I hope everyone has had a cracking start to 2012. I feel a bit bogged down catching up on everything leftover from 2011 but other than that, it’s been good!

One of the things I’ve been struggling over all week has been my first Recycle This post of 2012. At this time of year, I usually set myself a green goal or two for the year – and invite everyone else to set one as well. Something that, with a bit of focus during the year ahead, will become a lifelong reducing, reusing or recycling habit.

In 2010, I wanted to curb my addiction to cheap clothes – it took a while and an additional quota-based challenge in 2011 but I think I’ve cracked it now. Last year, I aimed to reduced the amount of food waste & food packaging waste we generated and while we haven’t been perfect in that regard, I think things have improved a lot.

This year though I can’t think of anything that feels like such an obvious crunch point for me/us. We’re not perfect by any means and are still working on improving our habits in a number of different areas but nothing feels like it’s an obvious “we really need to do that to be greener” thing this year.

I suspect it’s partly because we’ve been at this for a while now, have addressed the low hanging fruit and now I’m being blind/have rationalised away our biggest problems areas. I’m going to think very careful about that sort of thing for inspiration over the next few days but while I’m doing that, I’m asking for a bit of inspiration: what are you guys planning to do (or not do!) to make your life greener in 2012?

A suggestion from the skip down the road:

“Hi, I’m the big yellow skip down the road that you keep eyeing up every time you walk past me. The people at the house next to me must be having a clear out or something but no, sorry, that cool chair that’s been in the garden for a couple of weeks isn’t in here: they must have taken it back into the house. You should so get the broken standing fan out though – the white metal bits that cover the blades will make good hanging baskets: come and see me tomorrow and I’ll make sure they’re waiting for you.

PS. Call me!
PPS. Also, no asbestos.

Most of the vegetable stalls at our local farmers’ market don’t advertise themselves as organic (possibly just because they’re not Soil Association-approved organic) – but most of the labelled organic veg in the supermarket has been shipped half way from Africa if not further afield.

I suspect this is a better-for-self versus better-for-planet question but I’m not sure – since the pesticides etc on the non-organic veg are damaging the environment in countless different ways anyway.

We can’t always go to the wholefood/organic shops in the city centre that offer local, organic produce (albeit at a price) and my own organic garden veg are currently just seedlings being eaten by slugs, so what is the better alternative?

For reasons that seemed fun at the time, a few of years ago we halved and scooped out some coconuts. We clip-clopped up and down the street and around the house Monty Python style for a bit then the shells went in the cellar. There they stayed for a year or so then we found them, clip-clopped some more and then cellared them again.

Now, after a third bout of clip-clopping for the amusement of local children, the empty shells are now living in the garden and are really begging to be reused to save them from involvement in more repeat attempts at “humour”.

Any suggestions of things to do with them?

(Wonderful picture by minmax, c/o sxc.hu – because ours were too soggy to photograph well)

A few years ago, when everyone and their auntie was trying their luck during the ISP goldrush, we couldn’t open the front door for the amount of AOL cds coming through the letter box each morning.

Thankfully, it’s all slackened off a bit now but we still have stacks of old CDs to get rid of: data ones that have burnt wrong, ones that have been scratched and, on the rare occasion we still get them, those damn AOL-et-al cds.

The myriad of coasters we already own (3 different sets, 4 in each set) far exceeds the amount of coasters we use on a day-to-day basis (zero), so employing CDs to do the job – which is often the suggestion – isn’t really going to be that useful to us.

So any other ideas? What other uses are there for them?
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