Yes, Kermit, it is easy to be Green.

You don’t have to be a flag-waving, tree-hugging activist to join the the green movement. It is actually the little things that regular folks like me and you do that makes a big difference in keeping the environment cleaner and safer for our children. For instance, if everyone, and I mean everyone, recycled, the stuff that goes into landfills will be cut in half. At least!

The folks at LighterSaferGreener.com are asking families what they are doing to make the world a greener place. Click on the link above and tell them what you’re doing and you could win  Airwear® lenses for your whole family!

We’re always incorporating new things into our effort to be a little greener. This year, we added a few more little things to the list. Here’s three of them:

1. Bottled Water - I used to buy flats of bottled water for our lunches. This year, I stopped buying them. Instead, I bought reusable drinking bottles that we fill with water ourselves. I don’t fill up our recycling bin quite as much with plastic drinking bottles anymore.

2. Reusable Shopping Bags - You’ve seen them around. Most stores offer them at low prices to encourage their shoppers to use them. I got them when they first started coming out because they were cute, but I always forgot to bring them when I went shopping so I still came home with plastic bags full of groceries! This year, I made a conscious effort to bring them with me and use them. We don’t have tons of plastic bags that end up in the trash anymore.

3. Recycled Dishwater - I know you’ve got to be wondering how we recycle dish water. Right? Well you know how we had a drought here in the South last year and were forced to cut back on our yard watering? Well we started saving our final rinse water in a five gallon container next to the sink. Notice how I said ‘final’ rinse water, right? This is the rinse water right before you put your dishes up on the drain. Not that soapy, yucky mess you used to wash them in. We’ve been rinsing our dishes in a basin of hot, clean water (set in the sink) and saving this water in the five gallon bucket. We then take that cooled, slightly soapy water and use it to water our vegetable garden in the backyard. The amazing thing about this that we discovered is: the slightly soapy water deters bugs in the garden! So not only can we water our garden in the height of water conservation season, we are also keeping bugs off of them

What do you do to be greener? Visit the LighterSaferGreener.com website and let them know!

Along with the rest of the state, I’ve talked and worried about the drought we have been in having all year last year. We were in a bad drought situation last year so the city governments urged all its users to conserve water. While the conservation methods were at first met with resistance, people soon fell in line when confronted with visual proof of the drought, our beloved lakes turning into dry beds. Many of us implemented water conservation methods throughout our homes and businesses and I think we helped ease the burden some.

Thankfully, this year, the rains came back and our lakes are back up to capacity again. The great thing is, even though the lakes are full again, people have gotten into the habit of conserving and were continuing to save water even when it’s not necessary anymore. That’s wonderful, isn’t it?

Well, you’d think so, but as this article from our local paper says, “all this good news does have a potential downside”. The down side is, that people have been conserving so much that the city is now not making enough revenue from selling water. So they are proposing a tiered rate program where anyone who is using a higher volume of water will pay more than someone who is using less. The problem comes with large families like ours though. Although we may be using less water than we did this same time last year, we still use more water than our neighbors who live by themselves and may not even be consciously conserving their water usage. Does that mean that our rate will be higher than theirs? I don’t really know how it will impact us, to be honest with you. Our water bill has not gone down despite the water conservation methods we’ve implemented.

I received this via email today and all the tips they mention, we are already doing without seeing much change in our water bill. But, the way I look at it, whether it makes a difference in the amount of my water bill or not, it is just good common sense practice to do all the conservation methods anyway. We have gotten to be such a wasteful society that we take for granted the conveniences we get. There are still places on this world where running water is a luxury; a luxury that we shouldn’t take for granted lest we lose it.

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Tomorrow is officially Earth Day, but if we love being on this earth everyday should be Earth Day. Everyday we should be conscious about preserving this earth as we know it for our children. Here in North Carolina where open spaces and trees about, sometimes it’s easy to take for granted that all this beauty and nature surrounding us will always be there.

It is scary when you are presented with just how vulnerable this earth is when even just one factor is changed. Last year, was a very dry year for North Carolina and the whole South Eastern United States. The photo on the left shows just how dramatic the drought was illustrated by our dwindling lake levels. Yeah, that’s one of our local lakes. The water line should have been where the trees are. Instead, the empty lake bed has started to grow grass and the water is looking more like a stream than a lake.

Recreation and fishing at our lakes ended early and have been virtually non-existent through autumn and fall because there just wasn’t enough water at the lakes. It’s only now after a few good rain storms that the water levels have started rising again. Some of the drought restrictions have been lifted, but we’re not quite out of the woods yet.
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I’d be the first to tell you about how convenient disposable diapers are. However, even the most apathetic of us cannot deny the impact we are creating when presented with a visualization of our actions.

Today on Good Morning America, they were talking about how much humans consume and waste over a lifetime. One of the points they illustrated was the number or mountains of diapers a child goes through. It is a daunting amount when you are shown the pile. An added trivia is that that huge pile of disposable diapers will probably not degrade within that babies lifetime. Unbelievable huh?

The piece is a promo for the more in depth (I hope) “Human Footprint” on the National Geographic Channel. A longer feature is supposed to air on 20/20 tonight.

I think I will watch the show later just to see if my question from this morning is answered. While I was getting dressed for work, the story caught my attention because they were talking about the huge impact disposables are having on the environment then turned around and also added that cloth diapers aren’t much better because of the resource and power they use up when laundered. I kept waiting for them to say something about what could be should be done about reducing not just the human footprint in general, but just the darn diapers! But, the answer never came. I guess that’s why they call it a teaser.

If you’re interested as I am, watch the story Friday on “20/20″ at 10 p.m. ET, and watch the premiere of “Human Footprint” on the National Geographic Channel Sunday, April 13.