Average Jane’s Green Update

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GreenDimes was one of my more successful green initiatives from last year. My husband and I agree that our junk mail has been reduced substantially. I’m looking forward to a day when the only items that appear in our mailbox are legitimate correspondence and online orders. (I’m also working on getting more of my bills electronically.)

Even though I don’t do resolutions, per se, I had a few green goals for 2008. First on the list was to start bringing my own shopping bags to the grocery store. I purchased a 3-pack of bags at Costco that are really great, but enormous. I can probably get the equivalent of four or five bags of groceries into one, but that’s okay because they have two sets of handles in different lengths to balance the load.

My second goal was to start recycling glass. Our curbside recycling pickup started excluding glass a year or two ago and it just feels wrong to throw it away. The problem is that I can’t seem to find out where to take the glass I collect. Our recycling company’s website seems to be in permanent crash mode and none of the city or county sites have anything useful to say. I did find a glass recycling center in a nearby city; maybe I can pretend I live there and get them to take my little collection of condiment jars and wine bottles.

My final goal – and this is the expensive one – is to substantially increase the amount of insulation in our attic and have all of our old windows replaced with energy efficient ones. Our utility bills really aren’t that bad, but I’m sure our drafty windows and thin insulation make them worse than necessary.

While I’m working on making my house as green as I can, I’ve been drafted for a "green team" at work to come up with ideas for making the office more environmentally friendly. My ideas so far include purchasing environmentally neutral cleaning supplies and recycled paper goods, recycling more kinds of materials, encouraging more people to recycle rather than discard, and facilitating carpooling among employees who live near each other.

Have any other good green suggestions for me for home or office? I’ll take ’em!

Comments

5 responses to “Average Jane’s Green Update”

January 9, 2008

jennyonthespot

I like your green goals -they sound reasonable and do-able. Sometimes when I hear folks’ green intentions, I just get overwhelmed and feel so… well, “not green”. I saw those bags at Costco just 2 days ago – and they are enormous! We have a great market nearby that sells smaller ones, and I found these bags (http://www.minusbags.com/minusbags_shop.html). They are a little spendy, but I’m thinking maybe going green can be cute 🙂 Go green peas on chocolate!
🙂

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January 9, 2008

Sanjdimes

GreenDimes here,
Thanks for writing about us. You don’t seem average at all!

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January 9, 2008

mojavi

have you switched to the halogen light bulbs? I have them in myhouse. I admit they aren’t as bright but very efficient. Also get a blanket for your water heater. Get a digital thermometer, you can sign up for KCPL’s energy saver thermostat they will install it for free and they will program it to auto adjust for savings.
I have also purchased the bags from Dillons and price chopper, I am waiting to get them from target and walmart. I just don’t feel right carrying in a dillons bag to walmart you know… this is why making my own would have been better but not time efficient… ya know!

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January 11, 2008

fweetieb

I posted about this a few days ago:
http://justfweetieb.blogspot.com/2008/01/like-frog-says-its-not-easy-being-green.html
Oprah had a great “Green” segment last Friday. Check out her site as well.
Yay for canvas bags, CFL bulbs & not taking that ATM receipt – three quick easy ways to be “greener.”

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January 14, 2008

Dustin

The biggest item I would say would be to convert from a paper to an electronic document management system.
All organizations produce stacks and stacks of paper. The paperless office isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but any movement in that direction would be great.
Have you thought about TerraPass (http://www.terrapass.com/buy-carbon-offsets/)?
It would be cool to offset some of the carbon emissions for all of the travel to our clients.
My favorite “green” site is http://www.treehugger.com/

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