Elanso

You may recall one of my new year’s resolutions was to get myself greener. Not greener with envy when I see baby bumps or get birth announcements from more and more friends. For the most part, I handle those pretty well. What I felt I needed to handle better was the volume of our trash, the amount of plastics in the apartment and our impact on the earth in general, especially if we are trying to add another little being to it.

Beth Terry’s List at Fake Plastic Fish has become my checklist. I have it printed out (small font, using both sides of the paper) and hanging in my home office for easy reference. Beth chronicles the steps she is taking to minimize plastics and maximize natural non-toxic products in her life. I encourage you to go check it out - some things are easy (switching to reusable bags, not using plastic produce bags at the grocery, recycling), others take some getting used to (baking soda for toothpaste and cleaning products, lunapads), in other areas, I am just not ready to go there (making my own soy milk and yogurt).

But that’s ok. Because I think I have found a substantial number of things that have been pretty painless to implement and seem to be making a difference. Here are just a few:

1.) Michael and I have become more mindful of our paper waste - we both work from home at least part-time each week and print outs and papers from the office can add up. We’ve started collecting our documents and reports and started making sure we were using both sides of the paper (as memo pads, scratch paper for Michael’s sodoko puzzles). When there’s no room left to write, we walk our stack back over to my office, where another office worker faithfully recycles our used paper each week.

2.) I put my money where my mouth was and invested in some lunapads. They are darling, for sure, but I’m not sure how M. feels about them since laundry is on his list of household responsibilities. And they weren’t cheap. I am wondering if some of you thrifty women, those more able with a sewing machine than me, couldn’t just make your own.

3.) I took all of my plastic containers and stuck them on the highest shelves in my kitchen. This was a baby step of sorts. I has this irrational fear that without them, my leftovers would rot and my fridge would edge closer to chaos. So I needed to be sure I could live without them before I committed to completely getting rid of them. Guess what. I can. I got in the habit of saving glass jars and then my MIL (who is catching my greening fever) came over with this lovely gift - a set of Pyrex bowls with lids.

4.) I started composting. Sort of. What we refer to as the “back porch” is truly no larger than a spacious fire escape. There is barely enough room for my flower boxes and herbs and us, (in fact, M has been known to issue ultimatums throughout the summer, “it’s either the pepper plants or me!”) let alone a large compost pile or tumbler. But look at this little thing! It is about the size of a small trash bin and comes with this grainy smelling stuff that is supposed to break down your kitchen scraps into fertile compost. Ours just arrived a little over a week ago and is almost full of stuff. Stuff that would have gone down the garbage disposal or in the trash otherwise. Just feeling how heavy it is already made me more mindful of the amount of trash that we can generate. Gosh, I hope it works.

5.) I took a mug, a bowl, and some silverware over to my office to live permanently in my desk. There is no reason I need to use paper cups and plates when we have a small kitchen in the break room. There are plenty of incredibly cute portable cutlery sets you can buy, but I felt they were a little costly, especially when I have Ikea forks to spare.

And here is the part of the plan that I am the most excited about:

5.) We purchased a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share from a local, family-run organic farm. So, beginning next month, instead of going to Giant or Wegman’s for our fruits and veggies, we will get weekly shipments of locally grown, organic produce - the growing seasons dictates the stash. We did the math and for us, the seasonal fee is less than we usually spend on fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. Our folks have each promised to help us eat anything we don’t want. And several times throughout the summer, this CSA farm hosts “pick your own” Saturdays where we can go and get extra berries and other good stuff. The first box comes in May.

So these are some of the things we are doing to get a little greener, a little healthier, a little less wasteful. What’s on your list? I’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions.

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