What Can You Do To Be More Eco-Friendly?

Well, for starters you could forget to take the full garbage can out to the curb. Every.other.week.

Um, yes. We only throw our garbage away every other week. And generally there's only one or two bags of it. Dog poop goes into Bio-bags.

Garbage tags are $2 each. With 52 weeks per year, that's $104 + $7.28 in tax = $111.28 per year in garbage collection. By only taking out the garbage every other week, we spend $55.64 on garbage and reduce what goes into the landfill.

How?

Reduce, reuse and recycle.

1. Every plastic that's 1 - 7 gets recycled.
2. Take out containers get reused
3. Cardboard and paper get recycled (which is most of the garbage anyway)
4. Cleaning products = all natural baking soda, vinegar & Dr. Bronners so no chemicals ever get washed down the drains or soaked up in paper towels (which we rarely use)
5. Bar soap - no packaging at all and lasts much longer
6. Start using microfiber cloths to clean. Your wallet will thank you! (I still have approximately 12 rolls of paper towels from the last time I bought them - last year...)

At the grocery store:
7. Don't put produce in those stupid plastic bags
8. Bring your own reusable bags - make it fun and buy cute ones!
9. Buy only containers which can be recycled (Yes, I really do look for the recycle triangle)
10. Don't purchase food with a lot of packaging

Unfortunately we don't compost. Dang rental houses. I can't wait until we have our own garden and our own compost pile. Hopefully soon!

If you live in an apartment building that doesn't recycle, find a friend that wouldn't mind setting it out on their curb - you'll feel better and so will Mother Earth.

I hope that some of these tips can be easily integrated into your life. Reducing, reusing and recycling really aren't that hard, especially if you make it fun!