Tangled Up In Blog

Waste Not

This weekend in the New York Times I read an article about a man in New York City who, along with his wife and daughter, is attempting to have no net impact on the environment. This means no riding the subway or driving, creating no trash, no television, etc... He's writing a book about his experience, a movie is being made, and of course, he has a blog. Reading his account is really interesting because Andy and I have started, over the past month, to implement some of these changes in our lives as well. We've switched over to energy saving light bulbs and we've started making the transition to only natural cleaners. Today I contacted the credit reporting agencies so that we will stop receiving credit card offers in the mail...which you can do here. I can't tell you how excited I am about this. Right now we receive at least three credit card offers in the mail every single day. I'm also cancelling all of the catalogs we receive because frankly, I don't need a new J. Crew catalog every month. You can do this by calling the 800 number on the back of the catalog. These obviously pale in comparison to the extreme measures he's taking, like not using toilet paper. That is a line I am not crossing, but I would like to make more changes because obviously these are pretty superficial.

Along with reducing waste and energy consumption, we're also trying to make changes in the way we eat. This Saturday we're going to attempt to do all grocery shopping at the farmers market. We will definitely have to change the way we eat and obviously some things we will have just have to go without but I think in the long run it will be worth it. Of course I say all of this with the optimism of a project not yet attempted but I hope we can do it.

I would love to hear anyone else's waste reduction tips or things that you've tried that work and things that don't work. On the blog, No Impact Man, he discusses how he was just another liberal ranting and raving about the environment but not doing anything about it...well, I feel the same way so I guess the time has come to do something about it.

Labels: environment

posted by carolyn @ 1:29 PM