Been away and will blog about it later. It's Earth Day today. I may not be an award winning environmentalist but preserving the Earth for our future generations and teaching our kids to love the world they live in is important to me so I'm stealing some time to write just a little about it.
Last year I pledged to:
1. Potty train Baby O. Failed big time. Well, at least we tried. Numerous times. Unfortunately I think she is now traumatised by the whole experience and may take her even longer to be trained! Yikes!
2. Switch off all electrical items when not in use and not leave on standby. Quite a success except for the Astro decoder which they want us to leave on standby mode for updates. Hmm...
3. Use a tiffin carrier or own containers for taking away food. Done whenever we know that we are going to take away. Other times still rely on the containers provided by the food seller. I must comment though that a lot of them have actually switched to recyclable paper boxes or plastic wares which we can reuse and not polystyrene anymore. Bravo to them!
Other things that we have been doing:
recycle our milk cartons, egg trays, glass bottles, cereal boxes, etc.
compost though we have unfortunately stopped doing so due to space constrain.
planted own veg though not every plant was successful as everytime we are away even for just the weekend, our poor plants succumb to the heat and lack of water :( We still have sweet potato, ginger, chilli and pandan to harvest from now.
use only one car and public transportation while we still can and don't need a second car.
use our own bags during shopping. I've in fact sometimes swapped a recyclable shopping for my handbag! One size fits all!
This year I pledge to:
1. Continue to try to potty train Baby O.
2. Make my own organic cleaning agent of some sort which does not contain as many harmful chemicals for us and the environment. Am keen to try a soap or shampoo but will have to source the ingredients.
3. Refashion! Dug out some old t-shirts and hoping to have a chance to make them into something else that can be worn by someone to extend the life of the materials! Very excited about this but just don't know if I'll get a chance to do so. But will pledge to anyway!
Do you have an Act of Green that you want to share with us? Remember it doesn't have to be something big! Just one small action makes a big difference! Here are some suggestions to get you going:
- Extend the life cycle of a product - re-use bags/ wrapping papers/ use both sides of the paper etc.
- Grow your own fruits and vegetables
- Reduce food waste - buy only what you need/ clear refrigerator before buying more food/ ask for less (rice/ noodles etc.) when ordering if you know you can't finish it
- Reduce use of air-conditioner by drawing the curtains to keep hot air out
- Recycle old cell phones and electronics
- Collect rain water to wash the car, water plants, etc.
- Car pool instead of driving alone
- Pay bills online
- Ask more people to join in the pledge!
