World Wisdom: Top Tips

Beth at #Airwear is sponsoring a Lighter.Safer.Greener blogging contest over at TwitterMoms (that runs until tonight, so hurry if you want to get in on it) looking for top green living tips.

My top tips?

Reduce waste: We have low-volume garbage service (our garbage needs to fit in our 20-gallon container; the smallest "typical" in our area is 32 gallons). Most weeks, it's only half full. We accomplish this by aggressively reducing our waste. We have a garden in back, so we compost everything possible. We also use reusable as much as possible - our kids are in cloth diapers, we use cloth for nearly all of our cleaning (as well as homemade non-chemical cleaners), we don't use paper napkins, etc. Finally, we recyclable everything possible, even if it takes a little effort. We save all of the plastic bags that can be taken to the grocery store (it's probably more than you realize; ours even accepts cereal bags and frozen vegetable bags). We save the plastic that normally isn't recycled in curbside pickup (4, 5, 6) and take it over to a local food co-op that accepts it. We save Styrofoam packing and take it to an EPS recycler. We recycle shoes, CDs/DVDs/computer components, and much more.

Save energy: Our energy bill is significantly lower than my parents, in spite of the fact that our house leaked like a sieve until we got new windows and we have to do much more laundry due to the kids. I always wash on cold (except the diaper load) and I always hang dry (in the winter I hang them inside). We keep our thermostat low during the day, and even lower at night (and the opposite in the summer), using a programmable thermostat so we don't forget. If we leave for the weekend, we turn it even lower/higher depending on the season. We use as much natural lighting as possible, keep our water heater at 120, and use CFL bulbs.

Diet: We like local farmers' markets. But even more so, we love our garden. This year we were able to freeze bags and bags of tomatoes, carrots, and green beans. Next year we should be able to freeze strawberries and raspberries as well. We have a cherry tree in the back yard. All of this helps us eat organic (we don't use pesticides or fertilizer) at a low cost. We buy our meat directly from my parents' friend (who butchers local farmers' cows) and get milk from non rBST treated cows. I'm not a purist - we don't use all natural and organic products - but I do incorporate as much as I can in budget-friendly ways.

Feel free to visit the site and share what you're doing - you could win free Airwear (glasses made using environmentally conscious practices such as 100 percent recycled water, 100 percent recyclable packaging, and re-purposing unused materials in other industries).