Unfortunately, the kids’ chocolate milks came in these little mini jugs that were clearly going to spill all over my car.  So, I asked for cups with lids, and straws, and poured their milk into those.  (Of course, they still managed to spill all over themselves!) I was already feeling bad about all of this waste when my five-year old said to me, “Mom, will we recycle these cups or put them into the garbage bin?”

“I think the bin, because they have that waxy coating. But I’ll look it up.”

“Well, what about the lids?” he asked me.

“Probably the bin, too.”

He sighed heavily, a sigh laden with disappointment (in me? at the wastefulness of it all?).

Then my three-year old chimed in, “But we can recycle the straws, right Mommy?”

Actually probably not, but I love your thinking, kiddo!

Pushing the whole landfill guilt aside (and the HFCS guilt aside, too… why is it in EVERYTHING?), I realized just how green we’re being by practically never eating out.  We’re significantly reducing our garbage footprint by skipping out on the fast food world. I never really appreciated how much this budget-cutting decision was green not only for our wallets, but for our planet!

Are you inadvertantly green in any areas of your life?

I had a very limited budget ($2,000) and of that amount, I had to allocate several hundred toward new mattresses. Thanks to hand-me-downs from my parents, Craigslist deals and garage sale steals, I was able to pull together a comfortable, attractive apartment. No, it’s not a page out of Better Homes, but it’s no mismatched bachelor pad either. My favorite finds: A beautiful pecan-wood china cabinet and six-seat dining room table for less than $250, a less than 2-year old Maytag washer and dryer for $250, and matching Pottery Barn quilts for the boys’ beds ($20 for both, including the matching shams).

In addition to scoring home furnishings deals, I have also come to prefer shopping for my kids’ clothes (and mine, too) at garage sales and thrift stores. I’ve found some unbelievable deals: All cotton GAP PJs for $.50; Tommy Hilfiger tops for under $1.00.  There are a few items that I won’t get second-hand, namely underwear, socks and shoes.  But everything else, including the kids’ winter coats, goes on the garage sale list.

Now aside from the really good bargains, I like shopping at garage sales because they are a much more earth-friendly way to accumulate new (to us) goods.  First, there is the fact that so much of the stuff that gets sold at garage sales would otherwise end up in a landfill somewhere.  By buying it and using it as is or re-purposing it to fit our lives, we’re extending the life of that good and reducing the amount of waste in our garbage dumps. I recently read that Americans generated 246 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2005.  That’s a 60% increase since 1980.

Second, making new stuff is incredibly resource-intensive. There is the electricity and natural gas that goes into manufacturing, the petroleum that is the basis of some many of our consumable goods (think anything plastic), and of course the fuel that is used to transport these goods to our mega-malls and big box shops.  Buying the kids’ t-shirts for a quarter at a garage sale eliminates my small part in this massive energy suck.

For more on avoiding the consumer trap of new goods, check out this article from GOOD Magazine about the San Francisco-based group called the Compact. Back in 2006, Bay Area friends committed to not buying anything new (outside of food, medication and a couple other exceptions) for one year.  Their pledge sparked an international movement, which I will admit has been a real source of inspiration to me.

So, are you a seeker of second-hand deals and steals?  What’s your inspiration?