Happy Earth Day to you and your family! Whereas many Earth Day activities have been taking place around our area (and the rest of the nation) for the past few days-—today is the official day set forth by the federal government to embrace our environment and protect our planet. This year our family has decided to do our part in our own home.
Now that my daughter is old enough (she just turned 3) to understand how she can contribute to aiding the environment we made a pact to make this Earth Day one we will (hopefully) remember for years to come—or at the very least make it a day to raise awareness about how simple it is to help protect the planet the other 364 days of the year.
So here’s what we have planned. Today everyone in our household will:
· Take shorter showers.
· Turn off the water while brushing teeth and washing hands.
· Use one towel—for the ENTIRE day.
· Eliminate the use of Dixie cups, thus reduce the amount of trash we produce. (My daughter is addicted to paper Mickey Mouse Dixie cups and uses them to drink out of and play tea party with—this may be a tough give for her.) Rather, we will each pick one travel mug to drink water out of for the entire day.
· Ban the use of paper towels (for the day). This might be tough for me as I automatically grab for the roll whenever I see a spill. Did you know that as a nation we use 2,200 paper towels a year, per person? That’s six a day. (I probably use close to 10 a day.) So, if we all tried to give up one napkin a day, we could save a billion pounds of paper waste from going to landfills each year. My daughter has already generously volunteered to give up wiping her hands on paper towels. The other day she told me: “That’s okay mommy, I’ll just use my shirt, like daddy.”
· Visit the recycling center. According to the EPA, each person in the United States creates about four and a half pounds of trash every day. One way to reduce that number is by recycling. We will be taking in a stack of old newspapers (we plan to walk there toting the newspapers in my daughter’s wagon). By the way, did you know one four-foot high stack of newspapers is the equivalent of one 40-foot fir tree?
· Walk to the park and to the store instead of driving. (In a perfect world we would have walked to Mass today, but our church is located 22 miles from our home so we will use our vehicle once.)
· Wash clothes in cold water.
· Change the dryer’s lint filter after every use (to save energy).
· Keep all lights off until dusk. (Luckily, today it is supposed to be sunny and 82 degrees—a record for these parts this time of year— so we will try to remain outside for the majority of the day and evening.)
· Dine outside. We will not be using any kitchen devices that are powered by electricity today. Breakfast will be cold cereal and fruit. Lunch will consist of sandwiches and raw veggies. And, dinner will be pasta salad with ham chunks, a fruit plate, and cheese and crackers.
Certainly, there are many more steps we could take to help our environment, but we agree that small steps are important ones. From here we can see which ones we will be able to incorporate into our daily lives (beyond Earth Day).
The point of this blog was to show you what we planned to do around our house on this Earth Day and perhaps to motivate you to do a bit around your own home to protect our planet.
Have a wonderful Earth Day!
Related Articles:
Going Green-Part 1: What is A Green Home?
Going Green Part 2—“Green” Paint
Remodeling With A Hint Of “Green”