Thoughts on thrift and 14 ways I lessen my impact on the earth
When I was a little girl, I sometimes made cookies with my mother. I can still hear her say, “Your grandmother could make a dozen cookies with the batter left in that bowl” when I put what I thought was an empty bowl into the sink. I don’t know if my mother was able to get 12 cookies out of what remained, but the lesson made an impact on me and was one of many messages on thrift that I heard throughout my childhood.
My parents instilled in me the importance of taking only what you need and not wasting things. These beliefs were passed on to them from their parents who lived through the Great Depression and reinforced to them as children during World War II. I remember waiting in gas lines in the 1970s, and Jimmy Carter’s plea to turn the thermostat down and put a sweater on* was taken seriously by my family. In addition, my hometown, Randolph, New Jersey, started mandatory curbside recycling in the early 1980s and my parents were avid proponents from the start. With these messages during my formative years, it was easy to begin modifying my behavior when the evidence became overwhelming that human activities and consumption were having a major impact on climate change. Lately, I have been thinking about what I have been doing to lessen my impact on the planet. Here is my list. Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section of this post.
