, rather than things. Like the last family gift we gave was a year of Netflix to my father-in-law.
One of the easiest things to forget is the reducing part. It can be difficult when everything around us tells us to buy things all.the.time. I really try to commit to wearing out every item I have before I purchase a new one. The fancy new vacuum might look enticing, but my 10-year-old vaccuum is still doing the job just fine. Same with last year's black work pants and our 2003 car. I try to buy quality instead of quantity. It really saves $$ in the long run too. But I don't always win that argument with myself.
More difficult things we do: set the heat on 45 at night during the winter, DH walks to work and I ride public transit (we share one car for everything else), I can produce from my garden and the farmers' market, I make almost all of our food (bread, canned goods, pasta, etc.) from scratch, we don't flush every time, I pump saved shower water outside for irrigation, we compost at home for our garden, I installed drip irrigation, we plan to install a greywater system in our upcoming remodel, and I have drought tolerant plants outside of our food plots.
We are fairly new too but here are the intial steps that we have taken.
Only use reusable bags - including for produce and bulk items
No more bottled water.
Lowered the water temp on our water heater, use ceiling fans more than A/C when poss.
Changed over to CFLs
No more paper towels. Using flatfold birdseye cotton diapers. You can get them at Target.
Unplug appliances and chargers when not in use.
Faucet aerators
Trying our hand at composting - we'll see
Only by something that si energy star rated now.
We're working on the rest.
Good Luck!!
I try to look for the eco alternative when buying things. Sometimes it doesn't make financial sense but most of the time it does. I also look to buy things with less packaging. But all in all I would say that I buy way less than the average person.
Plastics are a tough beast to tackle. I recently switched to bar soap from body wash, we use reuseable bags when shopping, I reuse ziplock bags (for freezing meat).