This last year has brought a lot of change. Including many things influenced by our new "West Coast Green Hippie" lifestyle. Here are 7 things that we have switched to over the past year that save money and the planet.
1. High efficiency compact fluorescent light bulbs in every socket. They are expensive to buy (thanks Mom and Dad), but I have yet to replace one in over 5 years, and I just replaced the last regular bulb in the house last week.
2. Lower thermostat. So no air conditioning = no energy use, no freon, no money spent! They also run these ads here "Blankets. Good for snuggling. Turn down your thermostat this winter." Yeah, we are doing it.
3. Re-usable bags. I am proud to say that I now only use re-usable cloth bags at the grocery store AND the mall! It took a lot of courage to take the bag to the mall and say "Can I just put that in here?" I especially love that I use my Xstrata Copper Mining bag for this. The irony of it kills me. Saves money on contraptions to store plastic bags in - no more bag hutch for us - and many stores charge extra for bags. And I mean no more plastic bags - ever - we use washable plastic containers for lunch, and my last (smallest size) roll of Saran Wrap lasted 13 months.
4. Bake bread. Yes, the bread machine is a gift from heaven. I figure we spend about $1.50 per loaf, which lasts for a week of lunches for two. So yummy, so lacking in preservatives, saves in lots of ways. One unexpected saving is that it makes the house smell fabulous - saves on candles!
5. Mass transit. Although we drive to work (carpool), we use the electric train and the bus almost all other times. Fun. Most days. We can't stand suburban sprawl anymore.
6. No more Coke. Yes, we gave up drinking sodas. It started out as not having them at lunch, and we don't even buy 2L bottles anymore. No more cans, no more cost, fewer inches around my waste... We also re-use the same water bottles for lunch everyday. This has made a huge reduction in our waste stream.
7. Recycle and compost. Aunt Dolly reminded me - we do recycle! We have to separate paper from everything else, but that is it. We also compost everything possible, including some things that probably shouldn't go in. But, oh well, the environment has to figure out a degradation pathway sometime for this stuff. This means we've down-sized our trash can, and we only have to take it out once a week. This might sound disturbing, but when you don't throw any food scraps in, it never smells.
