Green efforts

I hope everyone found their own way to celebrate Earth Day earlier this week. I intended to write a long post about our family's "green" efforts, as well as the many things we need to improve on, but I didn't have the time to actually sit down and get it all out of my head. I will give you an update on some of the things that were in my New Year's resolutions that related to living green. One of our resolutions was to become paper napkin and paper towel free in our house. So far, we have been doing really well. We purchased a huge bulk pack of paper towels (12 double rolls) back in November or December and we still have most of that pack left. We have been using cloth napkins at mealtimes, and cloth towels to clean up spills. The overall impact on our lives has been negligible. It took about two weeks to get used to using cloth, and we no longer even keep paper towels on the counter. The extra laundry isn't even noticeable, I don't think it even adds up to a load a month. I started with the premise that a cloth napkin was a cloth napkin was a cloth napkin, however we have found that we definitely prefer some napkins over others. I recommend that if you choose to switch to cloth napkins that you only buy napkins that are 100% cotton, linen, or hemp. We have some that are synthetic-blends, and while they look the nicest new, they don't do the job as well and they don't improve with age. Our absolute favorite napkins are hemp napkins made by Ecolution. I have bought some napkins at thrift stores, but so far all my thrift finds have been synthetics, and well, I can see why they ended up at the thrift store. Another one of my resolutions was to compost. That hasn't been going as well, but the spring weather has renewed my resolve. We actually have three wonderful compost bins that were built by the previous owner of our house, and we spent some time last weekend cleaning them out and prepping them for our yard and kitchen waste. I haven't purchased a compost bucket yet (mostly because I'm cheap), but I plan to come up with some type of lidded container for organic kitchen scraps in the next couple weeks. For now I'm using a bowl and just dumping it outside very frequently. The good news is that the space under the sink that we used to use to store massive quantities of paper towels will now be the perfect spot for our compost bucket. One area that we really have lots of room for improvement is in the amount of driving we do. We both have long commutes (miles-wise, not necessarily time-wise). I don't have any ready solutions for making this better, other than our efforts to consolidate trips and eliminate recreational driving. Mr. Savvy does try to carpool when he can, but the addition of Baby Savvy means I have to do both pickup and drop-off if Mr. Savvy is car-pooling. We are continuing to look at our options, and take small wins when we can get them, but for now I don't see a long-term solution in our future. I'd love to hear about your efforts to go green... even in small ways. I'll do a post of the suggestions if I get a lot of responses, and hopefully I'll find new ways to make our household more sustainable.