Whole Foods Market & Coastal Clean up

On September 22nd, 2009 5% of your purchase from Whole Foods Market will go towards supporting the coastal clean up of 2009.  I’ve mentioned coastal clean ups before, but I’m happy to mention it again.  Coastal clean ups are a great family activity.  It teaches kids to be responsible and respectful of the world around them and to help out when and where they can.  We are planning on attending our local coastal clean up this year.    It’s nice to see so many people out to help clean up our local coasts.  If you can’t attend it’s a great cause to spread the word about.  Take a look at the site http://www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/ccd/ccd.html for more information.

Here are a few pictures about why it’s important that people keep trash out of the ocean, and why coastal clean up days are a great cause.

Tide Pools

We recently took a trip to the tide pools near Half Moon Bay, CA.  We were a little late, but were still able to find some neat things at these amazing pools.  We were able to see crabs, giant green sea anemones and lots of varieties of sea grass.  The one thing that I was shocked and saddened by was how much garbage we found in and around the tide pools.  We are not ones to leave plastic water bottles laying around, mostly because we drink out of them, so when we saw the plastic that was ruining the amazing scenery we picked up the junk and tossed it.  Once the junk was gone we really enjoyed watching the tide come in and the tide pools fill with water and the animals in them waving under the water.

On our way home from the tide pools I started thinking about volunteering again for another coastal clean up.  There are a lot of great organizations all over the country where you can work with other groups of people to clean up water near your home.  It’s not just coastal, but river, streams, lakes, creeks and marshes.  This is a great family outing.  When we were picking up the few bottles that we found around the beach this last weekend our 2 year old kept telling us “what a mess, what a mess”!  It’s a good start for such a little person to realize that leaving things where they don’t belong causes a mess, granted she doesn’t understand the impact that garbage can have on our wildlife, but she’s on her way.  I think that kids really enjoy making a difference and take great pride in what they can accomplish, even at such a young age.  Having your family volunteer to help clean up parks, or oceans is a great way to help your little one learn the great lesson of giving and to appreciate the world around them.

Next time your out and about at a park, lake, creek, river or the ocean take a quick look around and see what you might be able to do to help minimize the footsteps that others have left behind.  It might not be your “mess” but your still part of the bigger cause to help this amazing planet.

Enjoy the rest of your summer and keep thinking green.  Remember being green isn’t always about making giant expensive changes, but simple free things like picking up garbage or items that are left in our parks.

beach comber

checking out some sea grass, with all our other non-living treasures that we found to look at, then put back for the next visitors.

Drawing the Green line

When you think Organic do you automatically think Green?  Or when you think green do you only think organic?  Does organic/green stop at food or do you carry it through your life?  Cleaning products?  I’m a freak about making sure that my cleaning products are not only Eco friendly, but animal friendly as well which means no product that was tested on animals ever makes it into my shopping cart.  I try my best to buy products that use natural oils and disinfectants in them.  One of my favorite cleaning products is actually a combo of edible ingredients, although I wouldn’t eat them together.  I use vinegar, baking soda and fresh lemons as a way of getting all sorts of things clean and fresh.  If my sink is clogged I dump baking soda down the clogged drain and then follow it up with a nice heavy dose of vinegar.  This can be a little funky and messy, but it sure does beat sending down some toxic concoction.  Cleaning cutting boards I first spray a little vinegar on then sprinkle baking soda and last I use half a small lemon, fresh from our tree, to scrub the top and sides of the cutting board.  The result is an amazingly clean cutting board that doesn’t have an odor to it, can’t get cleaner than that.  No plastic cutting boards for us either we use a variety of bamboo cutting boards.

OK this is not about how I clean my house it’s about how we view green/organic and where we draw the line of what’s important.  So what’s important when it comes to the environment and being green?  Is buying Organic food is the only green thing you do? Do you do just what makes you feel better or do you do all that you can do to make things better for everyone?  Also what is best for everyone?  What if everyone in the world gave up cleaning with bleach?  Or what if we stopped using petroleum in our dish soap?  I think one of the easiest changes people can do is switching their dish soaps for a product that doesn’t contain any form of petroleum product or by product.  This would keep millions of gallons of oil from being used in everyday products.  Also is it me or is there something really weird about using oil when cleaning your dishes?  Just a thought.

If you think that making sure you use non-toxic green products to clean, then what about your clothes?  Shoes? How do you feel about buying plastic?  What about when you go to the grocery store, do you bring your own bags?  If not do you get plastic or paper?  What about changing from the plastic bags you put produce in to these neat mesh bags that you can reuse that don’t add weight to your purchase, but are much more Eco friendly?

I would love to hear your thoughts on green living and how much is too much or is that even possible?  Me I’m somewhere in the middle.  I would love to be greener, but it can be a bit more expensive to do the green thing.  For now we focus on the small things.  Making sure that things that come into our house are 1. reusable 2. something we really need 3. as Eco friendly as possible.  I think when you start out on the road to green there are lots of things that sound like a good idea, but being realistic is also important.  Not everyone can make all the changes they want to right away, which is why I would like to hear from you and see what you think is the important steps when greening your life.

My little green gardener

Green gardener in organic brown guitar shirt

The bins are old bins that we found at a garage sale and brought them home to plant in.  Some where old ones that we had but didn’t work for storage because they were getting too old.

Looking forward to hearing from you