The New Year is upon us. If you are like most people, you have probably made a few New Year’s resolutions. I know how those well-intended resolutions usually go – I make a resolution to diet every year and end up breaking it eventually. Even so, there are a few green resolutions that I am going to try to keep this year.
One it to use the reusable shopping bags. I have already purchased them, but I usually forget to put them in the car because I am in a rush to get to the store. Then, I get to the store and remember – too late! The reusable shopping bags are available most everywhere now – even Wal-Mart sells them. They are relatively inexpensive and can usually be bought for about $1 each. Every time you go to the store, consider that we use about 88.5 million plastic bags a year which requires 12 million barrels of oil and see if that changes your mind about purchasing a few reusable bags.
Another good green resolution for the New Year is to give up bottled water. Both Mary Ann and I have preached about the ills of plastic and bottled water in previous blogs, but now is the time to just make the switch. Purchase one of those cute, stainless steel or aluminum reusable bottles and fill that with filtered tap water.
Do you find yourself throwing away tons and tons of unwanted catalogs each year? Over 19 billion catalogs are mailed out to Americans, resulting in 53 millions trees being chopped down and 56 billion gallons of wastewater being produced. What’s truly sad is that most people probably have no idea how they got on catalog lists to begin with! To help stop unwanted catalogs, visit CatalogChoice.org. You can stop catalogs you don’t want (they will cease coming within ten weeks), cutting down on waste.
(This image is a work of a Federal Emergency Management Agency employee, taken or made during the course of an employee’s official duties. As works of the U.S. federal government, all FEMA images are in the public domain.)
