There must be 50 ways to help the planet

I found a link to a nice list of 50 Ways to Help the Planet while dinking around on the web, and thought it might be fun to go through them and see how many I'm doing and make to-do's (for months out - too busy right now) to change some of my habits. However, 50 is a bit much for one post, so I'm going to do 10 at a time until I get bored.

Here are today's 10:

1. CHANGE YOUR LIGHT
This one is about switching to CFC's instead of incandescent lighting. We've done this in the past, although since we've moved I don't think we've switched out all of our bulbs. We do have CFC's on hand to replace lights as they burn out. I actually already have a to-do to look into LED lights - supposedly longer-lasting, lower-energy than even CFC's, and without that stressful hint of mercury. Also more expensive up-frount, however. Since we have CFC's on hand an a related to-do, I'm marking this "In Progress".

2. TURN OFF COMPUTERS AT NIGHT
We could do better about this one. We often leave the laptop, as well as other electronics, on 24/7 when they aren't needed. I just created a to-do for this.

3. DON’T RINSE
This falls into my husband's area, as the dishes are solidly his responsibility. However, I created a to-do to ask him if he is rinsing, and recommend that he try seeing if we really need to with our new (to us) fancy dishwasher that came with our house. This saves time and money and is green - so definitely a habit worth changing, if our dishwasher can handle it (our old one couldn't).

4. DO NOT PRE-HEAT THE OVEN
They do mention the exception for baking. I generally already do this when I'm the one cooking. This is my husband's area more than mine, so I'll bring it up and let him decide - to-do created. We don't oven-cook that much, so it's not really a big deal for us anyways.

5. RECYCLE GLASS
We do this. Recycling is so ubiquitous here that I can't imagine anyone not doing this - especially when you don't even need to sort your glass from the rest of your recyclables in this area!

6. DIAPER WITH A CONSCIENCE
Use cloth or environmentally-concious disposables for this one. We used cloth for two months, but couldn't afford the nice diapers that change quickly. Taking two to four minutes longer for a diaper change is a big deal with twinfants, since one baby is usually crying the entire time that you are changing the other. We used cheap generic disposables for a while, but once we were able to afford Seventh Generation we gave them a try and haven't gone back - great quality! For our next child, I want to give Fuzzy Bunz a try - they look quick and easy. But we're so close to potty-training now that we can't really justify the investment until we know we'll have another baby to use it with.

7. HANG DRY
Also Bjorn's area. I don't think he'll be willing to do this, especially since we live in such a damp, wet part of the country (greater-Seattle area). I think I'll put this down as something to consider for summer, 2009. Honestly, I'd really like to talk to people who actually do this in the local area before I try it - especially since it means I need to take on the laundry.

8. GO VEGETARIAN ONCE A WEEK
We've already reduced out meat consumption some - enough to fulfill this item on the list - but I'd like to get to just preparing a meal with meat once a week (leftovers will probably last multiple meals). So I finally got around to creating a to-do for that. We also have a to-do in similar vein about looking into buying local, grass-fed beef from a CSA to reduce impact.

9. WASH IN COLD OR WARM
This is about not using the hot/hot for clothing. We already do this, using hot/hot about once a month for whites (if anyone remembers to wash them on the special setting), and otherwise wash using cold / cold or, for the very messy, warm / cold.

10. USE ONE LESS PAPER NAPKIN
This inspires three or four to-do's. First, get cloth napkins at home. Second, quit using paper towels (may need more cloth towels, or just easier access to the cloth diapers we use). Third, store a kit of re-usable napkins and silverware in the car for fast-food dining.

So there are 10 items analyzed for today. I may or may not go through another 10 later. I came up with seven new to-do items for our list out of these ten green ideas. Hopefully we can gradually make these small changes to live a greener (cheaper!) lifestyle - like good Christian stewards should!