And so you might be thinking, thanks, but so what? Well, I used to be like that, too. It wasn’t until I took an environmental studies class in college, did I start to open my eyes to all the little things I could do to make a small difference. And if we all do just a tiny bit, we may be able to leave a better planet to the next set of little people. And that’s a good goal, right?

I’ve been doing a lot of research on just what are some of the best things I can do to make a good effort in helping improve our environment. There are the basic things that we are all pretty familiar with and well, let’s be honest, don’t take up a whole heck of a lot of time and are simple to do! Here’s a list to get you started. If you aren’t doing any of these, now is a great time to start! If you have questions or suggestions, make sure to leave a comment!

~ Recycle, reuse and shop and live smarter!! ~

1. Recycle! I know, so simple. But millions of people still don’t recycle! If your community does not offer recycling, talk to your city officials and ask them to get with the program! Talk to your neighbors and start a recycling drive program for your street. Have a revolving collection point for your street and take the recyclables to a local recycling center every week.

2. Instead of buying paper plates for that camping trip, invest in some good melamine camping supplies so that you don’t generate more waste.

3. Instead of buying those plastic containers to store your food, use the glass jars that you buy spaghettis sauce, jam, peanut butter etc. in! Not only is glass MUCH better to store food in, but you won’t be using harmful plastics that are not only bad for the environment, but bad for YOU, too!

4. Don’t use plastic bags from the grocery store! You can find inexpensive reusable/recyclable bags anywhere these days. And if your grocery store still uses plastics, write a letter and let them know that they should consider NOT using plastic bags anymore!

5. If you must use plastic bags from the store, don’t buy trash bags! Use the plastic bags from grocery stores instead for trash bags for small cans.

6. Use brown paper bags to cover school books (don’t you know that anything vintage is back in?) or to wrap up your eBay goodies that you’re selling!

7. Save paper towel and toilet paper rolls for craft projects. Don’t need them? Donate them to schools…they sure can use them!

8. Use newspapers for cleaning mirrors and windows. They work great!

9. Write your shopping lists on junk return envelopes and carry your coupons in there, too!

10. Buy a lunch bag or box instead of using brown paper bags!

11. Instead of using a take out box from the restaurant, bring your own!

12. Use towels instead of paper towels.

13. STOP buying water in a plastic bottle! Buy a stainless steel water container and then buy a Britta or other water filtering system and fill that container up everyday! Not only are those MILLIONS and MILLIONS of plastic water bottles cramming our Earth up, but they are not good for you if you keep reusing them over and over. Plastic deteriorates and releases chemicals into your body….buy stainless steel for ANY container that holds liquid or food!

14. Use rechargeable batteries!

15. Reduce unnecessary travel. Less gas = less money and less pollution

16. Use old holiday cards as gift tags by cutting out the design on the card.

17. Buy recycled paper products! Always look at how your paper products are produced. Invest in companies that are making an effort to reduce waste and use recycled materials to create their products.

18. Eat organic whenever possible! It’s such a shame that eating healthy is so expensive on this side of the country, but do your best to replace a few products here and there at first. Dairy and produce are the best if purchased as organics. But even if you replace just a few things, you will be making a difference! Not only is it great for the environment, but it’s healthy for you!

19. Feed your animal friends organic! Don’t forget that your four and two-legged friends need to eat healthy. After all the recalls on dog/cat food, buying natural or organic for your furry friends is one thing less you have to worry about. We have been feeding our canines Solid Gold now for 7 years. It’s GREAT and we can’t recommend it enough. http://www.solidgoldhealth.com/

20. Got junk? Yeah, we all do! We seem to have it everywhere! And it’s hard to say no to it, right? We’ve been trying to make a strong effort to stop buying junk and stuff for us and the girls. The girls have so many toys that they don’t even play with them. So we are now packing up a box and donating it to others who have a lot less stuff than we do. If you buy something for your kids, encourage your kids to pick out an old toy in exchange for that new toy and donate the old one! It’s good for your heart and the environment!

21. Celebrate nature where you live! Being out in nature can deepen our appreciation of our environments, helping us to become better stewards of Earth.

22. Replace old bulbs with new energy-efficient compact fluorescents! But just remember to NOT throw them in the trash! They do contain mercury. Take them to your local Home Depot for recycling! Click on ‘CFL Recycling’ in the Home Depot link here for more information!

~ Resources and Links ~

And here are some fabulous links that we want to share with all of you. And if you have some tips and hints, let us know what you are doing to help the environment. Remember, it’s not just for the environment, it’s for your kids, your brother or sister’s kids, your best friend’s kids and all the kids in the world. They are the ones that are going to have to clean up this mess….so let’s start helping them clean it up!

Green Living 101: How to Reuse Old Toilet Paper Tubes
http://tinyurl.com/c4yq9f

10 Ways to Go Green and Save Green
http://tinyurl.com/5szh3g

Reuse and Recycling Tips
Tips for Sustainable Living
http://reusetips.org/

The Green Guide – For Everday Living
http://www.thegreenguide.com/

Publix Supermarkets – Get into a Green Routine
http://tinyurl.com/ca4yw8

40 Ways to Go Greener at Home (Besides Just Recycling)
http://simplemom.net/tips-to-go-green-at-home/

29 Tips to Go Green – Green Living on Squidoo
http://www.squidoo.com/agreenlife

How to Go Green
In-depth articles to get off your duff and go Green!
http://www.treehugger.com/gogreen.php

Tips to Reduce / Reuse / Recycle
http://www.epa.gov/earthday/tips-reduce.htm

10 Tips to Shaving 20 Percent Off Your Grocery Bill
http://tinyurl.com/dbjeax

Simple Tips for Reusing Materials Everyday
http://www.cawrecycles.org/living_green/reuse_tips

8 Smart Ways to Reduce and Reuse
http://tinyurl.com/d5bupf

Looking for green and Earth-friendly jewelry? Try Brilliant Earth
http://www.brilliantearth.com/

10 Organic Beauty Tips for Under $5
http://tinyurl.com/ddr54q

5 Tips for Adopting Shelter Animals: Win a Pet Spa Pack
http://tinyurl.com/dck4eb

Top Produce to Buy Organic
http://tinyurl.com/g75e2

~ Photographers and artists go Green, too! ~

Ode to the Earth
The Wiebners
http://www.thewiebners.com/blog.cfm

Greener Photography
http://greenerphotography.org/

Anne Ruthman’s Green blog section
http://anneruthmann.blogspot.com/search/label/green

8 Ways to Green Your Photography
http://tinyurl.com/dlolmu

Thirteen Ways to be a Greener Photographer
http://tinyurl.com/dzxnkp

The Green Photographer
A guide for photographers who want to be greener
http://thegreenphotographer.net/

How to Choose an Eco-Friendly Photographer for Your Green Wedding
http://tinyurl.com/da6daf

Thank you for caring!
~ Astrid and Rene ~

Image courtesy of NASA

Brilliant Earth is based in Canada and uses conflict-free diamonds, practices fair-trade and eco-friendly practices and donates 5% of profits to help local African communities. Not only do they practice green business, but they will also custom-design your set as well! They also have stunning sapphires (which are also ethically-sourced). Where’s my Christmas list?

Check them out!

~ Astrid ~

Now that Rene and I are parents, we pay attention to many topics we didn’t used to pay attention to. We are far more sensitive to what we do and what we could do LESS of in order to leave behind a better world for our children and our grandchildren.

~ Compact Fluorescents ~

One of our first changes around our home and studio was swapping out our old light bulbs for energy efficient compact fluorescents. Not only are they cooler (emitting less heat) but they use a lot less power and have a longer rated life. According to the Wiki, changing to one of these bulbs can save 2000 times its own weight in greenhouse gases! That’s a big deal! Think about the changes we could accomplish if all the households in our country made this simple change!

~ Consuming Less Water (and hot water, too)! ~

There are some days when all I look forward to is a nice long hot bath at the end of the day! However, with the pressure of water conservation, we have made changes at home and the days of long hot showers are no longer! Some of the other little things that we do now in order to conserve water are simple. For example, we now only water our lawn once every 10 days for just a few minutes.

When I do laundry, I always make sure to do a full load as you use a lot less water with full loads than half loads of laundry. Rene has made sure to check all the faucets in the house and the toilets for leaks. And we have purchased a timer for our water heater, which has already saved us some dough in our monthly electric bill!

And one of our more expensive goals for this summer is to switch to solar powered heating panels for our pool instead of using our regular pool heater. Check out these links for tips on how to reduce your water consumption at home:

• Low-cost ways to conserve water at home
• 100 Water-Saving Tips

~ Curbing the Plastics! ~

By far, we are most concerned with our use of plastics in our home. We’ve made a number of changes after educating ourselves on the hazards of the plastics we use and the plastics we use for food storage and consumption, especially for our little ones!

When they ask us if we want paper or plastic, we say neither! We bring our own reusable green bags that we bought at Publix for $.99 each. With four of these bags, we always have plenty of room for all of our groceries and we use ZERO plastic bags! All of the stores sell them and there’s no excuse not to use them anymore! Go out and buy a reusable bag each time you buy groceries or stock up on essentials. You will soon have enough so that you won’t have to use those nasty plastic bags. And make sure to keep them in your trunk so you always have them handy!

Before our trip to the Conservancy earlier this year, we never really knew the impact that plastic bags had on our environment. Turns out, plastic bags are a big threat all the way around! Not only are they made from petroleum, but some of these bags use inks and colorants that are toxic. They end up killing our wildlife and domestic animals when they end up as litter and if that wasn’t bad enough, they take years and years and years to break down into smaller toxic bits, which contaminate waterways and soil.

Another way we have reduced our use of plastics is by using a Brita water filtration pitcher instead of buying bottled water. We also bought Thermos’ for the entire family, eliminating the need to use plastic water bottles completely. But perhaps most importantly, we have completely removed the harmful use of Bisphenol-A in Polycarbonate sippy cups and bottles for our babies. THAT was a very important step that we took in safeguarding our girls’ health. If you are a mom and haven’t heard about B-free plastic sippys, tableware, bath toys, teethers and bottles, MAKE sure to check out this site for more information:

The Z Report on BPA In Children’s Feeding Products, Third Edition

We use the Foogo Thermos sippy for Helena and the Foogo leak-proof straw bottle for Ali, along with the Foogo food jars for Ali’s lunch box. We love Thermos’ Foogo products and recommend them highly. Best of all, we no longer use plastic products that are laden with chemicals for our girls!

~ Pesticides and Cleaning Products ~

We use no pesticides on our lawn and use only natural means to deter the critters. We have also switched to Seventh Generation cleaning products for our home. I am not a total clean freak, but I like a clean home and Seventh Generation provides sound products that work AND are safe for both my family (including Hound dog and Charlie) and the environment. Check them out! They have a ton of great products to keep a sparkling home and take care of baby and furry friends, too!

~ Paper Products and Use ~

All of the paper products we use at home come from recycled materials. We have also made conscientious efforts to reduce paper waste by using LESS overall. For example, I recycle packaging for things like art projects for the girls. Cereal and oatmeal boxes make great supplies for projects!

We have also opted out from the TON of junk mail we receive. What a huge waste of paper junk mail is! But most importantly, in our business, we now only print our promotional material on recycled paper using soy-based inks and we try to reduce the need to use so much paper in general. That means we always try to communicate with our clients using electronic means if at all possible before resorting to sending paper consumables.

These are just a few things we have done to help preserve a little bit of the environment. If we all do just a tiny bit, imagine the changes we can make! And in the end, we preserve this magical place we call home for future generations. Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope it inspires you to make changes in your own home and life. Stay tuned for more!

Have a wonderful day,
Astrid

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Going green is definitely an important topic in our household and for our business, too. Check back soon because we are working on some new additions to our album lines: green albums! We want to offer animal and Earth friendly options to our brides and grooms and their families and we will have more information on that soon! For my Brides, I will also be posting a section on green wedding planning tips, ideas and suggestions that will help you plan a greener wedding. Lots of good information on green weddings coming soon! If we all make small differences, imagine how much it will add up!

Back to our Earth Day celebration, the day started off great! We met with some of Ali’s pre-school friends and of course, first on the agenda was face painting. The lines are always uber long for face painting, and we will sometimes stand around for over half an hour waiting for someone to paint some sort of pink silly thing on Ali’s face. She totally loves it though, so missing out is never an option! To kill some time, Helena made an awesome necklace necklace.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida is a GREAT place to visit! Not only do they serve a vital role in our community here in Naples, but they offer a lot of fun programs for kids, while teaching them to respect our Earth and the animals that live on it.

Some of the cool animals we got to see were in the Discovery Center, where you can learn hands-on with great interactive exhibits with animals like sea turtles, snakes, baby alligators and even a touch tank! Ali was totally into the Lion fish. He was truly magnificent and seemed to totally love all the attention of the gawking kids!

The snakes were cool, too. And they had a big pile of snake skins, which Ali wasn’t afraid of and touched with wide-eyed awe. My favorite was the sea turtle. What a beautiful animal!