Forum dedicated to increasing awareness of green living through beneficial dialogue.

I have to say that if I were to suggest one change (which obviously I am. LOL) it would have to be the hardest change one could make... Ones mind. You can do many different things like replacing take out containers with your own tupperware or stainless carry out containers. Believe it or not many places will be ok with using your own containers.
Another change would be to stop buying bottled water. But as I said the most important change is your mind. When you start looking at things from a different perspective and change your mindset about how things should work you start to change other things through simply looking at them from a different point of view and coming up with other ways to do them.

Thanks for the reply, I just feel that if I could influence my closest friends and family to make one chang at a time it will gradually make a bigger change in their attitude. We are all recycling because we have good local services, I was thinking that energy savyng changes should perhaps be the next issue to focus on.

I've talked all my family into changing to energy saving light bulbs...

i did it the easy way.... went round all their houses and changed their bulbs for them! I did this for 6 different houses, just replacing the living room and and a bedroom in each... It's been enough to convince them, and they changed all the others themselves.

Changing to low energy lights is a simple way to change, and one that shows almost instant benefits in terms of cost effectiveness and energy saving..

If I could impress on friends and family that jumping in the car for every little thing needn't happen, I think that would make a tremendous difference. Walking when you can, and carpooling when you can't, or saving several trips to town into one trip; that would have to help alot.

We have a list on the fridge, we write down all the jobs we need to do eg collecting prescriptions, going to the supermarket, givinf someone a lift somewhere etc, then I try to do them all in one trip. It makes a big difference. We combine this with more use of public transport where possible.

We live within walking distance of the grocery store, post office, and the library. I try to walk to each as often as possible. The rain is coming soon, though, which means more driving. I like the idea of the list on the fridge, Deltic; I think we'll give that a try.

The list thing does make a difference, the kids know that if they don't put the lifts or errands they need on the list it doesn't get done and it waits until the next time. Unfortunately there are a number of trips that we make that are not on a bus route and too far to walk (especially in winter when it gets dark early).