http://eco-activefamily.com Tips, tools and resources for families seeking to live more eco-active lives and have a postiive planetary impact Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:27:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Washington Post ran an interesting story (A Trashed Economy Foretold) on Saturday about how a decrease in the amount of trash being discarded in landfills was an early indicator of the recession. "The trash man is the first one to know about a recession because we see it first," said ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/03/18/decreased-trash-early-indicator-recession/ 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 ago. Since we live in a small townhouse with limited space and had what we needed for ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/02/28/do-you-freecycle/ 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 ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/02/24/environmentally-friendly-economy/ 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. ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/02/11/pitch-the-paper-part-2/ 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. With the exception of occasional parties or gatherings at which we'd have guests, we rarely bought paper napkins to begin with. ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/02/09/in-the-kitchen-pitch-the-paper/ 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. ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/01/10/organic-garden-at-the-white-house-part-2/ I don't usually read the food section of the Washington Post (I'm food challenged), but an interesting article caught my eye this morning. It's about the effort to bring gardening back to the White House grounds (even more specifically, organic gardening this time around). I'd heard of this effort in ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/01/07/organic-garden-at-the-white-house/ As I rifled through a kitchen cabinet today looking for something or other, I suddenly became inspired to purge a few things that were taking up space. Among them, numerous bottles and packets of pills, vitamins, cold and other medicines that were expired or no longer needed. As I began to ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2009/01/02/disposing-of-expired-or-unwanted-medications/ As we celebrating the holidays, many will have new tech toys to enjoy. And, as we upgrade our tech tools,  it’s important to be conscious of how we dispose of the old ones. The Kojo Nnamdi Show on NPR yesterday, Recycling Electronics, focused on exactly this issue. Panelists representing agencies ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2008/12/31/disposing-of-the-old/ It's Sunday evening and in our house, that means recycling time! Today, the kids were a bit wired. Only the youngest of the three, The Boy, had a nap today, so the other two were a bit, well ... all over the place. So, when I put the call out to ... http://eco-activefamily.com/2008/12/14/to-the-curb-the-kids-have-it/