This year is going to be different. I’m not making resolutions, I’m setting goals – specific goals that will have real environmental benefits and that I can measure with real “before” and “after” statistics.

Though I hope I’ll reduce my environmental footprint in all sorts of ways this year, I’m only setting three specific goals in the hopes that a narrower focus will lead to broader achievements.

GOAL #1 – MAKE MY OWN YOGURT

I eat two cups of yogurt every single day – plain, non-fat, usually Greek-style yogurt that serves as the delicious base for whatever fresh fruit happens to be in season. It’s a healthy and mostly eco-friendly breakfast – marred only by the fact that I buy the yogurt in big plastic throwaway tubs. When I was in college, I had an electric yogurt maker and made my own yogurt every week. I also made yogurt by mixing milk and yogurt starter in a bowl, then keeping it in a warm oven for several hours until the whole mixture became yogurt-like. Over the years as I was busy raising kids, running a business and writing books, I’ve gotten away from making my own yogurt. But I’m appalled at how many plastic yogurt tubs I throw away every week. If I made my own yogurt using milk I can buy in glass bottles from my local food coop, I would go from three or four plastic tubs a week to zero. So one goal for 2013 is to start making my own yogurt.

Do you make your own yogurt? If you have a recipe you love, please share it!

GOAL #2 – USE NO MORE THAN THREE PRODUCTS BOTTLED IN PLASTIC IN MY BATHROOM

In my bathroom right now, I have various cosmetics, body lotion, hand cream, face cream, make-up remover, shampoo, conditioner, body soap, shaving gel, toothpaste, curl definer, hair straightener, nail polish remover, and hair color – and they’re all in plastic bottles or jars. My kids use different products, so they have almost the same number of products that I have in their own bottles! Beth Terry at My Plastic Free Life has written a great book about ways to reduce the amount of plastic we use in our day-to-day lives. Her personal example has inspired me to figure out how to cut down the number of plastic bottles I use in my bathroom to no more than three. Right away, I can replace the shaving gel and body soap with bar soaps that come wrapped in paper or with no wrapping paper at all. I can buy much larger sizes of products so that I’m using fewer bottles overall. But I’d like to set an even more ambitious goal and figure out how to make my own body lotion, shampoo, hair conditioner, and face cream, for starters. Do you make your own? What do you make, and how do you make it? I can really use your advice!

GOAL #3 – IMPROVE MY COMPOST

My compost is not the best. I use a composting barrel, and ten  months out of the year (March – December), I just collect my kitchen scraps and throw them in the barrel. Then I flip the barrel around a few times and hope the stuff decomposes. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve never been very scientific about adding the right proportions of dry and wet material to it so that the compost heats up the way it is supposed to and turns all that food waste into the black organic gold that would make my garden thrive. Right now, the kitchen scraps from the last several months are all lying frozen in the bottom of my barrel. But as soon as the spring thaw hits, I’m going to empty out that barrel and start from scratch. Do you compost? Do you use a barrel? Please let me know what works best for you. I can easily compost 100% of my kitchen scraps, apart from the occasional fish or chicken remains I have. But what I’d really like to aim for is somewhere between two and three big barrels full of rich organic compost to add to my garden by the end of 2013.

So there you have it: use less plastic by making my own yogurt and personal care products, and enrich my garden by creating better compost. Please share your own goals and resolutions for 2013, and come back often to help me overcome the obstacles I find as I pursue my own.

RELATED POSTS

New Year’s Goal – Shift Spending to Eco-Friendly Products and Services

Environmental Resolution: Do Less, Do It Better

The post My Green Goals for 2013: Less Bathroom Plastic, More Home-Made Yogurt, Better Compost appeared first on Big Green Purse.

You can, however, achieve it – because it’s a goal… a Big Hairy Audacious Green Goal, exactly the kind of goal we need if we’re serious about protecting the planet, our health, and the health and safety of our families.

You notice a BHAGG is not a “resolution,” as in the well-meaning but easy-to-break promise you might make to yourself in the new year. Nope, a BHAGG is a specific challenge you strive to achieve, knowing full well it may not be easy to reach – but when you get there, it will make a real difference.

The original term Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG, was coined by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1994 best-seller, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. They discovered that successful companies set goals that were not only visionary, but very specific, such as “achieve a 10% revenue growth rate in the next three months.”

The post Do You Have a BHAGG for 2012? appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Saving Energy

Reader Bonnie installed a programmable thermostat. It cost her $35, but she expects to easily recoup the cost on her heating and cooling bills. StudioJMM of http://profile.typepad.com/studiojmm put solar panels on her roof. Ann started a “no idling” campaign to get buses to turn off their engines when they’re waiting to pick up kids at school. Saves energy AND keeps the air cleaner.

Green Cleaning

Hana, aka the Green Granma http://thegreengrandma.blogspot.com/ discovered “the unending merits of vinegar” for greener cleaning. Celine spent a few dollars on cleaning rags she purchased at Goodwill. Lynne at http://greenertoday.blog.ca/ is now making her own green cleaners, plus buying local and kicking the throwaway water bottle habit.

In the Kitchen

Kerri (of www.realhartford.org) installed a worm composter. She spent $125 for the worm bin, and got the worms for free from a friend. She’s already harvested three bins full of compost, which she’s used to enrich her garden soil. Next steps? Making better use of bulk food. Barathi has given up bottled water and other beverages completely, and now, not only uses a reusable bottle, but gives them to friends to encourage them to do the same. Jeanne, a student in Quebec, France, became a vegetarian, a move she feels is saving her a lot of money (tofu is cheaper than meat!).

Cher over at http://creativeandtasty.blogspot.com/became a vegetarian, too. So did Anna at http://www.green-talk.com/. Jen of http://www.jenandjoeygogreen.blogspot.com/ planted a big organic vegetable garden. She thinks it cost less than $100, but is saving much more in food she doesn’t need to buy. Lisa of http://condo-blues.blogspot.com/ joined a CSA (community supported agriculture, which meanss you buy a farm’s harvest for a season). Denise got a hand-me-down solar oven, and has been making her own granola. Kathy began composting kitchen scraps to reduce the amount of garbage she threw away, and found she didn’t need to buy fertilizer for the garden! Sherry is getting her family to eat more locally grown food and less meat; they’re wiping their hands and mouths on the new cloth napkins she’s bought.

Home Furnishings

Bonnie also completely redecorated her apartment for $500 by buying everything second-hand on Craig’s list. On a larger scale, Diane left her home in Costa Rica to become an “eco beaver” in Oregon, where she and her husband are building their own abode. You can read about the many changes they’ve made – and plan to make – at http://connect.oregonlive.com/user/EcoBeavers/index.html. One smart move: they’re building three tall and narrow stories instead of something more sprawling to protect as much of their forested property as possible.

Personal Care Products

Jeanne, a student in Quebec, France, replaced feminine hygiene products with a reusable diva cup. Shannon of http://www.workingmomgoesgreen.com/ switched to more natural personal care products for herself and her family. She’s making her own deodorant, and using baking soda for shampoo, and cider for conditioner, saving at least $50/year.

Transportation

Beate of http://www.levananaturals.com/ started sharing a car. Hana, aka the Green Granma (see above) traded in her Buick for a Honda Insight Hybrid.

Started Their Own Companies and Blogs!

Talk about ambitious! Linda at www.ekobear.ca started this toy company to make sure her kids (and yours) had safe toys to play with. This, on top of greening all her family’s cleaning products, switching to reusable bags, using a clothes drying rack, and installing a motion sensor light in the bathroom, which is better than constantly reminding her 4-year-old son to turn off the light. Beate (see above) also opened her own online store. Take a look at http://www.levananaturals.com/.

Meanwhile, Renee set up a blog –  http://nevertoolatetogreen.blogspot.com – to chronicle the many small but meaningful changes she’s making to green her life. What’s she done so far? She’s stopped using nasty cleaning chemicals, has started to grow her own food or buy local, and started using a clothesline, actions, which she says saved her hundreds of dollars. Lori launched  http://groovygreenlivin.com/. And still more new blogs: Christina started writing
http://www.greenerparents.com/, where you can find her stories about switching out paper Kleenex for reusable cloth hankies and tips on giving a green birthday party for your child.

Congratulations to everyone who took a new green step, or who walked farther along the environmental path they’ve begun. You make a difference!

The post Need Help Getting Inspired for 2011? Learn From These Great Green Role Models. appeared first on Big Green Purse.

But how many “resolutions” have you made over the years? And – be honest, now – how many have you actually kept?

The truth is,resolutions are as easy to abandon as they are to embrace. Yes, they’re noble. They may even be inspiring. But do they usually work?

No. They’re just too vague, too lofty; they leave too much wiggle room. And if there’s anything the planet doesn’t need more of, it’s wiggle room!

That’s why, rather than make resolutions this year, I hope you’ll consider setting a specific goal. Something not just to aim for, but to surpass. A benchmark. A way you can prove to yourself that you’re actually DOING something. Making a difference.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I’d like that goal to be about how you spend your money. In fact, I’d like to encourage you to set a specific goal of shifting at least $1,000 of your normal household budget to the greenest products and services available: no-VOC paints, BPA-free bottles, energy-efficient cars or mass transit, organic food. You get the idea. The “green” version of what you buy anyway.

Why does it matter?

When we pay for goods, manufacturers pay attention to us. They have to. Consumer dollars are their lifeblood. So rather than fall prey to companies and the millions of dollars they spend to tell us what to buy, we can use our own dollars to tell them what to make – and how to make it.  The more money you shift to to greener options, the more you direct manufacturers to reduce pollution, save energy and water, use less packaging, limit toxic substances, curb climate change, and protect natural areas.
Plus, our economic system is based on supply and demand. If you want the supply of greener goods to increase, your demand for them has to increase as well.

But there’s perhaps an even more important reason to shift your spending. The way you spend your money is your first line of defense. It’s the fastest, easiest way to guard both your pocketbook and your health. Not nearly enough laws and regulations are in place to protect us from the 80,000 or more chemicals circulating in our environment. The U.S. Congress still hasn’t been able to regulate the carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, even though 2010 may turn out to be the warmest year on record. Most food is still grown by big conglomerates that liberally douse their fields in pesticides and herbicides.

We can reduce our exposure to toxins significantly by buying the safest products available.  We can save money by opting for more fuel efficient appliances and modes of transportation and reduce our carbon impact at the same time. We can keep our communities strong and thriving by buying food grown, not just organically, but locally.

So set a goal. You won’t be alone. Already, 6,000 people have started to make the shift, as part of the Big Green Purse One in a Million Campaign. If we get to a million (that’s OUR goal!), we can have a noticeable ONE BILLION DOLLAR IMPACT in the marketplace.

Want to get started?

You can make the biggest difference by picking one commodity and shifting all $1,000 to it. Some of the most important options (and ones that should be readily available in your neighborhood as well as on-line) include:

____ Organic, locally grown food (Why? Reduce your exposure to pesticides.)
____ Energy-efficient appliances (Why? Help stop global warming.)
____ Phthalate-free cosmetics (Why? Protect your health.)
____ Fuel-efficient car or a really great bicycle (Why? Save energy, save money, reduce air pollution.)
____ Fair trade, shade grown coffee (Why? Protect rainforests and songbirds.)
____ Non-toxic cleansers (Why? Reduce indoor air pollution and limit your exposure to toxic chemicals.)

Alternatively, you can spread your spending among the variety of products and services that you need to manage your household, choosing as often as possible those that offer the greatest environmental benefits. You’ll probably find that you’ll end up shifting far more than the initial $1,000 you aim for. In fact, that’s the idea. You set a goal. It becomes a habit. And the more money you shift, the bigger impact you’ll have. Talk about getting the biggest bang for your buck!

Note: I’m not encouraging you to buy more stuff you don’t need just because it’s “green.” And there’s no question that we need to continue to pass and enforce strong laws to protect our health and the environment. But it would be irresponsible not to use the most powerful tool available to us individually – our purse or our pocketbook  — to make the world a better place.

So, set your goal. First, join the Big Green Purse One in a Million Campaign. Read how people like you have reached their goals. Then use this free balance sheet to get started yourself. When you reach your goal, let me know so I can brag about you.

And remember: It’s not how much you spend, it’s how you spend it.

Happy New Year!

The post How about a Goal instead of a Resolution – Like Shifting $1,000 to Greener Products and Services appeared first on Big Green Purse.