Saving the Earf

In case you weren't aware, Charlie is on a quest to save the planet, little by little. He's dragging me along for the ride - not kicking and screaming, mind you, but I do have a hard time breaking bad habits. It's because of him, however, that I eat healthier (we're into Organic foods these days), exercise (still working hardest on getting that one to stick), recycle everything and even now we've started composting.

Sure, composting isn't a new idea by any means but we are new to it. The compost bin is on it's way to our house as I sit at my desk and write this. Last night the practice of scraping all of our leftover food & scraps into a ziplock bag commenced. A few stinky onions, a pomegranate rind and a mango peel later, let the decomposition begin! I'm kind-of excited to start making some good compost/soil/gardening material on our own. With so much of our food, etc that we waste it only makes sense to use it for something good - so we'll see how this endeavor suits us.

To recap, these are the things we're doing to be more "eco-friendly"; you can do them too!:
1. Replace most of our lightbulbs with the more efficient kind, compact fluorescents! They come in flattering color tones to suit your tastes. Don't worry, your house won't look like a garage!
2. Compost our miscellaneous waste (can include hair-like from the vacuum cleaner with all of your dog sheddings, food scraps) .
3. RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE (cardboard from those frozen meals and pizza boxes, plastic bags and wrapping materials/styrofoam, yogurt cups). Just make sure your recycling company takes the materials you wish to recycle - we can't get glass recycled here in Houston, it's verboten due to lack of demand for glass. C'mon H-town, get with it!!
4. Fuel efficient cars - both of our clown cars get at least 28-30 mpg on the city street, mid 30s on the highway. Not bad.
5. Conserve energy - Turn off the lights, computers, TVs etc at the power strip or unplug them when they're not in use. Our new TV and dish network system takes 5 minutes to boot up if you shut it off and that's annoying, but killing the planet is even more annoying, so we do it.
6. Keep your thermostat low in the winter, high in the summer. Use a programmable thermostat people! Luckily for us we're frugal with our A/C and keep our house at a toasty 80 degrees in the summer and ...well, cold in the winter. A couple of degrees can save oodles of CO2 emissions and also save money on those energy bills! We are fans of blankets for warmth and sweat for a cooling mechanism - embarrassing but true.

Please be kind to the earth and help us do our part to save the poor lady from our badness.
Peace out.

This message brought to you in part by:
The Marshiks
"The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills To Stop Climate Change" (David de Rothschild) http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Global-Warming-Survival-Handbook/dp/159486781X