Welcome!!

Hi - I love living as green as possible and teaching my children and everyone else how to live green as well.  I grew up in one of the most greenest natural countries in the world - New Zealand.  Now that I live in America I still want to instill the values I learn growing up onto my children and so on and so on down the family tree.  One big thing I noticed moving to America is the amount of trash I put out every week!!  In New Zealand each week we have 3 wheelie bins for trash - red, yellow and green.   Red - household waste (hopefully they delete this one soon).  Yellow - household recycling.  Green - Organic waste - food scraps and garden trimming.  Plus we have a lot of recycling centers - where for a small price ($10) you can take your household recycling and Organic waste.  Plus anything that is still in good condition like old china, washing machines etc and they will sell them - it doesn't cost you for these.  So what I'm working on is a small bin for household waste, larger bin for household recycling and another bin for Organic waste.  3 bin system - I'm lucky enough to have household recycling collected once every second week.  Plus I take my bottles into a 5 cents return center for store credits which I really enjoy, I drag my son along to help and teach him the value of recycling.  The other thing I do is watch what I buy - not a whole lot of individually wrapped products and try to get back to basics when cooking too.  You will be surprised at how much you can make from scratch and actually knowing the ingredients that you are eating and feeding your children.  You know what - you are going to save so much money this way as well.  To show you what I mean I'm going to post a recipe for basic marinara - it is for 12 cups (as this is basic you can add anything to it to make a meal) so only need to use 1 cup per meal.  It costs about 50 cents for each cup compared to $3 so saving $2.50 (which works out to $130 a year - which is basically a new pair of shoes or two!!!!! )  So be sure to follow me as I teach you how to raise A Green Kid and Family!!  Caroline