Saves the Earth Looks Nicer Saves Money
SHORT-TERM GOALS: Recycle:
It’s one of the easiest things we can do these days. Singlestream recycling makes our lives very easy: Just toss all of your paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, and cans into your recycling bins. Plastic bags can’t be recycled in SingleStream, so take them with you to the store and pop them in the plastic bag recycling bin (lots of grocery and big box stores have these designated bins). Bonus recycling idea: Bring unwanted clothes to Franklin Community Center (they take clothes donations on Tuesdays) or drop them in various donation bins around town.
Cloth bags for grocery shopping:
Most grocery stores sell their own cute versions of a reusable bag for your groceries. They are fun, and they will also even save you money in some shops (for example, Healthy Living charges you to use their single-use bags in order to encourage you to bring your own; other stores deduct 5 cents from your bill for every bag you bring). I recommend keeping a bag full of cloth bags in your trunk to dip into when you shop. Want to do away with disposable plastic bags forever? Go to bagtheban.com to find out how to take action in our area.
Buy organic and/or local:
You’ve seen the labels on your produce from the grocery store: Much of our food comes from faraway places! If we focus on supporting our local farmers by buying locally and organically, we are supporting them by putting money into our local economy, and we also are reducing our carbon “footprint” (the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we cause as individual consumers) by eating produce that
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hasn’t been shipped or driven across the world or country. Additionally, we are able to teach our children about growing seasons and help them realize that food comes from the earth, not from the grocery store. We can answer their questions about why they don’t see bananas and pineapples at our farmers’ market. We get to introduce them to the growers there too–people who are able to tell children about the cows and pigs and goats at their farms and how to grow food in greenhouses when there is snow on the ground. After all, part of the fun of greening our household is educating our littles.
Use biodegradable cleaning products:
Once you have finished your dishwasher and laundry detergent, dish soap, and other cleaning products, consider switching to an eco-friendly product. There are quite a few out there. Healthy Living Market, Fresh Market, Hannaford, and Target all carry Mrs. Meyers and Seventh Generation products. These products exclusively use ingredients that you will recognize and be able to pronounce, are composed of renewable plant-based ingredients (as opposed to the petroleum-based ingredients that most cleaning products are composed of), and often are packaged in material that has already been recycled and can be recycled again.
Go reusable!:
Purchase a cute reusable insulated coffee mug from your favorite coffee shop on Broadway, a glass (I love LifeFactory which Target and Healthy Living sell) or stainless steel (like Klean Kanteen sold at Target) water bottle, and lunch boxes or bags filled with reusable containers for your children. Healthy Living and Target sell fabric lunch bags/boxes, and you can use Pyrex glass containers for lunches; we also like LunchBots (lunchbots.com) and Pottery Barn for their cute stainless-steel lunchbox fillers. They even have large Bento containers with multiple compartments that will fit nicely into your child’s lunchbox. No plastic baggies, twist ties, or paper bags! And your children will have fun helping you fill those cute little compartments. Bonus go reusable idea: Dunkin Donuts charges you 99 cents for a coffee refill if you have a reusable mug, and Starbucks gives you 10 cents off every drink in a reusable container. So that cute travel coffee mug will quickly pay for itself!