Be kind to the earth today.

Here are just a few things that we did today:

1. Randy drove Jayden to school this morning on his way to work so I didn't have to take the other car out.

2. We took a huge bag of cans to the recycling depot. Jayden got $11.88.  Here's a pic of Jay's last minute dash to grab the small mountain of cans out of his bedroom before we left.

3. We are now a paperless on-line billing family

4. We used ceiling fans instead of air conditioners.

5. We wore Earth Day shirts to let everyone we passed know about Earth Day. By purchasing these shirts we contributed to helping cotton farmers transition their fields from conventional farming to organic farming.

6.  I mass super-poked all of my friends on Facebook to remind them about Earth Day

7.  We only used re-useable water bottles.

8.  I signed the petition for the Global Treaty to solve the climate crisis at We Can Solve It

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Find out more about Earth Day at these links:

Earthday Network

Wikihow – Celebrate Earth Day

About My Planet

Google – Earth Day 08

Yahoo Green

Everyday Activist – If you have a Facebook account add this application to your page too.

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Check out these activities and learn more about Earth Day:

1. What's your environmental footprint?  Take this quiz to find out.

2. Nature – Climate Change Calculator – take this quiz to measure your impact on the climate and find out what you can do to make it better.

We took this quiz.  For a 5 person household this is the estimated emissions (Tons of CO2 eq/year)

3. Kaboose – Earth Day – there are some great activities to bring awareness to kids on Earth Day

Look at these cute color in pages that I printed for Marisol & Flynn

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These are a few things we do regularly to help the earth:

• We time our showers
• We turn off the water when brushing our teeth
• We use recycled water for pot plants – from the steamer, the kettle or water bottles
• We turn off appliances when leaving the house
• We don't leave night lights on.
• We turn off lights and appliances as we leave rooms
• We walk as often as we can to run errands
• We use re-useable bags for shopping whenever possible.  Any plastic bags (if we've forgotten our re-useable ones) are taken to a recycling bin at our local supermarket or used to collect dog waste from the yard.
• At least 50% of our food shopping purchases are organic.
• We recycle and we collect cans to take to a recycling center.
• Every few months we clean out our wardrobes and donate our used clothing to a charity.
• We hold yard sales to sell our unwanted items so others will get some use from them.
• We use re-chargeable batteries to reduce the use of disposable ones for cameras, video cameras and portable electronics.
• I only run the dishwasher if it is full – I will be forcing my husband to do the same 🙂
• We never use the hot cycle for doing laundry.
• We prefer to purchase wooden & handmade toys over plastic & battery operated toys for the kids.  I try to make toys for the kids whenever possible (things that can be handed down and not thrown away).
• We all use re-useable water bottles – even the babies.  The babies have SIGG water bottles.  Not only do SIGG donate 1% of purchases to 1% FOR THE PLANET but they are also manufactured in an ecologically-friendly environment and are 100% recyclable once you are finished with them (maybe 10-20 years down the road).  They are also 100% safe and do not leach harmful chemicals in the container unlike a lot of other bottles that have recently received a lot of press.

There is so much more that we, as a family, can do for our earth and gradually we will make more changes to our lifestyle to accommodate more earth friendly products and activities.