For the last several years, I decided to stop giving up
things like chocolate for Lent (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and
start incorporating practices that I thought would bring me closer to God and
my neighbors.
This year I decided to grow closer to God by focusing on
preserving God’s creation. This may
sound crazy, but it’s the first time I spent any time in depth thinking about
the phrase, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Of
course, I had done these things before, like the time I turned a broken DVD
rack into a cloth diaper drying rack.
For Lent, though, I challenged myself to do something new every day for
40 days to improve my relationship with Mother Earth. What I found out was I wasn’t as “green” as I
thought I was.
Let me invite you into my journey. The theme for my 40 days was: “Reduce, Reuse,
Recycle, Educate.” I didn’t go in any order,
but I did start with noticing. The first
few days of Lent I decided to observe how much plastic I use, how much I
throw away, how much I consume.
When I realized the extent to my disposable lifestyle, I decided to
focus on:
Reduce
I know being a consumer isn’t great for the environment, but
I made a few purchases in these 40 days that would cut down on waste in the
long run. I bought reusable sandwich and
snack bags to pack mine and my son’s meals and snacks for school. This will cut down on countless one-time-use
Ziploc bags. Plus, the reusable ones have super awesome pictures on them like
Mario, Wonder Woman, and turtles. We
also started putting our pizza away in reusable plastic containers instead of
Ziploc bags or tinfoil. Then we just
stopped ordering pizza altogether. We
also cut back on our use of tin foil in cooking.
I noticed that at some point I had switched from regular
floss to the floss picks. I plan to go
back to using regular floss as soon as I run out of the floss picks. It is too much unnecessary plastic for
me. I am also considering finally
getting a waterpik.
I started taking real plates with me for lunch at work. And I invested in a good water bottle to use
while I’m out and about. I bought a
Swell bottle. I wanted something that
wasn’t going to leak, was easy to clean and was not plastic. Swell met all the requirements, plus it’s my
favorite color.
I bought bamboo toothbrushes and look forward to trying
those out when it’s time to retire our current plastic ones. It’s little things like this that I hadn’t
considered before. Changes this small,
using bamboo instead of plastic can make such a difference in our
environment.
Sometimes we have great intentions and then fall away from
them. One of those for me was buying
Norwex to clean my house. I still
use a lot of my Norwex, but I’ve been using it more this Lent to cut back on my
not-as-green cleaning practices.
I was more mindful of turning out lights I wasn’t using,
unplugging chargers, and conserving water.
I carpooled when I could and made less trips. My son and I participated in Earth Hour. We turned off all the lights and he
pulled out his “Good Dinosaur” flashlight projector and he told me stories from
the pictures on the ceiling.
In case anyone is wondering if I participated in Meatless
Mondays (or Meatless Fridays for Lent) as a way to go green, I’m already a
vegetarian so every day is meatless! But I did make an effort to be more mindful of the food I was eating—where it was from, how
it was packaged, etc. I kept wishing
there was some way to buy our produce without so much plastic involved. I am hoping to find some farmers markets now
that the weather is getting warmer. I
encourage you to look into the environmental impacts of the meat industry.
Possibly the biggest and bravest “reduce” change I made
during Lent was switching to reusable feminine products. Yes.
I. Did. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,
and I finally did it. I only used a disposable
when I went to my four-hour class, because I wasn’t brave enough on my first
day using a Moon Cup to go to school with it.
I purchased my Moon Cup and cloth pantyliners through Glad Rags and organic
heavier cloth pads from Hesta (which I haven’t had the chance to try yet). I kept thinking, “Why don’t more people use
these!?” I actually prefer the reusables
to the disposables.
Reuse and Recycle
In my “noticing” I realized how many tissues I go through in
a week. I have terrible allergies/sinuses
and I go through a box or two of tissues a week. To cut back on tissue use, I cut up old
t-shirts and turned them into hankies.
My son loved it so much we cut up old shirts of his too and made a box
of hankies for his room too.
Speaking of my son’s clothes, he grows entirely too quickly,
and I went shopping for part of his summer wardrobe at a children’s consignment
sale.
As far as recycling goes, we are pretty obsessive about
recycling but I realized we didn’t recycle absolutely everything that could be
recycled. I corrected this as I noticed
the items we were overlooking. One of
the items was toilet paper rolls. Since
we didn’t have a recycling bin upstairs, we were throwing things out that
should have been recycled. We now have a
recycling can upstairs and we gave a bag of our toilet paper rolls
to a friend who uses them for her rabbits to chew on.
We didn’t have paper towel rolls because we already gave up
paper towels and we don’t miss them at all!
Donate
I added another section.
I kept feeling moved to do something bigger, to add my drop into the
larger ocean of the environmental work already being done. I donated to the
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and to the Earth Day Network’s Canopy
Project to plant 20 trees. I already am
a supporter of The World Wildlife Fund and other organizations, so I wasn’t
able to give more monetarily, but I do encourage you to seek out where you may
want to support work that is already being done around the world to protect the
environment.
Educate
Education was a major part of this project for me. I felt that I didn’t know enough about environmental
issues and I wanted to focus my energy on learning as much as I
could. I researched countless websites
about everything from climate change to composting. I calculated my carbon footprint. I read What
We’re Fighting for Now is Each Other by Wen Stephenson. I watched “The Story of Stuff” and “Gasland.”
I absorbed as much as I could. I plan to keep learning but I also want to
start educating others. I am giving a
presentation to two women’s groups on protecting God’s creation and I hope this
post has inspired you in some way to make a change in your own life. Or at least give you an idea of a way to go
green you hadn’t thought of yet.
Bigger Dreams for
the Future
On days I couldn’t think of practical things to do, I looked
into bigger picture items that I am dreaming of in the future, these include installing
solar panels, buying an electric car, and getting Lasik surgery. Lasik surgery? Yes, for me, it counts. Right now, I am throwing away these little
plastic and foil contact lens containers every day. I can only wear daily contacts for my vision.
And while all of these little changes add up and matter immensely, what has been weighing on my mind the most is
fuel consumption. While we don’t drive
many miles, we do have a mini-van. We started
using our compact car more often, but I have seriously considered an electric
car. I think it just may be our next
choice when we’re in the market for a new car.
My biggest dream is for all of us to realize our impact on
the environment, to recognize God in every living thing, to strive to do better
to protect this beautiful creation and to grow closer to God in every way
possible.
