Easy things that you can do

Here are some things I have routinely done all my life that allow me to have a smaller "pollution" footprint. A lot of what I do has been misunderstood by sneering idiots, but as we choke this planet to death, who is sneering now?

1. Cut disposable paper and sponge cleaning products in half or fourths before use.

I cut every Brillo pad into fourths. You don't need a whole pad for one cycle of hand dish washing. One quarter pad works just fine for doing two or three pots or pans.

I cut each sheet of paper towels into halves or quarters. You don't need an entire sheet to cover your lap or wipe your mouth during meals. I tend to multiple use them too. I might use a quarter sheet as a coaster for sweating cold drinks for a day or two before using them in cleaning, then throwing them away.

As someone who used to have lots of allergies, I could go through boxes of tissues very quickly. If you need one, by all means use it and don't skimp. But if you are just sneezing, my mom taught me to take a clean hand size towel and use that for just sneezing. Then you drop it in the laundry and you've saved using much paper and trees. It's not a brilliant new idea; it's what men and women used to have handkerchiefs for, to cover the mouth and nose when sneezing.

I cut sponges into thirds. One third is a great size for each session of cleaning.

2. Use natural soap for more of your cleaning; why use harsh chemical cleansers?

Soap and water remain the best means to clean something. Let's be real. I have to clean my toilet just like everyone else who does not have a maid or butler. But it's not like people actually stick their hands in the toilet or encounter it's contents routinely by touch. So I use soap or dish washing detergent rather than harsh sterilizing cleaners. It's not like the toilet is the operating room table, where I do hope people would use more sterilizing. So when I need to clean the toilet I often just dump a few squirts of liquid soap or dish washing detergent. Remember, what you flush down goes into the ecosystem, and we have to stop spewing chemicals all over it.

Back before there were commercial pesticides, gardeners and farmers used good old fashioned soap on the leaves of their plants. I mention this only to fill you in on history before everyone became chemical crazed, and the huge role that soap safely played. They used pesticides where they really need to be used (farms that lack an alternative to make food affordable). But our grandpas and grandmas used simple soapy water on the leaves of their plants against most everyday insects.

The Italian American dad of one of my college roommates used regular drinking tea as his regular cleaning fluid for things like windows. I've kept that habit. When I have a cup of tea, I save the wet teabag before throwing it away. I then use the wet tea bag to swipe clean the top of the stove, for example, rather than chemicals and a sponge. I'll wipe down the stove top with the tea bag, discard it, and then clean and dry the stove top with one fourth or one half a paper towel. I've cleaned windows using a bucket of water with tea in it, back when I had a house with windows LOL.

If there's still some life in the paper towel used to clean the stove top, I will use it for a really grimy floor spot before throwing it out. This way it gets double usage.

3. Use your shredder for more than confidential paperwork.

If you put something through a shredder, it helps the decomposition process. Paper takes much longer to break down in landfills than people realize. (Think about it. You can find newspaper in attics that are decades old before they even start to break down). So I've started putting all paper through the shredder if it fits, not just the name/address/confidential parts. If I've cut a magazine apart because I keep some of the articles or pictures, I'll even put magazine pages into the shredder, and the same for catalogs. The smaller size of shredded paper material means that it can breakdown in landfills faster.

4. I don't wash my hair everyday.

I used to when I worked on Wall Street if I was taking the morning bath anyway, but for most of my life I have not washed my hair everyday. This causes great hilarity but the laugh is on morons who use chemicals every day on their hair and then flush those chemicals into the environment. People have natural hair oil for a reason. That's why women used to brush their hair one hundred strokes each night before bed. That was a great "beauty secret" of our grandmothers and their mothers. They did not have the time or water to wash their hair every day and they would consider that unhealthy for the hair, recognizing that it strips the natural oil out of hair, and encourages premature hair loss too. So they brushed or combed their hair one hundred strokes each night to stimulate the scalp and distribute oil in their hair from the scalp to the roots. It's only recently with the distorted body image that it is considered "dirty" to "not wash your hair every day." What suckers! All that hair product is not good for the life of your hair and it also gets flushed down the drain into our lakes, drinking water and the oceans, where it poisons life and promotes the bad type of micro organisms instead of the good ones.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful. *Rolls eyes*