Earlier this week Recycla addressed eating a greener diet while saving your greenbacks. Her suggestions are all superb — especially joining a CSA (Enviro-Girl’s share came to $22 a week for an Igloo cooler FULL of produce — she guesstimated that buying an equal amount at the farmer’s market would cost more than $50) and growing your own. Even if you have a plot behind your garage — say a 14 X 3 strip of land, you can borrow a rototiller and buy seeds for pennies and enjoy a significant harvest in a small space. Beans, tomatoes, carrots, onions and herbs could fit in said space with room to spare.
Seven other ways Enviro-Girl has found to reduce, reuse, and recycle on a dime include:
1. Reusing shopping bags — (yes, she knows she harps on this incessantly can you say obsessive?) Most stores will give you 5 or 10 cents’ credit for each bag you reuse. That’s equivalent to a 50 cent coupon when Enviro-Girl makes her weekly trip to the grocery store.
2. Reusing plastic bread bags (or bagel or bun — you get the drift). Instead of buying Ziplock bags, use these empty sacks for storing chex mix, sack lunches, or homemade baked goods.
3. Reusing plastic food containers (from margarine, yogurt, sour cream, etc.) for food storage. The plastics used to make these containers are fragile however, so DO NOT HEAT THEM IN A MICROWAVE. But for cold food storage (salad dressings, jello, marinated cucumbers) they can’t be beat. Enviro-Girl also keeps these on hand for meals she gives away to other families because then she doesn’t have to worry about getting her containers back!
4. Buy a water bottle and use it instead of buying bottled water. Ditto for travel coffee mugs.
5. Don’t overlook your inheritance. Enviro-Girl has some top-notch cookware and kitchen utensils straight from her grandmother’s kitchen. Her ice cream scoop is over 70 years old and it’s made out of some heavy-duty metal. Ditto her measuring cups and serving spoons. Back when Grandma stocked her kitchen, things were made with quality and craftsmanship. When Grandma died, Enviro-Girl was happy to take on her used dishes, pots and pans while her cousin shunned them, desiring matching stuff from Crate & Barrel and Younker’s instead. Sure, Enviro-Girl’s cousin’s kitchen matches, but she’s also had to replace half that stuff because it wasn’t built to last. She also spent a lot of money buying new while Enviro-Girl reused for free.
6. If you can’t inherit, reuse by buying used at a thrift shop or rummage sale. Glassware, pots, pans, utensils, dishes, casserole dishes and can openers can be had for a song and buy buying used, you can have an easy conscience that you didn’t contribute to landfills with packaging or manufacturing waste. Enviro-Girl has a cunning set of 8 cordial glasses that cost around $3.00 — new they’d cost her $30.00.
7. Cook your gifts! Instead of buying a new mother yet another sleeper or rattle, prepare her a meal that she can eat that night or freeze for a future day when baby won’t sleep. That new mother will appreciate the break from kitchen duty far more than more clothes or plastic toys made in China. For teacher appreciation gifts, bake up banana bread or chocolate chip cookies instead of buying an “I Heart Teaching” coffee mug or Avon lotion. Save your money on a housewarming gift and give a new neighbor a basket full of muffins ala Bree Van De Kamp!
