A Healthier Environment & Healthier Life

It seems that every day we see something in the news about how we are hurting the environment (or ourselves) with the products we are using and the things we do in our lives. It also seems that as of lately we are all becoming more aware of this and there seems to be a new ‘movement’ towards improving things. I typically do not ‘jump on the bandwagon’ simply because others are doing it…..but this is a bandwagon I’ve been meaning to ‘jump on’ for quite some time. So let’s go!

I really need to give the credit for my recent interest in this to both my wife and my employer. My wife, who is lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mother, has become more concerned with fitness as well as the health of our children. My employer….like many in this new ‘movement’ is implementing a number of new initiatives to ‘Go Green‘, ‘Support Sustainability‘, and to ‘Become Carbon Neutral‘.

The first thing we’ve done personally is to start a migration away from harmful cleaning products and other products to those that are safer. We’ve started using Seventh Generation products around the house and are quite happy with the results. We hope to continue in this manner….it just takes time to evaluate and consider what your needs are and what the alternatives are.

Another thing we’re starting to do is try to find healthier food alternatives. We are starting to buy more all natural products and organic foods (where price is reasonable). I’d like to say health is more important that price but we’re a 1-income family so we need to make some concessions. We love Trader Joe’s…..and the pricing is pretty much in line with major supermarket chains. They have lots of unique foods and lean towards all-natural and organic. Our closest trader Joe’s is about 70 miles away so we only go when visiting out of state…maybe some day New Hampshire will finally get one.

Replacing old filament light bulbs with n:vision compact fluorescent is another migration we’ve started. I’d say we are about 25% complete in this area. I’m going slow with this because we have a number of 3-way, dimming, and ornamental lights….and compact fluorescent options are limited in these areas. I recently replaced the bulbs in a light-bar type of fixture in our bathroom with CF bulbs and it’s taken getting used to because the bulbs seem to have a need to ‘warm up’ to get to their full brightness. I need to look more into this. I’m still not 100% sold on CF bulbs because of the mercury they contain and the disposal issues. Time will tell. I read that LED based bulbs (see article here) are on the horizon but their cost (starting at about $27 per bulb) is not close to what I’m willing to pay. Maybe the price will come down.

I love yard work and as I prepared to fertilize this spring I decided to go with an organic option. I used Scott’s Organic Choice and the lawn seems to green up as well as the old chemical based fertilizers. I’m sold!

There’s lots more to do….but we’ve made a lot of progress already. More to come.

This entry was posted on April 29, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Household Stuff, Health & Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.