Being Green: 6 Easy Things Every Mom Can Do to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
Happy Earth Day! In honor of Earth Day I have composed a few easy things you can do to contribute to helping the earth be a little safer for our kids.
1. Next time you go to the store try buying Tide for Cold Water. Using cold water on all laundry uses less energy–thus reducing your carbon footprint. It will also save you about $65 per year on your electric bill.
2. Reuse those baby food jars! They can be used to:
- transition toddlers and preschoolers to a big girl/boy glass at the dinner table
- serve ice cream, pudding, or mouse in them for great kiddie sized portions
- organize your “junk drawer” for things like rubber bands, thumb tacks, paper clips, small watch/toy batteries, stamps
- put paints in for your budding artist to dip their paintbrush into
- catch bugs in
3. Break out those cloth napkins that you registered for at your wedding! I don’t know about you but I registered for cloth napkins and I never used them. We just went through our LAST pack of paper napkins and we are now using cloth ones. Buying or using cloth napkins reduces the use of energy and resources to make the paper napkins. You can also reuse old dishcloths and make them into cloth napkins. If you want to get creative you can assign each person in your family a colored napkin. You could also have napkin holders with each persons name on it. When the napkins get yucky enough you can throw them in the wash. They don’t have to be washed after every use!
4. Consider purchasing a reusable water bottle for every member in the family. 38 billion water bottles are put into landfills every year! A reusable water bottle will help decrease that amount. Sigg and Kleen Kanteens are great choices that are environmentally friendly and recycleable! They also make them in great kiddie sizes.
5. Turn your heat/ac up/down 1 degree. One degree won’t be that noticable and it will also reduce your energy bills and carbon footprint!
6. Arrange a Toy Swap with your other mommy friends. Toy Swaps help rid your house of clutter toys your kids have lost interest in and provide “new” toys for the kiddos to play with. It doesn’t necessarily cut down on toy clutter but it does help reduce waste from buying new toys. With 3 kids I have toys coming out of my ears. Sometimes the plastic toys make me feel like I’m going insane. I have a pile in the basement of toys that we have grown out of or have lost interest in and I am already planning on making a stop at good will or arranging a toy swap of my own!
I recently bought a book that just came out called Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating A Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. It is a book with tons of information about making your home nontoxic, recipes for air freshener, bubble bath and pet flea repellents, green gardening, how to avoid those scary toy recalls and how to choose safer art supplies, smart choices for remodeling your home and even a shopper’s guide for quality green products, brands, stores and websites. I haven’t read it all the way through but I have read most of it and have been impressed with the helpful information in the book. One thing I appreciate about the book is that each chapter covers the impacts of our choices on the environment. I know that the idea of being green and changing family patterns and habits can be overwhelming but the book emphasizes that any choice to go greener is a step in the right direction. I think it would be impossible to overhaul everything in our lives all at once. I know in our family we are taking one step at a time and it still feels like we are doing so little. I am trusting that my small contribution combined with others contributions will help make a big impact on making the world a better place for my kids and grandkids.
Being green is definitely becoming more popular and easy to do. What kinds of green things do you do?
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Great post! We do all sorts of things!
1. Cloth diaper and cloth wipes for babies. I use cloth diapers for money, health, and environmental reasons. Disposable diapers will not decompose for approx. 250-500 YEARS. We’re talking 23 billion diapers a year sitting in the landfills. YUK! (more facts here)
2. Use natural cleaning solutions. This book is excellent for simple, easy-to-make recipes: Clean House Clean Planet by Karen Logan. I use vinegar/water for general cleaning, Dr. Bonners, lavender EO, and water for floor cleaning, and much more. It is really easy to go green for cleaning. Just implement a new cleaning recipe one at a time and before you know it, you’ll be using all green products. Your house will be just as clean but non-toxic as well. (Which is good for those with babies and toddlers!)
3. We already wash primarily in cold water. I will do one wash cycle in hot for my cloth dipes, though.
4. Shut off the lights in rooms we are not in.
5. Make use of fans and open windows as much as possible.
6. We limit how much we go out and combine errands as much as possible. We also live close to my hubby’s work which helps.
7. We rarely use paper plates, plastic eating utinsels, and paper napkins.
8. We use natural hygiene products (natural soaps, hair shampoo, shaving soap, etc.) Better for our bodies as well as the environment.
I know there are other things that we do but that’s all I can think of at the moment.
@Christine — All great suggestions!
Very cool thing here in Israel — ALL the houses (by law) have solar panels on the roof, which heats up the water for the house. What happens during winter, you ask, or really cloudy days? Well, there is an electric heater, and you have to so is turn it on for a brief period (30 minutes to an hour), and presto! hot water. It really saves on electricity. Also, very few people have dryers. I only use mine in the winter, when it takes 2-3 days for clothes to dry on the line.
I’ve always washed with cold water, so that one is covered! We sometimes use cloth napkins so switching wont be so hard. We made home-made paper here over the weekend as an Earth Day craft project. The kids had a blast and they learned that recycling is important.
Sharon – that’s really awesome that all houses in Israel have solar panels! I think we should implement that here as well.
That is cool about the solar panels, Sharon. I didn’t know that! I would love to use a clothes line but our backyard has an enormous walnut or some other nut tree that the squirrels love which means that the nut juice and squirrel poop are dropping left and right. All my clothes and diapers would be stained and ruined! I love the tree for the shade in the summer but I hate that sitting in the backyard is like sitting under nut bombs. Those things get bigger than limes during the summer and if one falls (usually from a squirrel) from the tree onto your head it leaves quite a bruise! I started to think that the squirrels were using us as target practice last summer!
Christine-We use cloth diapers too and I love them. I actually just started making my own cleaning products. As I run out of the other stuff I use I have been switching over. I usually use Method products anyway, but making your own cleaners is so much cheaper and recipes are easy to find online. I am in the big switchover process for shampoos and soaps too. I am thinking of making those too because shelling out the big bucks for shampoos is hard to me to do at this point in time. We are on an extremely limited budget since my husband in is grad school and neither of us have a job.
http://www.cosmeticdatabase.org is a great place to go to find out the degree of pthalates that are in common shampoos, soaps, makeup etc.
The more I learn the more I want to do but for my own sanity I can only concentrate on one thing at a time!
These are great tips. Thank you. I promised myself I would do more of these. But I haven’t thought of the toy swap idea. Thanks!
Thanks for the tips Amelia….particularly for the baby food jars.
I just bought 10 of those reusable grocery bags. I was so excited but forgot to bring them during my next grocery store trip.
So now they are in my back seat ready for the next time.
Theses are all great ideas.
I have forgotten to bring mine in a few times too and then kick myself for forgetting! I either put them in the middle of the front seats in the van or between the kids in the back so I remember to grab them when I get the kids out. I was keeping them in the trunk but kept forgetting them every time. I always feel so good when I bring in my reusable bags to the grocery store!
Argh, we forget the shopping bags frequently, but when we remember, it’s so much fun! I love throwing the store clerks for a loop. I swear, those Target and Walmart employees are robotic when it comes to the plastic bags. They just have a hard time with the cloth ones because it’s so out of the ordinary. It’s like those Visa commercials where someone tries to pay with cash and disrupts the whole “system” (btw those commercials annoy me! seriously, cash is not the devil – CREDIT CARDS ARE! but that’s another topic) We have begun spreading our products on the conveyor belt in order of heaviest to lightest to help them out, but they still don’t really get it. They put the bread in first and then wonder what to do with our dozens of baby food jars. Dave and I pretty much bag our own groceries now because we know how to fill the bags more efficiently. We only have four and that suits us just fine! Plus we spent so much time in Europe, where bagging our own stuff is required, and we’re used to it.
We tear our baby wipes in half when we’re changing pee-only diapers, saves money too!
ps. I have Jack Johnson’s version of “Three, it’s the magic number” about reducing, reusing and recycling in my head now. I love that song!
@Dawn – I was totally thinking of that song too! We have three big canvas bags and that’s usually enough for us. And I totally put my groceries on the conveyor belt in the order I want them bagged too! I can’t stand it when they fill up the bags with milk and detergent. Really, I don’t need a bag to carry those. Many times we say that we don’t want a bag and they always look confused. Or we will take the item out of the bag and leave the bag there.
And I am with you on the credit card commercial thing too! I was in my grocery store and I put my cash down while the checker helped finish bagging. Then he finally saw my cash and said, “Oh! I was wondering why the card hadn’t gone through yet.”
We love that song too! I always get a smile on my face when the boys sing along with it!
Dawn–I know what you mean about the checkout people. They usually look annoyed or confused when I tell them I have the bags. The turny thing at Walmart doesn’t make it very convenient to bag with reusable bags so I try to put my stuff in a certain order on the belt too. I have not yet had anyone behind me in line also have reusable bags so most of the time they look perplexed at my system throwing too. It makes shopping a little more interesting!
Sharon, I love the idea of solar panels that you have in Israel! And I totally forgot about line drying! We do that too in the warm months. Legally, we aren’t suppose to have lines up but I have one of those retractable lines, so noone can see them when not in use.
I’ve been wanting to get reusable grocery bags… still trying to convince hubby, though!
Amelia, you may want to check out some of the natural products. I am finding that with my shampoo, dishwasher tablets, and laundry soap that I am actually spending less money overall because the products last longer than the toxic ones. I don’t need as much shampoo in my hair or detergent in my wash for example because natural products are often concentrated. It is by trial and error that I have learned which products that is sold around here lasts.
Christine-What kind of shampoo, dishwasher tablets and laundry soap do you use? I’m all about saving $$$!
Christine, I’d like to know as well!
I LOVE all this info. Thanks for sharing it. I just recently went to plastic bags and will start to bring my own receptacle for coffee I order out.
Also, for Amelia (although you asked Christine): I love the Ecover (http://www.ecover.com/Default.aspx?nc=y) dishwasher tablets. They clean better than any of the harsh detergents I’ve used and they’re good for the environment.
I also use Wintree (http://wintreelaundry.com/about-environment.php) detergent. It smells heavenly and cleans good enough for me (it’s not as effective on serious stains). And finally, I’ve been using Giovanni shampooos (http://www.giovannihaircare.co.nz/products.htm) and conditioners. They don’t have a lot of the junk (i.e. sodium laureth sulfate) that other hair products too and I’ve been very happy with them. I got mine at Costco.
We finally converted to reusable grocery bags.
And speaking of bags, we also stopped buying disposable plastic bags (sandwich bags, ziplocs, etc.) which we used to use for just about everything.
We now store most lunch items in small pyrex containers or (if we’re worried about breakage) reusable plastic containers (though with the bisphenol alerts, we need to toss some of those).
And we store toys and organize other clutter zones with mesh fabric bags (KidsKlutterKatchers.com) instead of plastic bags.
We also no longer buy plastic toys and make sure that the plastic toys we’ve already accumulated and outgrown get re-used by other families rather than deposited in the landfills.
Oops. Did I saw we went to “plastic bags?” How green of me!
I meant canvas tote bags for grocery shopping!
I have a comment that perhaps someone might relate to. I have four young children (six, four, three and 17 months) and a 120 pound dog. When I go to the grocery store, I am toting the kids with me, which is a challenge in itself. I’m lucky if I remember to bring my wallet, let along canvas bags. I really LIKE plastic bags – they are awesome for so many kid related storage stuff, not to mention picking up the poop. I looked at alternative ways of pooping and scooping (bringing a shovel and pail, or biodegradable bags), but the methods are either impractical (picture carrying a shovel and pail while trying to hold the hands of a squirming 17month and three year old), or expensive (biodegradable cost money). It seems to me that my life is complicated enough right now, than to take on the challenge to change my grocery habits…that seems to be the job for the childless, or one or two kid family.
I just wanted to let you know of this really cool new cleaning product I bought that is also “green” friendly. Its a steam cleaning mop from Bissell. My neighbor had one and I tried it and fell in love with it!!! I bought mine from HSN because it came with a longer cord and 4 extra washable mop pads. All it uses is water to clean. So that means no more mop soap for me and all the work that comes along with it. Like ringing the mop, carrying the bucket etc.. (which when you have stairs is a pain)
Do any of you have it and how do you like it. I actually don’t mind cleaning my floors now. Plus, no more of my feet sticking to the ground.