12 Simple Changes, part one

1. Buy Organic Milk

Such an easy change - such a HUGE impact. If everbody started buying organic milk, think of the impact. There's also a huge bonus for yourself - no more animal antibiotics or growth hormones in your morning cereal. All this for a few extra dollars a month.

2. STOP buying bottled water

Get an aluminum water bottle and refill it with your tap water. If you don't like your tap water, get a filter. And remember America's tap water is monitored more closely than any bottled water you can buy. How many bottles of water do you buy in a week? Where do the bottles end up? I'm sure not all of them end up in the recycle pile...

3. Speaking of recycling, RECYCLE!!!

This seems so obvious I almost didn't put it on the list. We should all be recycling - there is no excuse not to. Pretty much everything you throw away can be recycled. Think about what you're putting in the trash before you actually put it in the trash. If it can be recycled, please recycle it!

4. Buy recycled paper products

What is your reason for not buying recycled paper towels or recycled toilet paper? The cost is often lower than a roll of Bounty. And the environmental cost of NOT buying them is enormous. The amount of beautiful, oxygen producing trees that are cut down in order to make products to dry our hands or wipe our asses...we can do better. We, as the most highly advanced species on the planet, know better and have created better ways. Don't wipe your ass with the tree your
great-grandfather used to climb.

5. Replace your light bulbs with CFLs.

Easy, cheap, actually saves you money by reducing your electric bill. There is absolutely no reason not to implement this change.

6. Make one day a week a meatless day

I like meat. I was raised on meat. Chicken tastes good, beef tastes good, and bacon is delicious. However, outside of the fact that eating meat involves killing another living being, raising a bunch of animals for the purpose of food is incredibly hard on the environment. So make one day meatless. It's good for your body to get a break from digesting those complex proteins anyway.

More tomorrow...