Gang Green, again
After laying low for a month or two, our neighborhood "green living" support group, Gang Green, met yesterday. About a dozen of us got together for a potluck/meeting, sitting around Mark & Bobbi's new Amish-made dining room table.
As with our early meetings, we talked about what we'd been doing and what we hoped to learn more about. There was a lot of interest in rain gardens, a topic that's completely new to me. It involves redirecting downspouts to channel rainwater to a garden area planned to withstand both periods of drought and standing water. Sort of feast or famine, waterwise. This will probably be the topic at our next meeting.
Baby steps
After the meeting Joanne & I agreed that getting together with people who are trying in small ways to make their lives more green was encouraging. No one is kidding themselves that these efforts will change the world. They are very small steps in what we hope is the right direction. But if everyone took a couple of small steps, we would change the world. That's how change happens.
So, for what it's worth, here are a few of our baby steps:
- by paying more attention to recycling and composting everything we can, we throw out just one half-full kitchen-size trash bag per week
- by setting my cruise control to 62 mph on my commute to & from work (10 mi each way), I've boosted my gas mileage by close to 20%—and made the drive less stressful
- many of our lights are now compact fluorescents; we try to replace incandescents with CFLs wherever possible
- for our recent trips to New Hampshire we took the Rapid to the airport rather than driving or having someone drop us off/pick us up (saving a 20 mi roundtrip for each)
- we take cloth shopping bags to the West Side Market and Dave's, eliminating at least a half-dozen plastic bags on each trip
Our Eco-footprint is still way too big, but we're making progress. And none of this has been terribly difficult, it just takes a bit of thought and planning.
More steps
The chief Gang Green instigator, Chuck Ackerman, posts occasional stories of his efforts to go green on the GreenCityBlueLake website. If you want ideas or encouragement for greening your own life, read Chuck's My Green Month.
Have you done anything green lately? Share your ideas by clicking "Comments" below.
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