Eco-Active Family

This piece originally appeared in my Green and Simple column on the Old Town Alexandria Patch. Want to simplify and de-clutter your life? Take cues from constructions sites and kindergarten classrooms. Construction projects have always fascinated me, especially large-scale projects, like the National Harbor project or the Woodrow Wilson bridge project. I marvel at how [...]

This piece originally appeared in my Green and Simple column on the Old Town Alexandria Patch. When thinking about ways to have a more positive planetary impact, don’t forget your feet! I must admit, it is a question I had not spent much time pondering until very recently. On an errand at T.J.Maxx a couple of weeks [...]

A decrease in the amount of trash being discarded in landfills was an early indicator of the recession. ‘The trash man is the first to know …’

Do you Freecycle? I’d first heard of Freecycling (the free exchange of mostly used, but still-usable goods within local communities in an effort to keep stuff out of landfills) a couple of years. Since we live in a small townhouse with limited space and had what we needed for the kids, I didn’t want to be tempted to acquire things we really didn’t need or have space for, so I kept my distance. But …

When I think about many of the things that our family is now doing to be more eco-active, I’m reminded of so many things that my mom did when I was growing up. She would save and reuse plastic bags and foil. We’d use jelly jars for drinking glasses and shop yard sales and flea [...]

I have a confession to make… In my last post, In the Kitchen: Pitch the Paper, there was an obvious and intentional omission. In my plea to pitch paper napkins, missing was a corresponding plea to pitch the paper towels. The truth is that we’ve been struggling with this one. And since this blog is [...]

When our family first began to make concerted efforts to reduce our waste, one of the first things we did was to pitch the paper … napkins, that is.

In follow up to my last post on the subject of an organic garden at the White House, I read with great anticipation the follow-up article in the Washington Post home section, which I hoped would describe some of the logistical and other issues that would present the greatest challenges. While the article provided lots [...]

In our never-ending quest to have a more positive planetary impact, I’m constantly looking for ways to reduce waste, especially on the front end, before stuff even comes into our home. And, often, it isn’t until after the stuff has come in that it shows up on our radar. Cheap plastic toys and games from fast food restaurants are a prime example.

… According to the Green Book, “U.S. Households dispose of nearly one hundred billion plastic bags annually, millions of which end up littering the environment and harming endangered marine animals. By reducing plastic consumption by just two bags per week, you’ll throw away at least one hundred fewer bags per year. If tied together handle to handle, these plastic bags would make a rope long enough to wrap around the earth more than 126 times.”

So, what can you do?