Category: Go Green

Go Green for St. Patrick’s Day!

Thursday is St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday not really worth celebrating unless you’re Irish or want to be. Normally I don’t think much about March 17th except to dress my children in the obligatory green. But this year I decided that instead of just wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day, I would Go Green by doing a little something for the planet.

At the park last week, my Mountain Fam explored the river. The water bubbled, birds chirped and the adventure would’ve been perfect except for one thing. Trash.

Beer cans, food wrappers, an old shoe, a discarded shirt, even a broken bundt pan were left on the ground. With the snow melting, previously covered litter is coming to light and it’s pretty gross.

A few years ago my husband started a group titled WTF!?! It had a membership of two, myself and Mountain Dad and it was committed to picking up trash along trails when we went into nature. WTF technically stands for World Trash Federation, but mostly it describes our reaction to the bags of garbage we hauled away.

Several years have passed since I thought about WTF, but Thursday I’ve decided to revive the group and invite some friends to join. And by some friends I mean everyone on the internet. That’s you.

Thursday March 17, 2016 I invite you to Go Green for St. Patrick’s Day! If cleaning up litter doesn’t suit you, do something else. Buy reusable produce bags at the grocery store. Start a compost pile in your backyard. Plant a tree. Plan a garden. Contact your state representative about an environmental issue. Whatever it is, make this Green loving holiday work for its national importance.

If you’re in Utah County and want to join me on a  Hike it Baby Go Green hike there’s more information here. Whatever you choose to do with your St. Patrick’s Day please let me know. I’d love to hear all the Go Green for St. Patrick’s Day projects!

How Hippee Are You?

I’m writing this while eating granola that I purchased in the bulk food section of Sprouts Market using refillable jars that I brought from home.

Yeah. I’ve gone a little hippee. 

I’m not the only one. Green living, sustainable agriculture, and climate change are big topics in the world. As an outdoors lover it makes sense to care about the environment and want to preserve the beauties of the earth. But living in an eco-friendly way requires sacrificing personal convenience.

How much do you give up for the sake of the environment?

In October, I read the book Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. Her family of four produces just one quart of garbage a year. That’s less than the average American produces in two days.

Zero Waste Home and its accompanying blog advocates living more simply by consuming less and using package free alternatives. Since reading the book, I analyze everything I throw in my trash bin – wrappers, bits of tape, food scraps – and think how I could compost, recycle or avoid tossing it altogether. It has changed my daily life.

I now use cloth diapers (much to Mountain Dad’s dismay), bring my own containers to the grocery store and carry a handkerchief instead of tissues. I choose to garden, make my own reusable bulk bags, and scrutinize every item that enters my home with a view on how to dispose of it when the time comes.

Living in the mountains requires us to haul our own trash and recycling away, so we naturally have an incentive to produce less of it. It also makes it easy to compost since our yard has no grass, just trees and native landscaping (mostly weeds).

But even so, I view my life from the outside and wonder, What happened to me? I used to think the only people who refused straws and used their personal water bottle at restaurants were the fringe of society. The crazies who hugged trees and wore free range wool or fair trade cotton. Now I am that person!

Maybe I should expect this kind of change living in an outdoors loving community. Tree hugging. Granola. Anti-plastic.

I realize that I live on the banks of mainstream society. But I don’t think I’m weird or abnormal. I think the rest of society is.

When I see people leave the grocery store with a cart full of plastic bagged food I judge them a little. It’s not hard to buy a few reusable shopping bags and keep them in your car. You go grocery shopping every week and will for the rest of your life. Why not invest $10 and a half hour of time to making the world a little greener?

Or my sister who continues to receive her bills by mail even though she lives in 2016 like the rest of us. I know automatic bill pay and ebills take time to set up, but one hour of your life is a small price to pay for greater convenience and fewer dead trees. 

Everyone has their comfort level in this area. For me it’s where cost, convenience and logic intersect. I compost and recycle because it’s cheaper and easier than hauling trash down the mountain. I cook homemade meals because it’s better for my family and I can use package free ingredients. Plus it tastes better.

There’s a little hippee in everyone. How Hippee are You?