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| How i make this world greener |
 I am a young, married mother of a 14 month old daughter. My husband and I are struggling to be able to afford simple things in life as I am 19 and going to college and he is 21 and also attending college but one thing we never ever scrimp on is the environment. To us, there is not much that is more important than taking care of the environment for the simple reason that our daughter deserves to live in a world as beautiful and as majestic as we do. Right now she is 14 months old and by the time she is our age I fear the world will be in shambles and this terrifies me more than you can imagine. Its not fair that because people dont care to educate themselves on what they can do to help out the environment, my daughter and her future children will be the ones to suffer. My husband and I have been putting together money through hard work and sacrifice to be able to make a diference. We recently bought some solar cells (the cells that when put together make a solar panel). We couldnt afford to buy an actual solar panel but luckily my husband is an engineering student so we bought the cells so that he can build them into a solar panel. We also bought a broken grid tie inverter (the device that connects the solar panels or wind mills to your household electricity) which he is repairing because new ones are very expensive. We switched every lightbulb to flourescent, made our diets mostly vegetarian (to help the environment), bought weather sealing for around all of our doors and windows, insulatulated all of our pipes with foam covers that you can buy at hardware stores, we dont use our dryer unless its too cold out to dry clothes, and even then we have made a contraption that lets you put the air vent from your dryer into your house after collecting all of the lint in a box filled with water (you can buy a similar item from most hardware stores) this heats up our apartment very efficiently without wasting any energy whatsoever. We only buy fish that has been farm raised to ensure that we are not contributing to the ocean being wiped out from over fishing, We tell everyone we know about how we live in hopes of inspiring them (its already worked with many people), we dont buy anything that has excessive packaging that isnt needed, we use vinegar to disenfect everything instead of lysol, vinegar has the same disenfecting properties without the harmful chemicals. Whenever at campus, we shut down as many computers and lights as we can find that are not being used. My husband worked hard to make both of our older hondas get much better gas mileage (35 on the highway). We invested into our local whole foods co-op which is a store that sells only environmentally friendly groceries and other items. We have also made countless adjustments to our 201 year old apartment to make it more energy efficient. We recycle as well as make our own compost for our organic vegetable garden. We are trying to talk local businesses into letting us put a coffee can for donations to our wind/solar energy fund into their establishments. 100% of these procedes would go straight to buying solar panels or wind generater parts. We read to our daughter many, many books dealing with the earth at even this young of an age in our hopes to establish a love for the world that can one day grow into her having compassion for it. We introduce her to the environment as much as possible by doing everything from taking her on walks with us to collect litter to bringing her to the local environmental center once a week. Her first words so far were "grass" and "stick". I figure if we raise her with a respect for the environment maybe she too will raise her children in that way so that we may have started an entire bloodline of people who will care about environmental issues. We are litterally doing EVERYTHING we know that can help to make things better and to change the world. All of the food we buy for our daughter is organic, not only for her health benefits but for the health of the world as well. We would be purchasing all of our food from local farmers and organic distrbuters, however this is quite expensive. My husband works at the engineering department of penn state and the campus library mostly so we can have easy access to books about global warming and the environment that we can further educate ourselves with. |
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I think that you are a wonderful example of a young family. If only more people were so willing to give back to the environment, for ourselves, our children and the future. Thank you for setting an example for the rest of us, and for being true to yourselves. Hard work will pay off for you, I am sure.
Nicole |
| posted by Nicole on 08/09/2007 |
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| I think your post is great. I like that you and your husband are doing so much to make your daughter's future better. Hopefully people will take notice of what you're doing and do the same thing. We're newer to the idea of changing our lifestyle but it's important and we're constantly looking for new ways to help. The other day my friend told me about an online wholesale store that's environmentally friendly in more ways than one. We're getting rid of all our other things and shopping with them. Not only is it our contribution to the environment, it's also helping us save money. |
| posted by shayna on 08/13/2007 |
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