I have always been conscientious about my affect on my surroundings–people, the environment, even in the simplest, everyday activities such as walking and sitting. I walk lightly. I recycle. If invited to dinner–I bring something and insist on cleaning up. When I visit people, I will offer to take out their trash–play with their children so they can do household chores or run errands. I have even been known to dust for them or rearrange books. I am the one who remembers birthdays–and reminds others. I plant trees and feed birds. I share my car. I upcycle and shut off the water when I brush my teeth. I share books through bookmooch. I buy greeting cards from the Arbor Day Foundation–each one ensures a tree is planted in the National Forests. I buy local organic produce.

I want to leave the earth with as little imprint as possible but I still have a ways to go.

I use paper towels a lot. I love bleach and cotton¹. I drink iced tea from starbucks–served in plastic cups². And I take long showers³ and wash my hands a lot with antibacterial soap–which is both a waste of water and introducing antibacterial stuff into our oceans, rivers and streams.⁴

I want to make some greener choices. I will start with the cotton I choose to buy. From now on I will try to purchase only responsibly made organic cotton products. I will use less bleach — I am not ready to give it up completely. I am also not at all prepared to give up my antibacterial hand soap. Hahaha… I will re-evaluate this at a later date. I also decided to try Marcal Small steps 100% recycled chlorine-free bleached, no dyes or fragrances paper towels. I had to order them from here because they are not sold in my area yet. I will let you know what I think once I receive and use them. There were other brands of recycled paper towels but they were the brown kind and those bug me for various reasons–also they do not come in select-a-size which I have come to appreciate.

Any ideas on the starbucks iced tea?

1. http://www.organicconsumers.org/clothes/background.cfm [↩]
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch [↩]
3. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/17/water.crisis/ [↩]
4. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0510-07.htm [↩]

Tags: antibacterial soap and the environment, Arbor Day Foundation, bleach and the environment, bookmooch, cards and planting trees, environmental choices, environmentally conscious, give-a-tree card, good choices, green choices, greener choices, greeting cards, helping others, marcal, National Forests, organic cotton, plant-a-tree card, recycle, recycled paper towels, responsible cotton, sharing books, simple green choices, starbucks, swapping books, trading books, tree, upcycle

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 12:55 pm and is filed under bleach, eco-friendly, environment, Green Living, Living greener, organic, paper towels, recycle, upcycle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.