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Buy Less, Use Less & Buy Responsibly
    Sounds like three separate things, but when practiced together, these will help you reduce your household waste, protect the environment and improve your social consciousness.

    Buy less. Every day millions of people rush out to buy items, many they will use only once or twice. Ask yourself: Do I really need this? Can I borrow this item from someone else? Can I rent this?

    Use less. Do you really need as many paper towels to wash the windows as you are currently using? Could you do with less, or better yet, could you use a micro fiber cloth and forget the whole paper usage all together?
Buy responsibly. This includes taking the time to know the source from which you are buying products. The transparency of a company – how open it is about where it purchases its materials to make its products, who makes the products it uses and how well it takes care of its own employees – is crucial to the whole of our environment, our community and the world. To realize your connectedness to each other is to truly understand your connectedness to the planet.

    Website resources: The Global Network's Best of the Best Companies Across America www.prweb.com, www.sweatshopfreeclothing.com.

Care for Nature
    Getting out to enjoy nature is a wonderful thing – most of the time. However, some activities are costing our environment dearly. Irresponsible and illegal off-road vehicle use, such as driving all-terrain vehicles, four wheelers, jet-skis and snowmobiles off designated routes and into the back country is threatening our national parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands. Illegally created routes erode and compact soil, destroy plants, degrade wildlife habitat and compromise water and air quality.

     Choosing designated routes for off-road activities is the responsible choice. Even better, choose less-polluting activities such as non-motorized biking, skateboarding, skiing, surfing, rollerblading and hiking as alternative outdoor activities.

     In addition, when you are out enjoying nature, don't forget to pick up after yourself. Forest fires started by careless smokers and unattended fires can ruin an ecosystem, and litter and fishing lines further destroy animal homes on land and water.

Website resources: www.sierraclub.org.

Rebecca Reynolds is a mother of three, an environmentalist and the creator and president of Green Clean, Inc., a socially conscious, all natural, professional cleaning company. She can be reached at (440) 899-9295 or www.green-clean-inc.com.