For most of my life, I have been a treehugger wannabe (my sisters lovingly tease me about my Birkinstocks and tofu). I have found very little support for this viewpoint within Christianity, which surprises me. One of the things that I have found refreshing in getting older is that I really don’t care what people think (within reason…I think it’s more that I am more comfortable with who God made me to be and am better able to appreciate differences in others). With that said, I am going green. 
I have been delighted to find that there are other Christian women out there who are also trying to ‘go green.’ Their blogs have been an inspiration to me. One of my favorite blogs is Sara’s. A recent post included a link that led me to get serious about going green. The visual representations were just what I needed.
The first change we’ve made is to stop buying water bottles. We are on the go a lot and had fallen into the habit of buying a case of water bottles every week (we’re a family of seven so those cases of water went FAST!). This has now come to an end. I bought all of us hard plastic water bottles (picture coming soon) that we can wash and reuse.
I am still buying my water though since our water in town is awful and for the last several years we’ve gotten letters from the city telling us that the levels of radium have been too high (though they assure us the water’s safe to drink). So twice a week, we haul our 4 5-gallon water bottles to town and fill them up at the water place (and supporting a Christian business in the process!). I think we’re either going to have to buy another water bottle or make another trip to town. With the hot weather we’ve had lately, we’re going through the water at record speed! With many people in a small space, I haven’t quite decided which would be the better option. I’m just not sure where we’d put another 5-gallon water bottle but each trip to town in our ‘bus’ (1997 Suburban) costs us $6.
We are tree-hugging wannabees, too! And I just bought some water bottles the other day… instead of those dreaded little money-sucking juice boxes. We used to own a company selling cloth diapers! You really get a picture for how we are literally trashing our world when you read about those stats all the time! Best wishes with making the earth a greener place, and kudos to you for teaching your kids to be responsible about limiting their trash
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Glad to see I have company! We’re almost to one month without buying water bottles so we’ve saved a ton of trash and have paid for most of the reusable water bottles with the savings.