Going Green

As some of you may know, I have become more and more "green" over the past few years. (I've even been called a "hippy" at times!) There was a point where I thought environmentalist were silly and that the world was going to end and we were all going to die someday anyways, so why worry about it? I also thought that nobody could really do anything that made any substantial difference, so it was pointless. However, my thoughts on this have really changed and I am starting to make changes in my lifestyle to become more environmentally friendly.

Why do I do this?

1. I strongly believe that as Christians it is our responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth. We do not own this planet we live on, it was created by God and is a blessing to us. This isn't to imply that I'm so extreme that I would ever put the environmentalism over the value of human life, but I do believe that we have a certain responsibility to take care of this blessing. For example, if you have a car, is it being a good steward of what God has blessed you with if you don't take care of it, it's always dirty, you don't change the oil, etc? No, it isn't, and the Earth should be viewed in the same way.

2. Being envrionmentally friendly is usually friendly to your pocketbook as well. For example, I now make almost all of my home cleaning supplies from baking soda, vinegar, and borax. I haven't done a cost analysis on it, but I know the savings are substantial. And it's been relatively easy to make the switch. My vinegar and water mix for windows works way better than Windex and I can probably make a bottle for less than five cents compared to paying $3.00 for it at the store. Plus I can be glad that I am not putting chemicals into the air that are harming my body. Another example--Mike and I are crazy about recycling. We can recycle paper, plastic, glass, cardboard, etc. as much as we want each month and we don't have to pay since our landlord pays the waterbill, which includes recycling with the city. We pay per bag of trash. It's probably not huge savings, but over the years, reducing our trash and recycling as much as possible will really add up. When Mike and I have children someday, I plan to use cloth diapers. They are great because even for one child, the cost is significantly cheaper than disposables, and they can be reused for subsequent children- we're talking thousands of dollars in savings!! And the type of cloth diapers available are much nicer and more user friendly than what my mom used 25 years ago!

So the reason I wante to write about this was because I came across this report on CNN and thought there was some good stuff on it. Check out the gallery on Disposable Culture. Being poor stewards of the environment often goes hand in hand with being caught up in our materialistic, got-to-have-it-now society.

Here are some more good resources:

Creation Care

Green Clean book

The Healthy Home

Why Use Cloth Diapers?