Six Economical, Green Steps My Family has Taken

Many families are taking steps to reduce energy consumption and be more environmentally conscious. Some families have taken extensive steps to dramatically reduce energy consumption and protect the environment, while others have minimally done so. My family has not taken heroic efforts, but increasingly has taken small environmentally friendly steps without a big cost or change in lifestyle. Nonetheless, there are other things we could but have not yet done.

Hybrid car: Last year, we were pleased to get a hybrid Honda Civic to replace our 15-year old small car. Not only does this improve our gas mileage to about 40 miles per gallon, but we reduced the additional cost by the federal tax credit (being phased out for Honda hybrid vehicles as Honda has met the threshold of cars eligible for the credit). We find that we choose to drive the hybrid over our other car more often than we had initially expected. With gas prices rising to closer to $4.00 per gallon, we enjoy the less frequent fill-ups and watching the dashboard monitor showing our gas mileage. Few other families are actually enjoying watching their car's gas mileage in the current economy.

Mesh or cloth grocery bags: We have acquired inexpensive cloth bags from nearly all of our local grocery stores, and whenever we remember to keep them in the car we no longer need paper or plastic bags. A few stores even knock a few pennies off our grocery bill. Whereas we used to receive strange looks from the grocery cashiers when we pulled out the cloth bags, we now find they are more widely accepted and even appreciated by cashiers.

Recycling: Most communities have improved recycling collections, and our county makes it very simple by allowing us to commingle different recyclable products. Even though we once separated different types of waste and sometimes took them to different recycling drop-offs, over time, we have increased our recycling as the county and my office take more products right at our curbside.