Day 96 of our Green Year: Reducing Possessions

It is a well-known fact that as a species, we love possessions. We love to horde them, we love to hang onto them and we love to show others that we have them. However, our consumerism culture has actually created the environmental problems that we now face.

Our desire to own two or three cars, a large McMansion and more electronics than someone would ever need have raised the energy demands of the world, and pumped untold amounts of chemicals and pollution into our world. Our consumerism, could very well be our undoing.

As a result, Layla and I have decided that we will be reducing what we buy and only buying what we need will help reduce our carbon footprint. Do we need an iPod? No not really, we can just as easily listen to music on our computers. Do we need a new car? No not really, we can just as easily use our old one, or walk.

Before we make any purchase, we are going to ask "Is this good for us and the environment?"
This will help us keep our possessions low, because while we put a hold on what we buy, we will also be reducing what we have. Layla and I will be donating much of what we own to reduce our possessions, while also listing many products on FreeCycle.
We are hoping to do what many people around North America are doing, and that is living with 100 or fewer items (10 forks count as 10 items by the way). This will help make moving easier of course, but it will help us live a bit better with Mother Nature.

Day 61 of our Green Year: The Ultimate Recycling

Well we are going headlong into our third month of going green and things are starting to really take off for us.
For today, we have decided to go green by joining Freecycle.org. Freecycle is a website that has actually been around for a few years, which allows people to essentially join the world's largest free garage sale.

Freecycle works through Yahoo Groups, and it gives the ability for people to put things that they want to get rid of up on the group for their area (our area is Trail, B.C.). Whether it is plant pots, a dresser, clothes or more, you can find it here and all you have to do is contact the person giving it away and pick it up.
As well, you can put up your things as well to prevent the things you own from ending up in the landfill. Remember, one man's trash is another man's treasure, and you don't want to contribute to our growing landfills by throwing things away, which someone else may want.

Think of how much waste goes to landfills that does not need to? How many times have you seen things like couches, pots, books and more at a landfill? There are about 10,000 landfills across Canada right now. That is about one landfill for every 3,500 people. As well, landfills account for 38 percent of all our methane emissions in Canada, which is 20 times stronger than greenhouse gases. While the items you get on Freecycle are not going to be producing methane, beginning by giving away what you would throw away, is a good start to preventing you from simply throwing everything away because it is easier. That way, landfills get smaller and more gets recycled.

Currently, Layla and I are looking for some things on the site to help us go green. We will see what we find!

As well, be sure to check out www.greenmagazines.com, where Layla and I will have ten tips on how to go green in each issue of Organic Lifestyles. They were nice enough to speak to us and we are looking forward to sending our message of how to go green to a wide audience!

Here is a photo of Layla doing the right thing by drying our clothes outside on the deck. Do you have any photos of you doing green things? Send them to us at crwbaird@gmail.com