Go Green with Big Results and Small Life Changes

More people are answering the challenge to change their lifestyles. We all know that the easier, more natural those changes are, the more likely we are to fully commit and stick with them over the long haul. The more complicated or life altering we attempt in the beginning, the more distant our chances are at success. So my suggestion for those starting on the green movement is to take small natural steps and move to the larger steps as you master the early ones. Inspire yourself not just with the environmental good you are accomplishing, but also the personal and municipal savings created from these behavior changes. There are indeed financial, as well as environmental benefits to inspire alternative behaviors. As stated earlier, many can be accomplished with minimal discomfort and frustration.

The most important area to address is how you dispose of items. There are lots of ways to recycle, reuse, and diminish the amount of stuff we dispose of into the trash stream. This is both a green and financial concern. Cities and towns pay for trash removal and the more people dispose of as direct garbage, the more taxpayers are charged for the cost of removal. This can result in higher taxes and fees, as well as strict and annoying controls on residents. When citizens voluntarily work towards reducing the waste stream, petty laws and regulations can be avoided. Taxes and fees do not need to increase as rapidly.

Materials that can be reused should find new homes. Consider selling the items in a yard sale, eBay, or on Craigslist. Charities, freecycle, and the reuse sights at your local dump are good ways of disposing of materials that are still in useable condition, but you do not wish to sell. Sometimes merely putting a free sign on an item and leaving it out on the front lawn will make it disappear. While it is more work, than leaving it out with the weekly trash or driving it to the dump, you are doing your part for the environment and saving taxpayer dollars. The neighbors will appreciate the gesture when they understand how much it costs to dispose of garbage that can be recycled.

Think differently about other materials you have traditionally thrown out or tossed in your recycle bin to see if there is another way to recycle them, practically. I am not discussing taking up a new art hobby. Remember the goal is to change habits that you will live with over a long period of time. Think about your plastic grocery bags and how those are being reused. Well many people are seeking to ban them; I still find lots of practical reusable situations for them. They are the garbage can liners for the small trash cans found in most rooms of our house and bathrooms. Our neighbor requested friends and family collect the bags for his Meals on Wheels volunteer work. He uses the bags to put the meals in he delivers to his clients. We send a full bag of offerings once a week to help him with his worthy mission. You can call the local office to find out if that is an opportunity to recycle. We had been putting our newspapers in our recycle bin until we discovered our veterinarian was asking customers to donate old paper for her kennels. It has not been a hard habit to drop the papers off at her place of business, instead of putting them out at the curb every two weeks.

Last summer when my husband replaced his lawnmower, he purchased a composting mower. We no longer bag our grass, saving us money on the lawn bags. The timing could not have worked out better, as our city just changed the rules. They will no longer pick up grass clippings. The composting mower turns out to be easier to operate than the old one, making sharing the chore, more optimal. The lawn seems to be enjoying the addition of grass clippings. We have never had a greener lawn. This is one of the best examples, I have experienced where going green was actually more cost and labor efficient than our old way of doing things.

Composting can be more of a life style change, but once done is not nearly as challenging as many fear. This was actually one of the first changes we made and it has not been hard to maintain. There are many resources on how to establish a healthy composting area. The point I want to make is it does cut down on garbage and as discussed above not a hard habit to make regular. Some people avoid composting because they are under the confusion that garbage disposals offer the same benefit of removing the garbage from the trash stream. Unfortunately, it is merely moving it from one tax base and green problem to another. Garbage disposals move your trash from the garbage stream to the septic or sewer stream, which still affects the environmental and potentially the taxpayer situation. If you really want to reduce the impact your compostable items have on the environment, utilizing composting is the most cost effective and green method.

As you start to evaluate your habits you will see clear opportunities to make natural changes that require simple adjustments and can be lived with comfortably. Starting there gives you a much higher chance at long term success with maintaining these strategies. The easier the alterations, the more likely you are to keep doing it and not really notice the change, it becomes a regular habit. The more of these simple habits you incorporate into your life, the larger environmental, personal finance, and municipal impact you will have, as levels are reduced and others benefit from reuse.