We all have them, lots of them, (though hopefully no one has that many empty Cool Whip containers). Before you send them straight to the recycling bin, why not give them new life, new purpose, new hope beyond being the container that once held the cottage cheese? Even plastic containers can have dreams...

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Seasonal Is Better

And better for you. Yes, you can have strawberries all year round, but they are much better and actually special when you wait for the first local crop to show up at the farmer’s market. They’ll taste better and be better, because they will get to grow locally and ripen in the sun, to be picked only hours before you bring them home. That’s food that is good, seasonal, and sustainable.

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For me, it started about a year ago at my favorite SuperFresh store. I saw the colorful sacks hanging next to the registers and knew, for only $1 each, I must have them.

From then on I’ve found the reusable bag an invariable craze, with chains like Target, and even the lesser-known Acme market jumping on board. What is it about these bags that make them such a hot item, besides their colorful pictures and handy design? Of course their marketing as reusable and eco-friendly is a sure seller, helping to reduce thousands of pounds of extraneous plastic waste, but what is in the bags themselves that make them so “green?” Here I’ll go in-depth into some of our favorite reusable bags.

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Simplifying household chores saves you time, money, resources.

The more you have to clean, the more you realize that simple cleaning routines make you most efficient and most effective. If you have a closet full of cleaning supplies that you must dig through every time you need to wipe down the bathroom, you’re wasting time. If you have a collection of cheaply made cleaning tools that don’t really do the job, you’re wasting time. I don’t know anyone who has lots of extra time to waste, and for most of us, cleaning is the last thing we want to spend much time on, anyway.

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Get in the mindset of DIY when you can for what ails you and/or your stuff.

This kind of lifestyle is opposed to a commercialized, consumerist mindset that says, "Ask a professional," or "Buy something new." Sometimes you do need a professional, but not always. Sometimes it's best to buy something new, but not every time. Until you make it your habit to start going through some problem-solving steps yourself, first, you'll find that you keep wasting time, money, and energy on unnecessary items and activities.

Natural fixes can be applied to any area of life in the right situation: diaper rash on your baby's bum, hay fever, a broken pot handle, a boring relationship. Let's look quickly at the main categories: 1) Health, 2) Stuff, and 3) People.

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Cilantro is a love it or hate it kind of herb. Its smell is distinct and strong, and if you're not used to it, can be very overpowering. My mom used to tell a story of going to eat in Indian food while visiting some friends in England. Here she is, this little Mississippi woman, sitting on cushions on the floor, about to eat out of a bowl with her fingers. The waiter brings over a dish of diced cilantro and her friend says, "Oh, you'll love this, it makes the dish so-o-o-o good," and then sprinkles a big handful over Mom's food. Mom had a hate-it relationship with cilantro for a long time after that meal. It as the first time she had ever tasted it, and that night, even a little would have been too much.

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• Get an Eco-Safe Merit Badge that provides printing alternative for your readers. Rather than printing out a copy of your latest wisdom, your visitors can choose from options that include "Send this page to my email" or "Email me a PDF of this page" or "Download a PDF of this page." For sharing an entire page with someone (without printing off the post), they can download the PDF and then email it like mad.
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1. It's economical. Sustainable living promotes using, reusing, fixing, buying quality items and learning how to repair them, taking care of what you own, buying less, enjoying more. Sustainable living might require a little more effort - at least getting "set up" to live sustainably - but once you get in the habit and get your sustainable systems in place, it means a simpler and richer life. You don't have to constantly consume; instead, you look for ways to use what you already have. You don't buy the newest and best; you buy local and fresh, unique and artisanal, and you enjoy the experience of meeting the producer of the goods as much as you enjoy owning and using the goods. Having such deep-layered experiences in the marketplace means you need less to enjoy more. You don't have nearly as much of a drive to accumulate when you're busy enjoying the high quality experiences, relationships, and activities of your sustainable life.
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I don't think anything can exemplify the very opposite sustainable living than product like the plug-in scent diffusers. Think about it. We're using electricity to power some small motor to turn a fan or to heat some pack of synthetically scented gel and spread a concoction of who-knows-what around our homes. When the gel dries out, we pull it out, toss it in its plastic packaging, and replace it with another one. Or, if the entire plug-in quits working, we toss the entire plastic and metal piece into the trash and replace it with another electricity-using plastic and gel invention.

Yikes.

We can do better than that, don't you think?

Again, let's start with simple.

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I consider myself a pretty eco-friendly gal, even in the college environment, where extraneous energy use is a very real problem. Over the next few weeks I would like to document some of the ways schools are helping their students be conscious environmental citizens.

In high school I imagined college as a place filled with stacks of essays, papers littering my desk, page after page of thesis material printed and ready to give me credit for all my hard work. But the reality is as an English major in this technology age, the number of papers I have physically handed in to my professors is a whopping 1.

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