So, recently our family has started to “go green”. It all started when I watched Oprah’s Earth Day show. I was mortified by the news that there is a monstrous “trash swirl” in the Pacific Ocean that is over ninety feet deep and twice the size of Texas!!! It’s just hanging out there, getting bigger by the minute! Also, the show enlightened me about the dangers of plastic bags.

We already were doing some things right, like using CFL bulbs and a water filter on our faucet. But I didn’t realize that we could be doing so much more! So our first step was to make sure we recycle EVERYTHING that can be recycled. For us that is plastic and paper/ cardboard. Next we decided to limit our plastic bag usage by buying reusable shopping bags. I always thought that they were too expensive or a waste of money, but the blue ones at Wal-Mart are only fifty cents. Also, some stores like Reasor’s offer an incentive when you use their brand of reusable bags. This was my favorite thing that we changed because I had no idea how dangerous plastic bags are to wildlife! And the reusable ones are bigger and sturdier (Is that a word? Spell check says yes!) than plastic. Right now we are working on switching out all our detergents and cleaners to eco-friendly versions. Surprisingly, homemade, eco-friendly cleaners are very inexpensive and work just as good!

We are still learning of things we can do, but for now it feels good to know that we have made some baby steps in the right direction!