According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the amount of waste that is generated by United States citizens continues to increase each year. Between the years of 1960 to 2010, the amount of waste that was generated by each person in our country increased from 2.7 pounds per day to 4.4 pounds per day. This adds up to about 25o million tons of waste generated in 2010! These statistics indicate that decades of environmental campaigns have not been successful.

3 Easy Steps to Go Green

The good news is that going green begins with three easy steps… Step 1: Reduce. Step 2: Reuse. Step 3: Recycle. When we reduce the amount of waste that we generate, it makes steps 2 and 3 easier to accomplish.  Just by being aware, making conscientious choices, and seeing the world with fresh eyes, we can all reduce the amount of waste we generate on a daily basis.

20 Simple Ways to Reduce and Go Green

Here are a few easy strategies that each of us can utilize in an effort to reduce the 4.4 pounds of waste we generate each day:

• Buy products with little or no packaging.
• Buy products in bulk.
• Learn to cook from scratch.
• Remove your name from junk mail lists.
• Stop printing emails, files and documents from the internet.  Store them digitally as files or bookmarks.
• Compost your kitchen scraps and yard waste.
• Bring your own bags to the store or use resuable bags.
• Bring your own coffee cup to work and/or to your favorite coffee shop.
• Buy products made from recycled materials like pencils, printer paper, paper towels (if you absolutely need paper towels) etc
• Donate clothing, shoes, toys, outdated electronics, and appliances to charity.
• Filter your own water instead of buying water in plastic bottles.
• Don’t use paper plates and cups or plastic eating utensils.
• Never buy or use anything made from styrofoam (it takes 500 years to begin to break down)
• Try to limit your use of paper towels.  Use cloth napkins and dish towels instead.
• Shop locally to reduce the amount of waste incurred as a result of packaging, cardboard boxes and those styrofoam peanuts that take 500 years to break down.
• Consider using cloth diapers for your baby or disposable diapers that are biodegradable.
• Have your printer ink cartridges refilled instead of throwing them away.
• Send unwanted cds, dvds and their cases to be properly recycled.
• Reduce your waste by reusing and recycling.
• Bring your own grocery bags when grocery shopping.

Not only can we reduce the waste we accumulate as consumers, we can also learn how to reduce our carbon footprint. Each of us has a carbon footprint which can be concisely defined as the measurement of “how much waste you leave behind after directly or indirectly consuming energy”.To learn how to calculate and reduce your carbon footprint, use this free interactive calculator provided by Nature.org.

Next week, we will explore Step 2: Reuse. This step is the most fun of all because reusing includes repurposing, refurbishing, reclaiming, and many other creative adventures that can serve as meaningful projects for the whole family!

How are  you reducing and going green this year?

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Tracey Lenac is the founder, editor and publisher of Raising California, an online magazine that highlights elements of holistic, organic, GREEN lifestyle choices along with homeschooling and spirituality.   She is also the founder of Soul Centered Kids in Los Angeles, California, where she teaches soul centered skills such as meditation, reiki and yoga to children of all ages and developmental abilities and the founder of The Souls of Boys, an online store specializing in non violent, non toxic, soul centered toys, books, media and resources for boys.  Tracey has a Master of Arts degree in Education and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She is also a registered Reiki Master/Teacher, organic gardener, the mom of two boys and a secular homeschooler.

I have had pneumonia. Twice. And both times, I thought I was going to die. I may be exaggerating a little bit, but there is something about struggling to breathe that gives you that sensation and it’s downright frightening.

Fortunately, neither of my children have had any respiratory challenges. But as a mom, I can only image if they did and the helplessness that I’d feel if I were to watch them struggle to breathe without being able to do anything for them.

But the reality for me is that even if they did, I could wrap them in a blanket and rush them to the doctor just like my husband did for me. And there, I’d hope they’d get a shot and an inhaler to make their lungs open up and their breathing get back to normal. (Yes! This is a pic from the doctor’s office right before I went back for my chest X-Ray. Embarrassing!)

Why We Need to Raise Awareness to Provide Aid for Pneumonia

But this is not the reality for all mothers around the world. The reality is that more than 1.5 million children die from pneumonia each year?

The Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia shares the fact that every 20 seconds, pneumonia kills another child. That’s 4,300 child deaths every day, and a staggering 1+ million child deaths every year from a preventable, treatable disease.

Yes! You read that right. Pneumonia is preventable. It’s treatable. It is one of the world’s most solvable problems. Yet without funding and action, it is unnecessarily taking the lives of more than a million children.

What You Can Do to Help Save Children Suffering From Pneumonia

Today is World Pneumonia Day. The Global Coaltion of Child Pneumonia has a phenomenal website with a virtual toolkit. You can help in many ways. Here’s a few ideas:

• For moms in social media: Promote via social media, including Twitter (using the hashtag #WPD2011), Facebook, Google+, your blog/website. The virtual toolkit provides twibbons for your Twitter avatars, buttons and badges for your blog, and lots of infographics and content for your blog.
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• For all moms: Write a letter to your elected officials, encouraging them to support foreign aid. Lobby. Sign petitions. Send emails to your friends or share the importance of supporting this cause to friends in your neighborhood, community, or mom groups.
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• For moms who want to take action: Host an event. The virtual toolkit provides ideas, steps, and even posters to get you started.

How do people live in other countries?

How do children in the jungles of Peru adapt, go to school, eat, pray and live?

How about the kids in the slums of India, or the mountains of Romania?

I admit that my love for adventure travel dictates a lot of the way I think about these things.  But even if I were inclined to stay home and scrapbook (I wish I were that kind of mom), I would hope that one of my more adventurous friends would push me out of that box into the world, to make me think.

If you’ve ever taken an amazing International trip, you know how much your mind expands. Something about the new culture, tastes, sounds, and languages, really gets the synapses firing. You come back fired up, creative, and with a completely new perspective.

It was like that for me after we worked in orphanages in Romania. Our hearts were afire. And I couldn’t see how anyone could spent $50 on a pair of jeans anymore, when that was their entire months salary. After Peru, where I saw tribal people washing a dead cow in the river, preparing it for dinner, I had a completely different understanding of what it means to eat and prepare dinner for a family.

When my youngest was a newborn I took him to the jungle. I had to remind myself that Americans often live in places like that, as well as missionaries across the globe who raise kids in foreign lands. It was a great experience for my two boys, and waking up to wild monkeys howling in the trees was something they’ll never forget.

They’ve traveled to London and Paris and a lot of other places, and they’ve been able to see how little kids there talk, live, and school.

But some of the most amazing experiences we’ve had are right here in our own backyard, spending time with kids who live in homeless shelters, and integrate into normal schools.

In it all they’ve got a “global” understanding, that the world is just simply bigger and more complex than the one we live in.  Maybe it’s a love for adventure or a love for the lost and broken that urges me to bring them to these places. It’s not a popular choice, and it’s one that’s often argued by their cautious grandparents (really? You’re having a homeless child over for Christmas dinner??). But, extending a hand to pull someone else back up, might be the only thing it takes.

And in order to do that, we have to be willing to adventure to another place, another country, or perhaps just a shelter or orphanage in your own backyard.

Tammy Kling is a mother and an author.

Her latest book, The Compass, is a transformational journey that guides people to access their dreams.  The companion documentary by the same name features world renowned speakers and motivators Brian Tracy, Les Brown, and Tammy Kling among others.

Tammy blogs at Escape Suburbia.

India is famous for its monsoons. Three months out of the year, rain is plentiful. But when it stops, the ground dries up and while the forests are still vibrant, the earth is dusty. What this means for people in remote villages who have inadequate water retention and purification systems, is long walks to the source of the water supply for an attempt at getting clean water. Or worse, drinking from contaminated sources. Worldwide 1 in 7 goes without clean water. And in India, it isn’t any different.

Each year, Aveda, in partnership with Global Green Grants Fund, holds a monthly fund raiser in April for Earth Month, where they sell candles and donate 100% of the proceeds to cleaning up water worldwide. Sometimes as a busy mom I wonder what I can do to make a difference. I often think buying products like this couldn’t possibly make an impact.  I mean, it’s just one candle, right? Wrong!

This year alone, with the help of its customers, Aveda raised $3.7 Million. When you think of buying one candle, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But, one candle plus one candle times all the candles sold makes cleaner water a possibility for many.

One such village that benefits from these candle sales is the Tiwalri Village in India. I had the opportunity to join Aveda on the adventure of a lifetime and visit this village yesterday.

What I love about what Aveda and Global Green Grants’ initiative in Tiwalri is their holistic approach. The outreach wasn’t an in-and-out approach or the give-a-man-a-fish philosophy. It was inside out and systemic, involving leaders on down in the community. They thought of all the possible red flags and involved people in the community to brainstorm solutions. They went the route of education up to implementation with one goal in mind: sustainability, ensuring that the water supply would exist long after Aveda left.

Imagine your basic need to have clean water. Now imagine the impossible task of making that a reality. Then, imagine two organizations making that possible not only for you, but for your entire city. Think of the gratitude you would feel when those organizations came to your remote location to spend a day with you. The smiles and appreciation were heartwarming. The stories were amazing.

Whether you are buying a candle to support clean water worldwide or supporting organizations in other ways, my experience yesterday taught me that small and simple steps lead to major accomplishments.

She recently returned from 18 months in Ukraine. While there, she learned about IWD when some locals asked her and my father-in-law what we did in the United States to celebrate.

My mother-in-law had never heard of IWD so she explained that we celebrated Mother’s Day here. Their Ukrainian friends’ response: “But what about the women who aren’t mothers?”

Touche!

While the US hasn’t declared IWD an official national holiday, it has dedicated the entire month of March to Womens’ History Month and the United Nations and many organizations, including prominent companies, put on conferences during this time to further promote and address women’s issues and rights focusing this year’s theme on “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for All.” (Click here to read conference summaries and progress/challenges.)

So, why is this important? What does this have to do with me as I sit behind my computer in my little corner of the world and you as you sit behind yours?

I watched this video and marveled at how relentlessly Iranian women are fighting for a chance to enjoy the gender equality freedoms I take for granted. I read this article that stated, “A growing number of countries have legislation that supports sexual and reproductive health and promotes gender equality. Nevertheless, maternal mortality remains unacceptably high, too few women have access to family planning, and violence against women remains a cause for global shame.”

I sit here behind my computer with the opportunity to work and provide for my family and I am haunted by a scene of 12-year-old girls dancing in the night market in Bangkok right out in the open with hardly any clothes on for all to see, for some to take advantage of. Taken from their homes. No mothers to care for them. I couldn’t take it in. I didn’t know what to do. Global shame doesn’t begin to describe the anger and helplessness that I felt in that moment and still feel 8 years later as I write this post. I turned my head. I kept walking. What could I do? The scene has never left my mind. But maybe there is more I can do. Maybe there’s more we all can do to further equality and rights and justice for women everywhere.

I am excited to be partnering with Avon to promote their commitment to help end violence for women world wide in support of IWD.

As I have researched and watched the #iwd hashtag on Twitter, here’s ways to learn more or get involved:

• Check out this site, which has a searchable database of events listed by country and state/city. Is there one in your area? Next year, Utah is going to be on that list!
• Choose an issue that speaks to you, like this one on maternal health perhaps, and look for ways to support the organizations that are dedicated to progressing these causes.
• Check out organizations like Vital Voices and attend one of their celebrations this week.
• Read this article and learn five things you can do to help support IWD.
• Watch the videos below and others like it to be more informed on global issues and how you can help.
• If nothing else, tweet your support for IWD (#iwd) and connect with women globally who share your support. Maybe together we can all make a difference!
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