Being Eco-Friendly

Today's Summer Blogging Challenge post is one that I am passionate about and am very interested in what others have to say.


June 24 - Favorite eco-friendly thing to do

I fully believe that if there's something I can do to reduce my carbon footprint on our Earth, I should be doing it - I try my darnedest! Because I can't pick just one, here are a few of my favorite eco-friendly things to do!

1) I love buying locally. Me driving a mile and a half to a local farm to buy produce is a heck of a lot better for the earth and the local economy than if I drive to a WalMart and buy their overpriced fruits and veggies.

2) I hang my laundry on a clothesline to dry. I'm posting about my laundry habits in a few days so here's a quick overview: The exception to line-drying are the loads of towels, underwear, and socks. I want to make sure all of the gross stuff that's on those dirty clothing items are killed in the washer and the dryer by the heat. In the winter, I put everything else on a line that hangs in our basement. The air is dry enough that the laundry dries within a day. When it's nice out, I hang stuff on a clothesline in our backyard. Saves us money because we're not running the dryer, but it's also a help to the environment.

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3) We recycle as much as possible. In fact, most of the time we recycle so much that we don't have too much garbage to take out on our weekly garbage day. We can easily go two weeks on one garbage bag, but we often need to put out our recycling bin on a weekly basis.

4) On a related note, I try and buy recycled goods as much as I can when I'm doing household shopping. I think it's important to buy things that are packaged in recycled content and I will happily support businesses that do it.

5) We have lights on light switches. This way, we can turn off whole rooms of lights/TV/stereos with the flick of a switch. Doing this reduces the amount of ghost energy usage that our small appliances use when they're turned off. We also use florescent light bulbs in every part of our house that we can. I found a bunch of them on sale a year or so ago for less than a dollar and I snatched up as many as I could. We have replaced 90% of the traditional bulbs in our house with energy saving florescent bulbs!

6) In the winter, we cover our windows with plastic to reduce cold drafts. This also saves money with our heating bill. It takes a few hours to do in the fall, but it pays off when the heating bills come all winter long. I'd imagine that this isn't something you need to do further south, but in Wisconsin's climate it's a big help!

What about you? What do you do to be eco-friendly?


This post is part of the Summer Blog Challenge. To see more posts inspired by the challenge visit my Summer Blog Challenge page!