Earth Day and Frugal Activities

So, yesterday was Earth Day, and I found myself thinking about my family's impact on the environment. I made this list of the many frugal things we already do that are good for the environment:

Clothing

• Buy used clothes on eBay or at garage sales
• Sell used clothes on eBay or at garage sales or donate to Goodwill
• Save some clothes for cloth scraps for quiltmaking
• Air dry all of our laundry except baby clothes, towels & bedding
• When machine drying, we only use 1/2 of a dryer sheet
  

Food

• Use reusable containers for lunches
• Wash baggies & foil when we do use them
• Pick our own blueberries in the summer and freeze them (would like to also do this with strawberries this year)
• Cook at home 90% of the time
• Use cloth bags at the grocery store
• Make our own yogurt
• Never use paper plates, cups or napkins (and rarely use paper towels)

Baby Care

• Use cloth diapers & wipes
• When using disposable wipes, have the ones that aren't overtly dirty washed and used again
• Make homemade baby food
• Breastfeed (I understand that this is not an option for all women. I have been lucky enough to stay home with my daughter, so it has worked for us)

Transportation

• Combine errands to use less gas
• Take the subway (my husband does this daily so we only need one car)

Other

• Never run the dry cycle on the dishwasher
• Use dish clothes that can be reused for washing dishes
• Recycle our glass, plastic, paper weekly
• Buy Energy Star appliances
• Use CFL bulbs
• Put plastic on our windows in the winter
• Keep our heat at 65 degrees or below

There are a few things we need to work on.

1.) We have our appliances hooked up to power strips, but we don't routinely turn those off at night

2.) We still use the clear plastic bags at the grocery store to put our produce in

I am sure as we continue on our frugal journey we will be able to add to our list of positives. (And I am sure if I think about it more, I could find many more Earth-friendly behaviors our family needs to work on!)