Today is earth day and there is no better day to try and minimize your negative impact on the earth. How to you celebrate earth day? Do you plant something or maybe you pick up litter along the highway near your home.
Every effort is helpful whether you are making it on for one day or if you are setting out to try and do something differently for the entire year. Some of the things we are doing year round are rain water harvesting and grey water harvesting. I take baths often and am always feeling bad about sending the perfectly good water down the drain afterwards. Since I use biodegradable shampoo and soap I have been eager to siphon my bath water out into the garden. We life in the desert so sometimes rain water is limited.. If I can take my bath water and store it for use in the garden that would reduce the amount of water we waste and it is good for the plants! We rigged up our low tech bath water harvesting system yesterday and it worked well last night!
We also have a compost bin and are able to greatly reduce the amount of waste we contribute to the landfill by composting and recycling our waste. Our compost goes right back into the soil to replenish it and provide nutrients and our recycled stuff gets reused also.
What things do you do to tread lighter on the earth?
Anther great way to celebrate earth day is with the kiddies. After all one day tis earth will be theirs and we need to teach them to respect and value it. Crafts are great ways to teach kids things with a hands on approach. Consider doing some earth day crafts with your kids today if you can, it is a great opportunity to bond with them and teach them. Here are some ideas for parents who want to craft with their kids:
That is great about the bath water system you two have rigged up! I always loved how over in Asia they use the grey water system and the bathroom sink water then goes into the toilet to be used again. TGH and I use rain water barrels and I’m looking into starting a compost heap for our garden.
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We have a HUGE compost bin that has made our garden really awesome. Sometimes it smells kinda funky, but all our compostable stuff goes in there. We recycle EVERY card board container (even food), plastic and paper, all metal. Several years ago we acquired huge 50 (??) gallon drums and I pumped bath water (and shower, too…I just plugged the drain during my shower) and put it into the barrels. Unfortunately, it was a difficult task, since our bathroom is on the 2nd floor and we had to use a pump to get it outside and down to the barrels. My husband was game for only a short time before he decided it wasn’t his ball of wax. AND the water smelled HORRID (um, kind of like sewage) after a few days in the barrel. We didn’t put chemicals in it to keep bacteria from growing. In my fantasy life, I’ll have a house built with cisterns to collect rain water, non-sewage water, laundry water to use outside. And I’ll use only solar power in my home.
When I was a kid, living outside of town we pumped our laundry water out into the yard. We had the best grass and we never ran a sprinkler.
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Your dream sounds lots like our dream! When we own a house we will permanently rig up a grey water system like what you describe!
It is so great for watering plants and you don;t even have to store the water if you don’t want to, they have those hoses that are sealed at the very end but are sponge like so the water seeps out through the entire length of the hose watering everything it comes in contact with..
Good stuff!