Archive for November, 2009

Can we stop using plastic bags?

November 30th, 2009

It is a new week and I have a new green challenge.  This week, the task is to try and eliminate the use of plastic bags.  Specifically, we will try to not bring any additional plastic bags home and will attempt to not use plastic bags in a wasteful manner in our house.  I guess I never thought about how many plastic bags are used throughout the day, but I would guess it is relatively high and Ashley wants us to do our part to reduce this number.

Although I have not researched this as of yet, I suspect that this will be an easy way for us to reduce our footprint in a big way.   It seems like anytime a person goes into any kind of store, a person has an opportunity to collect a plastic bag.  If a guy runs into the gas station to grab a Coke and Snickers, they want to give you a bag.  What happens to that bag?  I would imagine that most often it goes directly into the garbage.  A simple ‘No thanks’ can likely add up to thousands of bags over a lifetime.

We already bring canvass bags to the grocery store, but I will try to be more conscious of the plastic we take away.  Another thing that I know Ashley wants us to accomplish with this is to minimize the use of garbage bags.  We do have some fairly large bags that end up in the garbage that could probably hold our garbage.  Cat litter and dog food bags are things that will work marvelously for us.

Another large change in the Guygoesgreen household and I am looking forward to learning and changing.  Please let me know in the comment area below what you do to conserve plastic bags.

Share

Reviewing a week of thankfulness and giving thanks

November 30th, 2009

This week has been all about giving thanks.  Not only did we celebrate this Thanksgiving by spending time with friends and family, but we also spent some time giving back.  The abundance we have is not shared by everybody and felt it giving back was an appropriate challenge for the week.  The ways in which we gave back were useful for our community and also green.

One day we spent volunteering our time at Fill the Dome, where local students raised food and money to help the needy in our area.  Not only does this serve the needy of our community, it also promotes reuse and being green.  We also went through our closets to find stuff that is no longer, or only lightly used.  We collected this stuff together and sent it off to the Boys Ranch of North Dakota so that they can better help the people of our community and promote the reuse of items.

Although we did this as a part of our journey of going green, it also was really a great feeling to help out in our community.  I feel very fortunate to have the people in my life that I do and the means to get by in this world.  I understand that my situation could change at any moment and so I feel we must be thankful for what we have today.  Giving back is a way that I am able to express my thanks.

So we have done a few things to help out in the community, but I also know there are people that do so much every day.  Here is a big fat “thank you” from us! 

In closing, I want to share some of the people/critters I am thankful for.  All of my family!  I am also thankful for my wife Ashley, my dog Charlie, and our kitties Dufus, Velcro and Milo.

Let us know what you are thankful for in the comment area below.

Share

Green Thanksgiving blog links

November 30th, 2009

I thought it would be appropriate to post a few blog links on how other people spent their Thanksgiving and what green Thanksgiving means to them:

Green and Crunchy – Vegan turkey day sans turkey and great pictures of great food

Treehugger is looking for photos of your Thanksgiving celebration.

Julia at Color Me Green writes about heritage turkeys and a weekend project

Dwelling Melville writes about their Thanksgiving and trying to make a change locally

For those of you who are in the US, how was your Thanksgiving?

Share