The following are excerpts from Kimberly's soon to be publised book about her "Green Lifestyle"
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Today is Earth Day on our calendars in America. It's a day when we all should be thinking and re-thinking our lifestyles in an effort to be less harmful to Mother Earth, mankind, and other species, both flora and fauna. Let me put forth seven basic, tangible ways that you and your family can become more green without any startup costs, in fact, you will reap financial savings in these economic hard times.
1. When shopping for food, buy local and organic foods. Why? Because locally grown foods cost less in terms of transportation and carbon footprint to get to you at the market. Organic food don't use any genetically modified organisms that pollute our food chain with built in pesticide protections. They are free from artificial fertilizers and pesticides. You may not realize, but agricultural runoff is the number one pollutant of our waterways.
2. Stop using chemical fertilizers and pesticides on your own lawn and plants. EPA and other private studies have shown that animal species are altered by these products. In fact, we have animals such as frogs and alligators in Florida born with both sets of genitalia from pesticide runoff in our lakes. We also have statistically more human female babies being born than males worldwide attributed to chemical pollution. Kill pests in natural ways: step on them, boil hot water & pour it on fire ant mounds, a bit of dishwashing liquid in a bottle filled the rest of the way with water kills most crawling insects, and if nothing else works, you'll find that any one of the commercially available window cleaning products will kill anything else with just a spritz (there's food for thought) about what you are using to clean your home.
3. Think about your garbage. I know, I'm asking a gross task at this point. Sorry, but you need to think about your garbage. Recycle everything that you can. Even the stuff you never thought about. Cardboard lurks in all kinds of ways besides shipping boxes. We can recycle the cardboard on tissue boxes, toilet paper & paper towel rolls, and cardboard that comes in packages to provide a stiff backboard to more fragile items. Plastic wrappers can be recycled. And while recycling one of the 300 billion, yes I said BILLION, plastic bags used by Americans every year is a good start, a much better idea is to use reusable bags for your groceries and more eco-friendly options for wrapping items in your totebag lunch.
4. Make or buy a rainbarrel. Collect the runoff water from your property in an enclosed rainbarrel. It should be enclosed so that it doesn't provide a breeding ground for mosquitos and to prevent evaporation. There is a spigot at the bottom so that you are watering your garden plants from collected water instead of pumping more water to water.
5. Get rid of all the commercially available cleaners that have been marketed to you as a "necessity". Some homes have a specific cleaner for each task in the home. This chemically pollutes your home. You can clean your entire home with peroxide, steam, borax, baking soda, water and vinegar and save hundreds of dollars per year. Sinks can be scrubbed with a scrubby & baking soda so that toxic chlorine fumes are not being inhaled. Mold is killed with peroxide and it serves to more natural "bleach" for clothing (except silks) and household surfaces (floors, countertops). You may steam tile after sweeping and it will not only clean but sanitize the surface with its 200 degree steam. No chemicals.
6. Buy a water filter pitcher and portable water container made of steel. The water filter pitcher will eliminate your need for jugs or bottles of water at home and steel reusable bottles are great for portability. Steel reusable water bottles are an ideal option and will not infiltrate your water with dangerous pthalates that leach from plastic. Water bottles became chic in the 1990's as Americans became more aware of the "French way" and it became chic to carry a water bottle everywhere with you. While our fascination with name brand water ala Evian has faded, our addiction to plastic bottled water has not. After all, there were rumors that drinking 8 glasses per day was good for us and the municipalities put horrific chemicals in our water sources in order to make them "safe" for consumption. Well, bottled water MAY be a somewhat better option for drinking at least, depending on the source-40% of bottled water is merely bottled municipal source water, not spring water as the name might delude you into thinking. Read the label, it indicates the source. You might be surprised. Only 25% of water bottles in the U.S. are recycled, the rest are thrown in the trash. Recycling is always a secondary solution to not using in the first place because once again, it takes energy to go through the reconversion process.
7. Stop using products with synthetic fragrance. Americans are addicted to synthetic fragrance in almost every product they use, yet there have been no long term studies to show it is safe. In fact, there are lots of cleaning products and other products labeled as "green" or "natural", that aren't. If they have synthetic fragrance, they aren't really green or natural. There is nothing natural about a chemical. Our increasing use of synthetic fragrance in our personal products such as perfumes, "deodorants", body lotions co-incides with the horrific increases in COPD, asthma, allergies and autism that we are seeing in our society. Try using products that either are fragrance-free or at least unscented. Consider starting with your laundry products for washing, rinsing and dryer sheets without fragrance. That at least leaves out the synthetic fragrance from the water and the air as the water is spun out and the air of the dryer exhaust goes into the environment.
I hope that this list of lucky seven gives you and your family something to consider for this Earth Day. By next year, with the accelerating rate of innovation and restoration to more natural ways in this country and in our world, the list will be entirely different!
