Green Living
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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.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What are you green goals for 2011?
I was just curious as to what you all plan to do, improve on, change, or reduce in the coming year?
Re: What are you green goals for 2011?
We have a house that we bought in June this year. We have already started on yard rennovations before winter hit. We put down cover crops and cleaned out a lot of the yard. I ordered our seeds this weekend, and am so excited to plant them! We will be doing an extensive garden that will consist of 8 or 9, 4ftx4ft squares.
We are going to grind our own cornmeal this year and may grow some wheat to grind our own flour.
We are buying a pressure canner this year and purchasing some of those reusable canning lids and are going to can/preserve/freeze a lot more than we did last year.
We have switched our meat sources completely to local farms. We feed our 4 animals a prey model raw diet, and have switched them to the same meat that we eat. We will also be purchasing our dairy from a local farm and are going to make our own yogurt, cheese, and other dairy products. (do any of you buy raw milk rather than pasteurized, and if so do you like it a lot better?)
We finally purchased some unpaper paper towels and hang dry our laundry when the weather is warmer.
Finally, we are building a chicken and duck coop with solar panel capabilities!
Get our garden up and running. We started composting right at the end of the summer (that was a goal of mine as well). We have the spot all picked out (there was no garden from the previous owner to resurrect)
I plan to try to make more than I already do. Tried really hard to make my own yogurt without a machine and pretty much failed every time. So I am going to get a machine that can do cheese as well. One was recommended here for maybe 40 bucks that I plan on getting.
Getting my 4 year old to eat more of what we eat, so I can buy less processed food! (damn you mini pizzas from Trader Joes!)
-Stop using plastic ziplocs completely. We use reuseable containers 99% of the time but haven't found a lightweight replacement for ziplocs when we backpack.
-Get my vegetable garden going so I can stop buying produce from grocery stores.
-Dry all my laundry on a line during the summer. And maybe rig a line inside our laundry room for next winter.
-Get a pressure canner and can a lot more from our garden. We are expanding our garden area quite a bit so we'll have more veggies.
And add an herb section.
-Plant grape vines around my back deck. They will be nice decoration and useful at the same time.
-Do more landscaping. I would like to add some decorative grass, more hostas, and bigger bushes in the backyard. I would also like morning glories or some type of vine on our fence.
-Non-toxic indoor plants. Our cat ate a plant I had a few years ago, and almost died. Her liver and kidney enzymes were waaay over what they should have been. We didn't think she would make it, but she pulled through!
-My big one: To make major changes to my in-home daycare. I just posted an add that we're all organic, eco-friendly, and cloth diapers are welcome. I'm hoping there is interest in it in our town! I am doing away with all chemicals, non-organic and most packaged foods. I think it will be great to know I'm starting children off with nutritious meals and a healthy environment.
#1: Have a green baby. We've been TTC for a year and I am sooooo ready to be a mom. We plan to breastfeed and cloth diaper.
-Expand our food garden. We have two 6x3' raised beds, we're adding one more and a long bed along the fenceline that we're going to use to grow sugar snap peas and cucumbers. Add another long bed on the side of the house for herbs.
-Try harder at having a 3 season garden. Our spring and summer crops came in great in 2010, but we planted the fall crop too late and didn't get much of anything.
-Can and dehydrate more. I think we froze plenty, our freezer is chock full of every vegetable from every season of 2010. We underestimated how awesome dried tomatoes and apricots are, though. Hence our combo Christmas present of a larger dehydrator :-)
-Try to have a greener 2011 Christmas. We kind of gave up on reducing our landfill impact over the holidays, and I am so ashamed of the bags and bags and bags of disposed wrapping paper and boxes we made
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I'm sure I'll pick up more along the way :-) but for now...
-further switch all personal care products to EF versions
-get a second composter
-expand garden
-limit new purchases
-explore local second hand options
Big E (6) & Little E (2.5)
-My big one: To make major changes to my in-home daycare. I just posted an add that we're all organic, eco-friendly, and cloth diapers are welcome. I'm hoping there is interest in it in our town! I am doing away with all chemicals, non-organic and most packaged foods. I think it will be great to know I'm starting children off with nutritious meals and a healthy environment
I'd be surprised if you didn't fill out immediately. I wondered why more and more daycares didn't do this, for the health AND for the marketig of it. No brainer. GL and great idea.
Us:
1. Get a garden going in our new place if at all possible
2. Get rid of the rest of our storage plastic and replace with glass and ceramic
3. Get rid of all plastic cups and wean DD off plastic sippies as well
4. Cook double meals and freeze more often to save time, heating and effort.
5. Completely turn around food purchases to local produce, grass fed meat, organics
We've got (another) military move this summer, but we don't yet know where we're going. My goal is to find another home that doesn't exceed our needs. We've lived in enough places to know we don't need more than 1k sq ft and that 2k sq ft is too big.
My compost bin was a total flop this year. I'm guessing the climate here just doesn't like dirt. Hopefully wherever we go next will allow me space for a chicken coop, a small garden, and a big enough yard for the dogs to run around. I'd LOVE to be in a place that doesn't require sprinklers and lots of water for grass to exist.
I'm aiming to cook less of my produce. I'm currently investigating green smoothies as a way to ingest that produce raw.
My dogs also eat a raw diet and I'm hoping when we move we find a local supplier. I think the sodium in the large bags of chicken quarters are negatively affecting my dogs.
I'd also like to be very non-eco-friendly and get to gettin on some IVF!
Since we just moved into our house we have a few green goals:
Start a compost pile
Have a garden
I have purchased a bunch of fabric swiffers and reusable snack bags from etsy so we aren't wasting plastic bags/swiffer pads
We are hoping to adopt a dog this weekend, and the dog will be fed organic dog food
We are TTC as well and we plan on bf the baby and cloth diapering
I am also trying to eat less meat (unless it's local)
Buy more things local. It's pretty easy in Vermont!
Use far less paper towels than I am right now.
Become more aware of where I get my food and what its comprised of
To only buy clothes at the thrift store.
Start a container garden
They are local to us, but I'm pretty sure they are the supplier to non SoCal WF. I like the Organic Pastures raw products.
-Switch our dog to a raw diet
-buy as much grass fed/pastured meat as financially possible
-eat out once a week only
-keep carpooling! DH has been dropping me off at work so we save $ on gas & parking too
-become better at meal planning & using my crock pot
I've actually got some huge goals for 2011! We're about to close on a house that needs some renovating so we plan on doing a big Green renovation on our 100+ year old house.
The house is also on 2 acres so we want to start doing some animal keeping and get a good garden going. I am really into canning and just bought a food dehydrator so I plan on doing a lot of food preservation to keep on hand and give away as gifts.
I want to start getting into community involvement, too. Chico, CA is where we are moving and they have a lot of Downtown programs that I want to help out with. Maybe even get some commercial kitchen space and start selling things at the Farmer's Market.
I've complete eliminated chemical products in 2010 (cleaners and stuff we use in the shower are all EF and have few ingredients) so that's good. In 2011 I want to go a step further and try to green up my wardrobe a bit. For the most part what I have is fine but as stuff starts wearing out or gets ruined I want to replace them with EF clothing, even if it costs a little more.
I hope to do a better job at gardening this year. DH said we'll invest in an automatic watering system (drip lines with a timer) so we don't kill everything again.
A related goal: I hope to do more canning this year.
We also plan to move this year, and I hope it is to a house with better weatherproofing so we aren't spending so much on heating/cooling. And ideally, it will be a little closer to work so we're spending less time commuting.
My Food Blog