Comments on: What’s Been Your Biggest, Coolest, Eco-Friendliest Change This Year?

By: Diane MacEachern

Diane MacEachern — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:25:06 +0000

You opened a store? That’s incredibly impressive!! Good luck with it, and thanks for sharing!

By: Beate

Beate — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:02:40 +0000

Oh, it’s so much part of my life now that I forgot my biggest change this year – I opened an online store offering organic and fairly traded children’s clothes.

By: Diane MacEachern

Diane MacEachern — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:24:51 +0000

Lynne, That’s so inspiring! I’ll be looking forward to reading your blog and getting inspiration from all that you learn!

By: Lynne

Lynne — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:03:23 +0000

I finally got it. I read up on chemical ingredients in our products, and finally, it clicked. I am making all of our own cleaners, I’m buying organic when I can, I rid our home of chemicals, I switched our products to ones with a shorter, greener ingredient list. I am buying from more small local farms. I’m off of water bottles. I am buying organic fair trade coffee. And I’m blogging about it. http://www.greenertoday.blog.ca
This year, I’m changing our lives.

By: Sherry

Sherry — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:11:54 +0000

In May I bought a dozen cloth napkins at a garage sale for $3. Now we use them all the time! Combine cloth napkin with cloth rags and I’ve completely eliminated my use of paper towels!
I’d like to eat meatfree more often, and switch to local grass fed beef when we do eat meat. My family loves meat so that will be tough sell, but I’ll work into it slowly.
In the years to come (hopefully not 2011) I want to buy a more environment friendly car, but that will have to wait until the vehicle I currently drive dies.

By: Kathy H.

Kathy H. — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:49:08 +0000

This year I stared composting. It cost about $50 for the compost bin. I did it to reduce the amount of garbage going to the dump and also to cut out fertilizer for my grass and flower beds and now I don’t need to buy topsoil either. Next year I plan on replacing all of the light bulbs in my house. I already started but dang I have alot of lights so its going to take a while.

By: denise yribarren

denise yribarren — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 03:35:05 +0000

For months I have been dragging my feet to use a hand-me-down solar oven. I decided that this year I won’t fear change and possible failure! I looked on line and found some relatively easy recipes for solar cooking.
Really, the biggest challenge is remembering to reposition the oven every few hours to follow the sun. So far, I’ve made chili and granola. Bread will be my next challenge in the solar oven.
I am well on my way to eliminating plastics in my kitchen. (This was a real test for creativity!)
My goal is to try a new project every week. It feels good to grow as a person in pushing myself in trying new challenges
Thanks for all the inspiration!
Denise

By: Christina Marlett

Christina Marlett — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:44:23 +0000

We made 3 major changes this year.
1. We switched from Kleenex to Hankies because we wanted to stop throwing out money with every kleenex, save some trees and get rid of red irritated noses, especially on our kids.
I can’t tell you how much we saved but it has been significant because we just used some old cotton I never ended up sewing with and cut it up. I would never go back! (Although when our parents come to babysit our kids they bring their own boxes of kleenex and leave them behind because they think we can’t afford it:)
2. We did an Eco Party for my daughter’s 5th birthday. Instead of gifts, people send their child with $10. We pool half of the money to buy one special gift that she actually wants and the other half she chose which charity to give it to, which was the World Wildlife Fund. No wrapping, no people driving to stores, no plastic, sends a good message, LOVE IT!!!
3. I started my own website and blog about Green Living. http://www.greenerparents.com Come over for a visit to check it out.

By: Diane MacEachern

Diane MacEachern — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:14:43 +0000

Diane, Thanks so much for the great comparison between Oregon and Costa Rica. Pretty eye opening! Good luck with your house construction – it’s an exciting, if sometimes nerveracking process. I have a sneaky suspicion I met you or your husband years ago when your CR adventure was just beginning. I’m glad we’ve reconnected.

By: Diane Jukofsky

Diane Jukofsky — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:42:42 +0000

This year my husband and I moved to Oregon after living 21 years in relatively low-consuming Costa Rica. The change to the ultra-consuming US was shocking & yet we were able to adopt green habits we couldn’t practice in Costa Rica.
In Costa Rica we paid an entrepreneur to come by our house in his gas guzzling old truck and haul away our recyclables, which he could then sell. In Oregon, the county comes by once a week in efficient vehicles to pick up our sorted recyclables along with other trash.
In Costa Rica, we lived in a town house with a teeny back yard – not possible to compost in such a small space and in a tropical climate. In Oregon, our rental home has a compost pit tucked into a corner of the backyard.
In Costa Rica we bought a small home from which we worked, so we had no say in its construction, which was not very good or ecofriendly. We are building a home in Oregon, so we have a chance to make as many green enhancements as we can afford. The Central Valley in Costa Rica has an ideal climate – it’s never so hot you need air conditioning, never so cold you need heat. Not true in Oregon (though even on the hottest days this summer we didn’t need the AC in our rental house). The house we’re building is super energy efficient – triple the insulation as usual, with heat pumps, efficient wood stoves and more. To share our research with others, we’re blogging in the Oregonian about this adventure in eco-homebuilding: http://connect.oregonlive.com/user/EcoBeavers/index.html
Our new house will be three narrow stories, to have as little footprint on our five mostly forested acres as possible. We’re rehabilitating the damaged wetlands on our property – a chance we never had in Costa Rica, which unfortunately has lost most of its original wetlands to development and pollution.
So 2010 was a year of major changes for us, as we’ve moved from one rainforest region to another. One constant is that we will aim to be good eco Oregonians as we tried to be good green Costa Ricans. A major contributor is that we will continue to work for the Rainforest Alliance (www.rainforest-alliance.org), which we helped launch when we first moved to Costa Rica a couple of decades ago.