GREAT TOPIC!! In our house we compromise a lot on this issue but for different reasons. I’m the only one who cares about green issues (both health and energy) in my house for the mostly the same reasons you guys do. In fact, my darling hubby had never recycled a single item before meeting me (gasp!). But he is very tight with his (now our) money, so where energy savings overlaps with saving money he is totally on board. So he has kindly adopted my stringent recycling rules and given in me to purchasing more expensive green cleaning products (with coupons!) and I have agreed to walk more places then I ever used to. It seems to work well. My next project is to plant a small garden – I can’t wait!

BTW – I love your blog! I save it for last every day bc it’s my fave :-) (is that weird? maybe some people read their fave first?)

Yay for being green!!! I am definitly a “greenie” but it helps that my parents are tree-hugging hippies and have an organic farm. I’m all about turning the A/C up when I’m not home, going to farmer’s markets, recycling anything and everything, etc! I probably push all my friends to try to be a little green, and my boyfriend now recycles because of me :)
Oh and John… on the “pretty” rain barrel subject… my parents have small steel tanks at the end of several gutters around the house and to make them more appealing my mom put water lillies in them, but she mostly uses them for watering all the potted plants with rain water! My dad also got a 1000gal tank for Christmas a few years ago so he uses that for the gardens, so at least you don’t have that in your back yard!!

Another great post!!!!! Thanks so much! You and my husband would get along great, “line the house with rain barrels” cracked me up!!

I turned from being very “brown” to being VERY “green” about 3 years ago! I love it! We are in the process of adopting our first child and I plan on using cloth diapers. We are also very fortunate to have curb side recycling bins that we do not have to sort. My only complaint is that I wish recycling was picked up weekly and garbage every other week!

I also compost, use only green cleaning products, make my own green laundry detergent, switched all my plastic tupperware to glass, grow my own organic garden, shop at farmer’s markets, and shop second hand. I love finding all the “treasures” for cheap! My next step to being even more eco friendly is a rain barrel. I have been wanting one for a while, but just haven’t done it. That might be on my weekend to do list. Thanks for all the inspiration!

Love this topic! Our home started on a green journey years ago when I started carrying my own bags to the store before they were available. The big step was when I started a butterfly/veggie garden which had to be organic. Then I took a local composting class. We compost outdoors and inside with worms….not gross at all….not smelly and very scientific. The worms came when I decided to teach my 4 year old son what happens to food. The great thing with how we started this is that during the school year my son teaches his classmates and often teachers how to compost and the butterfly lifecycle. My 7 year old knows more than some adults. And forget me, Mom, being the #1 recycler in our home, that is now driven by my son….from what not to throw outside because it will feed the worms to which items go into the recycle bin…..teach them young and they will outshine you! No struggles in how we are going green, I threw out the tupperware and went glass, no-one complained…..next step….still working on it!

It is the same here at our house! My husband is definitely all about the energy saving- unplugging all appliances before bed, keeping the ac at the appropriate temperature, turning off lights and even saving flushes- eww- not to mention his ocd way of recycling anything and everyhing. Anyway, I admire his seemingly overboard recycling habits and I do enjoy recycling myself but my “green” living is more on the side of health. I too am slowly transitioning into organic options and when necessary, I don’t inlight my husband to see if he notices the difference :) I love the idea of natural cleaning but haven’t gone completely wild yet. My battle seems to be in my own ocd tendencies where I still like deep cleaning so much that I am having trouble putting away the same bleach and “harmful” chemicals that give me peace when I facing germophobia. I am very interested in seeing the documentary you suggested. Its on my list of things to do!

Haha – you guys are amazing.. I’m still trying to get my husband to recycle. :)

I watched No Impact Man last night! Such a great documentary! I doubt I could go without (or want to go without) such luxuries as toilet paper, but there are sooooo many things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint. :)

I’m all for going paperless, but I don’t think I’ll be including toilet paper on that list for now! Speaking of paper, and being on the same page (pun intended), my husband and I mostly seem to agree on green/healthy living. I think our main motivation has been prompted by not wanting lots of nasty chemicals around our home (especially now that we have a curious toddler roaming around the house). Strangely enough, I am also motivated by being too lazy to use our car. If I need to get a couple of things at the shop, I walk the short distance simply because the thought of loading and unloading my daughter into the car, dealing with traffic and finding a car space is too much hassle. The exercise and stress reduction of getting out of the house is a nice bonus. Plus, we save on petrol.
Anyway, on a completely different note, do you know of any ways to carry lunches to work without using plastic wrap or plastic containers? Also, how do you go about storing any leftovers in the fridge? Do you use the glass pyrex containers or something else? Thanks.

My son-in-law, in the gutter installation & anything else you need business, has a very attractive rain barrel. A bit pricey, but if you were to line the perimeter of your home, it would look a bit nicer than the purely functional yet not so attractive barrels! Other cool stuff also if I were in the “more money than I know what to do with category!”

Here is a link to his site
http://shop.springfieldgutters.com/category.sc?categoryId=2

I’ve always been the green one in our small familly of three but my lovely husband always always hears me out and then complies with no buts and ifs because he knows it’s for our own good.
We compost and he’s the one to take care of that dirty business, we bought an air-pressure outdoor cleaner and this has saved tons of water and time, we intend to build rain barrels, too, as soon as we fix up the garden area.
I recycle religiously (he, not so much, but I go over his garbage bin so that’s ok!) and I’ve insisted on using reusable bags and cloth towels. Finally, I make my own detergents from laundry to mopping to bathroom cleaning and I couldn’t be happier about it!

As an avid gardner I fully support your love of rain barrels. Question: What about the garage? Does it have a gutter system? If not, how much would it cost to install? A more extreme idea is to increase the surface area of your garage roof by adding additional plastic or metal panels. The more surface area, the more rain you collect.

I also read about a guy that built a fairly large roofed pavillion for just this purpose. He uses the area underneat for cookouts, etc. The roof is wild looking because he wanted to maximize his rain collection but it was built in such a way that it looks very modern and interesting.

Anyway, good luck!

My only concern about the rain barrels is the potential for mosquitoes & the West Nile virus. They get pretty intense in these parts. Just like this heat today!!! (I sure do wish my car a.c. worked.)

Some county Parks & Recs departments have rain barrel work shops. So check them out if you’re interested.

We do it all! I’m a huge gardener so we’ve always had a compost bin where all of our scraps and yard waste goes in. But, the compost only supplies so much so when we need compost, we use organic compost from our favorite nursery. We have a rain barrel that waters the gardens with an all natural mosquito repellent in the barrel. We eat organic when we can and have switched from regular ground beef to bison. We don’t use dryer sheets, we use dryer balls. We use reusable sandwich bags (instead of using a ton of ziplocs for school lunches). Of course we use reusable totes at the grocery store. The list goes on and on!!

Also, on top of using Tom’s of Maine and other natural products for us and our kids, we use the California Baby all-free shampoo/body wash, especially for babies. It’s fantastic!

So kudos to you (and all those out there) for being as green as possible! We can’t do 100% but we can do our small part.

Hi!
I think Christoph and I are equally green. Both of us are into using eco building materials for renovating our old farmhouse, preparing laundry detergent, baking bread, eating local food, not flying etc.
This summer there will be an exception though – we will fly for the first time in 13 years. To go look at grasses on Shetland.
Hope the grass research part makes the trip a bit less un-green :) Guess we will plant some trees this fall to balance the carbon nevertheless :)

With all the focus on keeping chemicals from impacting our homes/selves, have you & Sherry read the articles about the carcinogenic flame-retardants that Ikea and other furniture stores use? While I love the usability of their furniture, it makes me definately favor buying older/vintage. The other surprising recent news item, is that most popular sunscreens contain hormone distruptors (article in NYT this week) — see the Environmental Working Group’s rankings of the most popular brands (www.ewg.org)

Thanks for suggesting Snacktaxis. Unfortunately they don’t ship to Australia – BOO!! but happily I found the same idea available locally (another US brand called Lunchskins).

I live in the Pacific Northwest. On a garden tour of a neighborhood that a large percentage of starving artists, I saw rain barrels “wrapped” with galvanized sheet metal roofing (if you like shiny), and balanced out by galvanized horse trough planters. The whole space was amazing. The owner wanted camouflage for the rain barrels and raised planters that would keep their dogs out.

I imagine you could disguise extra rain barrels with flexible
willow fencing
http://www.gardeners.com/Willow-Fencing/Landscaping_Fences,36-647,default,cp.html

or the bamboo kind. If you are worried about “too much water” or mosquitos, some folks have their rainwater rain from gutters or barrels into an underground cistern where is can be more safely stored in one location. My in-laws use this system in the Oregon high desert to help supplement their water supply in the dry summers.

And my kids love our organic flower and produce garden and all the wiggly worms in our worm bin. I can see a back yard seating area with worm bin end tables in your future. What a great style challenge for you!

One way that my husband and I choose to be “green” is by buying used as often as possible. We LOVE thrift stores, antique stores and flea markets. Our house is filled with character and individuality… and we’re doing something affordable to keep perfectly useful (and sometimes beautiful) pieces out of landfills. Oe less newly-manufactured thing purchased from Target or Ikea.

Of course, our fervor extends to clothing as well. I can’t see the sense in buying organic produce and BPA free plastic bottles… while buying clothing for my daughter made in sweatshops in other parts of the world. Green + cruelty free = a great combination.

This covers all the bases = saves you money, helps the environment, helps your health, makes you feel better, it’s so easy to do and it costs less than $50.00; Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: “if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn’t wipe it off with paper, would you? You’d wash it off” Available at http://www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won’t even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without feeling guilty. It’s cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You’ll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but remember the water use of industrial users far exceeds the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways.

Also got interrupted on my last post. I have also seen rain barrels wrapped with chicken wire or hog wire (the bigger stiffer rectangular kind) and then used attractively and effectively as a low trellis. We also have many folks out here in Seattle who run copper rain chains down to them instead of gutters which is beautiful and creates a great sound:

http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Amaryllis-Copper-Rain-Chain/1713051/product.html

One designer in Seattle who is really innovative and has experience with how to do sustainable landscaping and make it look good is Cameron Scott of Exteriorscapes. His portfolio is pretty fun to look at, he has a lot of experience and ideas about rainwater storage and I bet he could do a whole guest post on how to make it look pretty.

http://www.exteriorscapes.com/exteriorscapes.html

Living in Germany one simply has to be green. Driving mostly bike, separating garbage – paper, glass, bio, plastic etc. using by low energy saving bulbs.
Buying organic food, supporting local farmers. Here it is just a way of life. Even most paid CEO won’t use his Mercedes if he lives in a city then rather a bike, bike traces are all around the city and you pay more tax if you drive a car, so called ecology tax. No plastic bags at grocery, mostly a cotton one, reusable. Energy saving household equipment using extremely small amount of water or electricity. I love this country to giving me so many opportunities to be green.

Here’s a great reason to feel good about using Dr. Bronner’s (or other veg-derived soaps): my toddler inexplicably decided to chug our “Baby Mild” Dr. Bronner’s the other day. We use it to clean him, us, the floors, my bras, etc. & always kept it handy next to the tub. I was two steps away from him, turned away for literally a moment, but didn’t even see him do it. When he started to puke uncontrollably, however, I figured out what happened.

Not so fun – but the good news is that if it had been petroleum-derived, we would have been in for a trip to the ER. As it was, he was briefly very sick, we were scared mightily, but everything was ok. I cannot tell you how many less dramatic moments I’ve had where I’ve thought, “I’m so glad I switched over to the non-toxic [spray cleaner, deodorant, etc.] version!”

My husband was a little reluctant to chuck all our old brands & thought using baking soda & vinegar to clean was nothing short of heretical, but now we’re really glad we made the switch!

Just wanted to say that I love that you referenced venn diagrams… hilarious!

We don’t do as much yet as I’d like to when it comes to being green, but in the last couple of years, we’ve significantly increased our recycling/reuse efforts. This has cut down the amount of trash we throw out down to 1 kitchen sized bag a week (we used to have 2 or 3 a week).

I love No Impact Man! I’ve been following his blog for a couple of years and he’s very inspiring!

We are working on being even more green. Our first baby is due in August and we want to make our home the healthiest environment possible. We are also cloth diapering and we recycle like made.

Loved this post – I am slowly switching all my personal care products over to more natural brands like Dr Bronners, Burts Bees, Toms of Maine, Jason Organics and the like. Just back from Whole Foods and had to comment that the price of the California Baby sunscreen you recommended made my jaw drop – $7.50 per ounce! A small 3-ounce tube was $22.50! As a pale gal who uses an ounce of sunscreen DAILY on the recommendation of my dermatologist, that is crazy expensive for me. (I literally go through a bottle of sunscreen a week.) Maybe the tiny amount needed to cover your little girl makes it affordable, but wondering if the grown-ups of the house use a different brand for day-to-day SPF protection? I use the EWG site as a guideline, but would love to hear your perspective, as you seemed very keen on California Baby which made me think maybe you road-tested a few other brands in your switch to safer products for your family. Any advice?