Everday Tips to Honor Our Earth

Today we celebrate Earth Day, happy Earth Day to all! In full disclosure, I want you to know that admittedly I am not a consummate environmentalist but like many of you, I am very interested in doing my part in saving the planet. So what I hope to do in this post is share with you the easy everyday ways that we can make a difference on the environment. These changes are not drastic but if we all did them, they would have a drastic impact on the environment.


I may be showing my age but when I was growing up we were raised with frugality in mind which by default converted into conservation. The mantra at my house was “click click, do you think I own stock in the electric company”? OR “Turn the water off if something isn’t under it” OR you don’t need all of that for just that….sound familiar? If we all pretend that we have a finite amount of everything and that we have to save some so that there will be some for our children to use should be our guiding principal.

The things we have incorporated into our lives even with raising two boys are easy to do. It’s been 20 years now that we have been using cloth napkins for all of our meals. Each of us has our own design or color, the napkin is reused for the week and then is laundered. Our family loves using cloth napkins and they are much nicer than paper.

The other big change we made in our lives is drastically reducing the amount of bottled water we use. We now only use it in the rare instance where filling our stainless bottles is impossible. Think about these facts about bottled water…globally we generate over 1.5M tons of plastic water bottles and less than 5% of that is recycled. Over 38B bottles end up in US landfills every year. It takes 1.5M barrels of oil to produce the US’s bottled water and over 1B bottles are transported each week consuming oil and other resources just to deliver. Something else to consider when using bottled water is the harmful effects that plastic has on our health. Studies have proven that food items to include water that are stored in plastic, absorbs some of the plastic materials which are then consumed. These materials turn into bad estrogens in our bodies and when accumulated with the many other chemicals that also turn into estrogens in our bodies can cause cancer. There are many published studies on this that you can look up. My point with bottled water is that it’s bad for the environment and our bodies, why not start using a reusable stainless bottle now?

There are several other things we have done to reduce our carbon footprint but the ones mentioned above are very easy for anyone to start using immediately. Make it fun for your family; get the kids started off right by leading as their example. Remember, your conservation today will allow them to enjoy resources tomorrow.

Happy Earth Day, let’s make a difference! Kathy