The teen girl had a special studies day last Friday. The topic was how to be better about saving our planet. They watched the documentary Straws and came up with an action plan on what they can do individually to be better stewards of the environment. Of course the 14 year old girl’s plan for not using straws? At dinner that night she said “mom, if you touch that straw, I will cut you. Do you know how bad they are for the environment?” Sigh. I appreciate her enthusiasm, but like all teenage girl things, it comes with drama attached.

Our family is working on our own action plan for how we can be better at recycling, and I think that word alone needed some revamping at our house. I always thought as long as we were recycling, we were doing our part. Let me give some examples. Yes, some family members (ummm, me) do use plastic water bottles, but I recycle them religiously. Same with plastic grocery bags.

So the first step at our house is not to focus so much on recycling but more so making it so that we don’t have to recycle. Here are some of the steps of our action plan.

1. No more plastic straws. We will keep handy some metal straws in case the day calls for something special like an afternoon Starbucks treat.
2. No more plastic shopping bags. We will take cloth bags to the grocery instead.
3. No more plastic water bottles. Got out the Klean Kanteen for my workouts. Just need to take the extra minute to fill it with the filtered sink water. No one is so busy they cannot take an extra minute to fill a water bottle.
4. No more plastic bags for lunch items. Wash and reuse containers… that is the ones that make it back into the sink. I think my kiddos brought home a dozen containers on the last official day of the traditional school year. Some went straight into the trash, and before you judge me, I was too scared of what was inside of some of them to open and clean.
5. No more throwing out moldy or expired veggies. The chickens will happily eat this waste.
6. No more plastic milk jugs. Glass ones from now own.
7. Not only will we recycle all of those Amazon Prime boxes that somehow end up on our front porch with great frequency, but also smaller things like food containers and boxes.

So thanks, as always, Carolina Friends School for motivating us to be better.

How does our plan sound? What are the small changes you have made to be better about saving our planet?

• lifeinmiddleage