Thursday, July 26, 2007

Does this mean I'm actually Green?!?

I have been reading a bit about green construction, and green living, and green (yada, yada, yada fading away...)

Let's see. I changed my lifestyle in part so that I wouldn't have to drive an hour to work every day. In doing so, I cut the number of miles I drive by quite a bit. I also cut dramatically the amount of time I spend sitting around with the engine running.

I've always felt that 78* in the summer for the A/C, and 68* for the heat in the winter was appropriate. But, is because I'm cheap, and it just seems that when I am out in the 100*/100% humidity Atlanta summers, coming in to 78* feels just as good... and it doesn't slap quite as hard when I have to go back out.

I turn off lights when they aren't being used.

I keep my tires properly inflated.

I insulate. I caulk. I don't water... ok, I rarely water the lawn. My truck is usually not THAT clean. I don't over-mow my grass.

Of course, on the flip side... I Jeep. Jeepster Commando with YJ Wrangler front clip

But, then one could argue that it is the ultimate recycling project.

But, back to the good side, I've always recycled. In fact, I practice what s called pre-cycling. When buying things, we look for items that will be easily recyclable, or can have a second life in some other way. As my son would say (quoting Builder Bob), "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good tips and you are doing your part. My family used to recycle heavily, but the locations we could do so in our area have since closed down or keep hours that prohibit us from not only recycling as much as we did, but at all. Fortunately, the local schools still take newspapers. But for glass, plastics, etc. we are now forced to include the things we once separated in with our regular trash pickup. It would be nice to get local growing communities locations to actively recycle. If available, I know many families that would.