A Family's Decision to be More 'User-Friendly' to the Environment

"Mommy, you left water running, you know you are wasting the whole lot of it!" "Mom, close the refrigerator door; all the air is leaving it and that makes it hard for it to keep libing" (she meant living). These are words said to me just recently by my four year-old. Now in my defense, the water was only running long enough for me to walk 4 ft. to the trash and back; but, I must admit the little tike does have a point. We often think our kids aren't listening to much we say, but if we pay close attention to their actions we may be surprised.

The above scenarios have led me to think of how much I lecture my family about not being wasteful (especially when it comes to food), but are my actions conveying a different message. In light of this thought and question; this Earth Day I pledge to mother earth to be a positive, living example for my children. I vow to not only tell them of ways to be kind to our planet but to also show them. To begin this journey my children and I talked over many changes that we can make inside our home. Here are two of the ideas we chose to be the best start for our family.

Recycle and Reuse
In my opinion, I believe my family's amount of weekly trash to be where we are most wasteful. Our recycling is actually very limited and much of what we send to the landfill could be recycled. We usually save the plastic bags from the grocery store for future use as bathroom trash bags, and that about wraps up how we recycle.

So the children and I decided to use bins of various colors for storing paper, plastic, glass, and cardboard. The use of bins has already been a hit with helping the children organize clothes, toys, and shoes for donating. We pulled out the battery charger that we haven't used for years, and bought some rechargeable batteries to use in our tv, dvd player, and video game controllers. We also put the numerous reusable store bags my husband's aunt has given us into the back of car to use for lighter shopping trips. For information on a specific city's recycling requirements, the following website may be helpful.

www.earth911.com

Conserve
Now we believe we have pretty good habits when it comes to turning off electrical items not in use and water while brushing teeth. Of course I knew there was room for improvement, so we brainstormed ideas for using less water. We realized that my oldest (who is responsible for running his own bath as well as water for one of his sister's) fills the tub very close to top for baths, my husband takes very long showers, and I leave the water running while conditioning and detangling my hair in the shower. One evening while we were all together for supper, we talked about our water consumption and each vowed to make positive changes.

We will take the steps to be more friendly to earth together as a family and gently remind each other of our promise. My Earth Day pledge to my children will be not only words, but actions that will lead to positive decisions from them and others that they impact.