We've had a few days to think about it now, so it's time to commit to your October reduce, reuse and recycle goals. Y'all know the drill by now: you can do one, two or three; you can decide that this is the month you launch two recycling projects and one reducing project ... whatever. Just jump in and inject a little scrutiny into your daily consumption and disposal habits.
As for me ... well, y'all got to me. This month, I will be reducing my dryer use by drying my towels on the wooden rack in our garage. All of you who made the arguments for line-drying have persuaded me that this is worth a look. So this month, I'll be doing an experiment to see how it works out.
I will also be reusing some old shelves I took down from our upstairs closet. These heavy, overpainted boards have been nesting in the crawl space; I plan to buy some brackets and put them up in the garage for storage ... once the garage is free of tile, our contractor's tools, etc.
As for recycling ... here I am honestly stuck. We are already recycling everything we can according to our local trash service. I guess my commitment for this month is to keep on keeping on.
Enough about me. What reduce/reuse/recycle projects are you launching into this month? Which habits are you keeping up?
We got free mesh bags from Bloom Grocery store during the DC Pride Festival that we are using for groceries instead of plastic bags.
Posted by: verucaamish | 2007.10.03 at 11:28
I find that drying towels in a dryer makes them far less stiff and far, far less rough than air-drying (no machine)... I air-dry almost everything else (including most bedding) but the dryer does make items softer, and with towels I find that matters (especially to us wimps?).
By the way, this is my first post, but I was inspired by all of you to get cloth shopping bags (Mountain Equipment Co-op has big cotton bags for sale), which I now use all the time (after only driving them around the first while, now it's a set habit). So thanks!
Posted by: BD | 2007.10.03 at 12:33
I have no ideas. I think I might have too much on my plate right now to add another thing, even if it's small. So I'll keep up my efforts, and if I do any Christmas shopping this month, I'll make an effort to go with choices that include fair trade products, small-scale production, charitable gifts or experiences over things.
Posted by: drunken monkey | 2007.10.04 at 06:20
My husband and I are slowly switching to environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies. We'll see how much we can tolerate the odor of vinegar! We're also trying to generally reduce our usage of nasty chemicals. Most recently, this meant clearing a slow drain with a snake (at $7.50, cheaper than the Drano, and it's reusable!) instead of Drano.
Posted by: Becky | 2007.10.08 at 07:34