Snow days

Just when I thought winter was over, today we get a snow storm. Snow and ice and all other matter is falling from the sky, and I feel like it should be a snow day, only here I am at work. Bah.

I am spending much of my 'free' day searching the internet for ways that I can green up my life. I don't mean with plants and stuff, but I mean to reduce my impact on the globe by living responsibly. There are a lot of bad things that we do:

- live 45 minutes away from work, requiring a vehicle and a commute
- fly around Canada a lot for work
- buy stuff, not always with the environment in mind
- eat food that comes from far far away
- use some cleaning products that aren't wonderful
- use halogen and incandescent bulbs at home
- heat with hydro and firewood
- power the house with hydro
- have three older cars, two of which don't work (don't ask)
- have renovated the house with no regard to sustainable materials
- love car races
- buy things like books and stuff online, when I could easily walk down to the bookstore at lunch.

However, there are a lot of good things that I/we do:

- recycle everything. I mean everything
- compost almost everything else
- grow our own veggies in the summer
- replacing the incandescent with CFL lighbulbs whenever they wear out
- economize on my laundry wherever possible
- dry on the line in the summer
- turn off the lights around the house when they're left on
- commute together, and don't use the two oldest vehicles
- plant trees and more plants
- garden completely organically
- catch our own fish to eat
- use non-toxic cleaning products, vinegar, baking soda, method brand stuff, when possible
- don't take a bag all of the time
- re-use plastic bags as much as possible
- clean out all milk bags, zip-locks, etc - recycle the really old ones
- take very few airplane vacations - or double-up, making work trips vacations too
- don't print emails or anything ridiculous like that
- print/write on both sides of paper
- use old envelopes as notepads
- all our water comes from a well - is unchlorinated etc and delicious
- economize water - water plants with leftover standing water glasses, etc.
- don't water my grass or garden (much) in summer
- donate old magazines to doctors' offices once in a while
- buy a lot of used things - furniture, housewares, etc. at garage sales and thrift stores.

Just writing this is giving me ideas for all of the things that I could be doing better. I could be bringing cloth tote bags to the grocery store (but then what would I use for garbage bags?). I could be riding my bicycle to my parents' in the summer instead of driving. I could be buying all cleaning products from method. I can replace the windows in my house to make it more energy efficient. I can eat more local produce and meat. I need to get rid of one of my cars, but first, I am going to teach myself simple auto repair with it. The car we use for commuting is eventually going to be switched for a hybrid - mama wants a Prius baby. That is a hot ride.

I need to influence my workplace to be more efficient - it drives me bananas to see people printing out every last email and keeping paper copies in folders, it's so weird. Those things can easily be saved to the hard drive. I take home recycled paper from the office to my house for printing, but nobody else does this, and the 'recycled paper' pile is like a foot high. Nobody uses the stuff. Also, our computers are 'sleeping' all night all over the office, and sucking power as they do. I for one am going to unplug everything every night, or put it on a smart power bar.

There's so much waste around us every day, so many things that people do thoughtlessly that can be remedied really easily. People have bad habits which can easily be broken. I am not perfect - lord knows I still shop online and eat whatever's put in front of me - but I am trying to at least be aware of my slip-ups so that one day I can pass good habits on to another generation. My little brother got down in the dumps one day about everything, the state of the world, and told my mom that it made him not want to have kids. I think the right thing to do is to go ahead and have a kid, but raise them responsibly and with awareness, so they can enact change when their time comes. Things ought get better through the generations as people become more aware. It's a responsibility to make good people to balance out the ones who will be end up being agents of waste and destruction.