Green Week Tip #4

Tip #4 Purchase a canvas bag or two and bring it to the grocery store to avoid using their plastic or paper bags.

I got a pair of bags at my local grocery store for one dollar each! They are huge and we can usually fit all of our groceries in just two bags. The biggest challenge is remembering to take them to the store with me! I always feel so good when I use them!

Check your local grocery store for bags or use a bag you already have....perhaps a simple canvas bag like this one. Or even something like this pretty wicker-like bag. Looks to be straight off of the streets of Paris or something. Or make a bag...I have ideas flowing like crazy!

In addition, take your plastic grocery sacks back to the store to be recycled!

Plastic bag facts:
1 trillion used worldwide annually
110 billion consumed in the US annually
Can take up to 1,000 year to decompose
Plastic bags pollute the eco-system

As a follow-up from yesterday, I went home and scoped out our drafty window situation. I already knew it was bad but it's actually worse than I thought. All of the windows in our (old) place are slingle paned glass on metal tracks. Most of them are so old and abused that they rattle on their rails or they are even just resting or leaning against the rails. About 3 inches separates these crappy single panes from old fashioned-looking wooden windows divided into 6 smaller panes. These windows open and close vertically. In some cases one of the six panes is missing, as in the window behind the couch, thus explaining the extreme draft. In our bedroom I found one of the wooden windows had a gap where the top of the lower window meets the bottom of the upper window...big enough to poke my finger through. To make it worse, the single paned glass on the other side wasn't glass at all!....only a screen! No wonder our bedroom is freezing. Needless to say, today we will be visiting a local hardware store to see if we can find some of that shrinkable window plastic. We haven't turned on our heater yet and when we left our house this morning it was only 58 degrees! I've had enough. And the thought of turning on the heat just to let it all flow out my crappy windows....NO WAY!