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Living green is a phrase that either resonates with or completely irritates citizens in the United States. For me, this way of life was introduced long before anyone had coined the phrase, discovered global warming, or even really talked much about conservation. Of course, at 50, I'm pretty old!

I remember my mother reusing foil-taking it off of a pan that had been in the oven, wiping off the foil, folding it and stashing it away for another use. She is a pretty amazing person in many other ways, but I think living within one's means, conserving what resources we have, and generally trying to make the world a better place are the most important lessons my mother taught me.

Composting and growing your own vegetables. For many years my husband maintained a vegetable garden in our back yard. We composted all non-protein food waste for use as fertilizer in the garden. We grew many of our own vegetables and ate what we grew all summer and into the fall and cut out meat almost completely.

Cut down on fuel usage and pollution. These changes in our eating habits not only aided our physical health. Our not purchasing so much food at the grocery store meant we didn't contribute to the shipping costs, gasoline used and air pollution caused by trucking food to local stores. We also were needed to make fewer trips to the store.

Reuse and recycle. I still rinse out and reuse plastic zip-lock bags (as long as not uncooked meat or poultry was stored in them). We're switching all the light bulbs in our house to the new compact fluorescent bulbs. Our locality offers free pickup of recyclable products, so we recycle everything possible. We also use mulch that is available free at the local landfill made from recycled wood products.

Adjust the thermostat. We have installed ceiling fans in many of our rooms. We keep our thermostat set higher in the summer time and use the fans to circulate the cool air more efficiently. We use a wood-stove insert to heat most of our home during the colder months, with the ceiling fans set to winter setting the heat is dispersed efficiently throughout the house.

There are many additional small and larger ways families can live greener. If every individual and every family did their share, our environment would be in much better shape.

Learn more about this author, Mary Moss.
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