Earth Hour 2009 — we did our bit
Since we’d marked the calendar and set an alarm, we were ready this year for Earth Hour 2009. We turned off all the lights outside the house. We shut down the laptops, router, printer, UPS, and electronics and then turned off the lights, fan, and everything else. All we left on were the appliances (furnace, fridge, water heater).
Throughout the year we try to do what we can to conserve and reduce our footprint on the Earth. We only own one car. My husband drives it to work and back during the week. He makes a loop on the way home to the post office or store so there’s no additional travel since their on the way home. We shop once a week or every other week depending on our needs. That weekly shopping trip is on a loop so we drive to the recycle center to drop off all our recycling (we’re not on a pick up route), then we hit the stores in order and come home. Many times we do the shopping on Saturday and thus don’t drive or go anywhere on Sunday.
We have a small vegetable garden during the year and eat out of that for fresh veggies when we can. Of course, most years we’re struggling to get the fruits of our labor before the critters get them. (We live on five acres in the midst of farm country and often have deer, rabbits, and other critters in our yard.)
We also have a small fruit orchard but even though we do get peaches and plums and apples by they time they ripen the deer or other critters get them. We have managed to get our strawberries and raspberries (and we put the blueberries in planters on the deck so we could get them.)
What angers me sometimes is the questions on surveys: Will you drive less because of gas prices? No, we won’t. We’ve reduced our driving years ago and they only way we could further reduce it is not to go to work. Many of us have been cutting down and doing what we can for the Earth for years and have very little we could still cut back on so the questions don’t truly get at the current status of some of us. For other, who have never considered cutting back, they probably could find ways to reduce driving or use of resources but others of us have already done the hard stuff and we’re working on refining where we can.
So, this year we did our bit for Earth hour and now we need to consider what more we could do.