It’s Not So Hard to Be Green
We’re down to the last week-plus of Autism Awareness Month 2008. We’ve been asked to wear our awareness, to eat and shop and to give $$$$ in support of autism—not that my autistic son has been asked or even expected to do anything in honor of the month. The funny, or curious, or ironic thing about Autism Awareness Month is that an autistic child doesn’t have to do anything except (which is not a bad thing, not at all!) to be him or herself.
Today being Earth Day, our small household is doing our part to be eco-minded and -acting. Plenty for Charlie and us to do: He’s been taking out the recycling, I carry around my coffee cup to refill and avoid printing out what I can see on my computer. We’ve been walking whenever we can (to the grocery store yesterday, with a canvas bag; Jim walk-runs to the train) and we’re down to one car (and you can check your walkscore—-how far you have to walk to get to things from where you live—here). No brown-bagging it at lunch; Charlie has his blue lunchbox stocked with resuable containers.
Maybe it’s not so hard to go green (though this greening our vaccine thing seems to be stretching the notion of “green” just a bit). Certainly we appreciate the great outdoors more than a lot here; nothing like a walk with Charlie in the tall grass, a scuffing of the shoes in the spring dirt, and a pause under the big blue sky to hear where the birdsong’s coming from.
Tags: asd, asperger, autism, earth day, ecology, Environment, green, holiday, lunch box, pdd-nos, recycle, vaccine, walkRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Environment, Holidays, Vaccines
7 opinions for It’s Not So Hard to Be Green
Marla
Apr 22, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I will say there are parts of NJ that are so gorgeous. Some days I feel “home sick” for the nature in Jersey. The hills were great. Not much of those here.
Happy Earth Day!
Melody
Apr 23, 2008 at 3:17 am
Yikes! My address gets a 40 out of 100 in walkability. Oh, well. Whenever I go to the coffee shop (a little over a mile away) or things like that, I walk or take the bus, so my family’s impact probably would be pretty good if not for the fact that my mom uses a car to get to work, which is about half an hour drive. I ride the bus to school, though, and my dad takes the bus to his work.
Storkdok
Apr 23, 2008 at 7:38 am
Yikes! I get a 2 out of 100 in walkability! I do live in a rural area, have farms nearby. We may not be able to walk to the store, but we have been trying to green our lives over the past few years. We compost, I finally just got a kitchen pail to make it easier to compost. My husband asked me this morning if I was turning into Al Gore! HAHA
We are joining the food coop this year on the farm nearest us. They are growing all kinds of veggies and you go and dig up and pick your own fresh, all organic, not that I am an organic nut, at least yet! I just like the idea of supporting our local farmers and fresh veggies.
Well, I just couldn’t do the cloth diaper thing with our kids. I looked into it, but I was working full time and on call every other or third night for my first, and then for my second I was driving my son to his special preschool and in the car at least 3 hours a day, thanks to living rurally! I don’t feel so bad about this since I read that the energy it takes to take care of cloth diapers is at least the same as using Huggies.
We recycle most of our trash, and I have to constantly pull stuff out to recycle after my husband throws it away. He calls me “Al” when I do this!
We try to do what we can and make little changes all the time.
Your post first made me think of a little green frog singing, “It’s not easy being green…”! LOL
Cliff
Apr 23, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Hmm… so what does it say that I get an 11 and yet still have been only walking? Maintaining physical health, I suppose.
But I have to admit, I’m just not the most eco-friendly person, though I should be… I guess it’s enough of an issue to follow my own habits, less than making them eco-friendly. Ah, well.
Cliff
Regan
Apr 23, 2008 at 2:21 pm
54. Good. That’s why we picked the neighborhood.
Our community makes it really easy, to the point of routine, to do the typical ecofriendly things, and even runs subsidized composting programs and other. Eleanor has been recycling trained and knows what is garbage and what is recycling, is a huge help and seems to really enjoy helping with the sorting and other.
Like StorkDoc, I like to support our local organic farmers as much as I can–and the eggs taste better :-).
People are really just being more routine about these things. The only major gripe I have is overpackaging , and plastic bottles (the ubiquitous ones for drinking water). Too many darned plastic bottles.
Lenora
Apr 23, 2008 at 3:03 pm
68, and that is with them not counting our nearest park, library or grocery.
Ironically, I live in the “worst” part of our town. The more affluent areas have more residential, less business. They have far worse walk scores.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Apr 23, 2008 at 11:53 pm
My address keeps giving me an error message, no matter how I type it in. We’re actually about a 7-10 minutes walk from a small shopping mall with a grocery store, bank (not our bank), pizza place (nor for us), Quizno’s (also not for us), private elementary school (definitely not for us), yoga studio (expensive), Dunkin’ Donuts (ubiquitous here in NJ—worse than Starbucks perhaps!).
It’s gotten very warm here very fast so Charlie and I, with canvas bag in tow, have been walking to the store in the early evening—–but there’s no sidewalk and that’s not unusual (no sidewalks) for the town we live in. Walking is not encouraged and people have no idea what to make Jim rushing on foot to the train (mile and a half away) in the morning.
I put in where I work in really urban Jersey City: 88.
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