Keeping promises

After my little rant the other day about the environment/sustainable living etc I thought maybe I would point out a few little things that I have actually done so that I'm not all talk! These things are by no means earth-shattering (or should I say healing?), but I think it's the little ignorances that accumulate into the bigger problem and these small changes can simple lead to greater awareness and hopefully make a bit of a difference.

To start with, the first thing I did after reading these tips was change all my bills and statements to electronic rather than paper. I then thought about the whole 'green bag' dilemma. My problem with green bags is that I have about 30 sitting at home and in my brother's car, but I most often do grocery shopping on-the-fly after work, uni or when go to buy coffee, in most of these circumstances I am walking, have a small handbag and didn't actually intend to do any grocery shopping, therefore I rarely have a green bag with me.

So my solution came in the form of envirosax, these are reusable shopping bags made from lightweight polyester, they are waterproof, machine washable and can hold up to 40 pounds of weight, which is twice what a supermarket bag can hold. And above all, they are pretty! Much more attractive than a green bag anyway, I got the Flora 5-bag set and I love them! They fold down to practically nothing so that at the moment I'm keeping two of them in my handbag at all times and I hardly even notice they are there.

Other things I am doing is not driving unless absolutely necessary, this means I pretty much drive to work and that is all. If I need to do shopping or feel like grabbing a coffee I either walk or get the tram, with petrol prices at the moment it's pretty good motivation to get of my butt and walk! I also sneakily turned down the thermostat at my parents house, I wash my clothes in cold water, unplug my laptop at night and when I'm going out all day, print on both sides of computer paper, reuse water bottles to death, don't get the newspaper or phonebooks, buy my meat from a local butcher, only eat meat about 3-4 times a week, and that's about it.

Things I need to do include: putting a "no junk mail" sticker on my mailbox, not using the tumble dryer so much, having shorter showers, being more stringent with recycling, not wasting water when washing the dishes, recycling the wire coathangers from drycleaning (although these are technically my bosses not mine, but really as if he cares about the environment), and turning off lightbulbs more!

I've also been lecturing my parents all week and things that should and could be doing to help make a difference, but I think they do pretty well without me anyway. So that concludes my second environmental rant, if you got to the end of this then I applaud you.