Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Keep 350 Day Going

Saturday, October 24th, was 350 Day. Not quite sure what that means? Lemme 'esplain. Scientists say that 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe limit for humanity, according to http://www.350.org/. We currently stand at 387. Boo. Not good. The 24th was an international day of action, to get the awareness out there to the whole world.

Sooo.... it's over. OK. Now what? Now, we work on things to actually achieve getting that number down. What can you do? I'll try to help as much as possible on that with future posts! We'll just do a quick one for now. Consider it your first assignment! I promise I'll be easy on ya. I swear it. It's my philosophy that green is actually pretty easy! So here goes....

Stop buying tissues. Go cold turkey on Kleenex. Just stop. Hankies were good enough for our grandparents, so they're good enough for us! I tend to favor the brightest loudest most colorful bandanas, personally. But there are the cute frilly lacy ones... there are the monogrammed ones... there are the plain whities! Choose your weapon! You can use organic cotton to be even better. You can make your own to be super-green and crafty. You can give them as great green gifts.

There are multiple benefits to this simple action. You save money, because you aren't buying boxes of facial tissue anymore, and because these last forever. Well, they last a really long time, anyway. And the more you wash them the softer they become. Yay! You save trees. That's good all around. You save water. I know you might think you are using MORE water because you have a little extra laundry, but that's not the case. It takes a lot more water to produce the boxes and boxes of tissues than it does for you to wash a tiny little bit of fabric. After all, you were doing laundry anyway. These fit. It's not like you are doing a special load of just hankies.

That's it! And if you can't do cold-turkey, that's OK. I still grab a few pieces of TP to blow into on rare occasion. But really work at it. And lead by example. Be the change. I can't say that enough! And with this simple start, YOU can help get that magic number 350 back to reality. YOU can help.

2 comments:

  1. You are so right!!! I keep cotton table napkins nearby in the office and house - I realized just how often I used to grab a tissue just to wipe, not even to blow. We used to go through those big cases from Costco in a snap. I can truly say I don't miss them. And in a real pinch, there is always the Seventh Generation TP to fill in.

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  2. Isn't it crazy to think about how many boxes of tissue you used to go through? I don't miss buying them one bit!

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