Meet one of my favorite people: Heather Heck. She lives in Portland, Oregon and is someone I consider eco-conscious with grace. I asked her to share some everyday steps to becoming more sensitive to environmental issues without having to go buy solar panels. This interview is part one of a three-part series.

SG: Let’s start with food and water. What suggestions do you have for helping us be more eco-conscious?

HH: We have a couple of tricks for conserving water. The first thing I ever incorporated into my “earth friendly” routine was turning off the faucet while brushing my teeth. Like many others, I would stand there with the water running pointlessly. Now I turn on the water to wet my toothbrush and then turn it off until I’m ready to rinse.

At times, I’ve had a less-than-stellar water heater, which required the water to run for a bit before I got any warmth from it. If you can swing it, get a good hot water heater and help limit that issue, and you can get an energy efficient model which will frequently qualify you for tax breaks too.

Yards are a common place for folks to waste water. Simple tricks help here:

Water your lawn in the morning or the evening, not during the hottest part of the day when more water will evaporate.Check your sprinklers to make sure they aren’t watering your paved areas. Concrete doesn’t get thirsty.If you are okay with letting your lawn yellow during the hottest months, you can limit your watering to about two inches every couple of weeks. Measure this by placing an empty tuna can on your lawn when you water. Once the can is full, turn off the hose.I live in a part of the country that has great tap water, and I still won’t drink it. We consume lots of water from little plastic (Costco) bottles. We simply recycle the bottles. I even have a recycle bin at work, and I bring my water bottles home from there.
Prior to Costco water, we used a Brita water pitcher, and filled up reusable water bottles with filtered water. We each had our own, and we would even use them around the house, which also limited how many glasses we had to wash, thus saving more water and electricity.
I’ve not put this into place, but I suppose you could have your dog rinse your dishes before loading the dishwasher.

SG: Uh, thanks for that idea.... What about food? And the whole paper and plastic thing. What do you do?

HH: Food is an entirely different topic, and is frankly scary. In general, and as your budget allows, buy organic, especially dairy products. More and more, growth hormone—injected into cows—is being tied to early development of young women. Think about it: a cow is injected with hormone to produce milk, your daughter drinks that milk, which contains that hormone. Eew! You saw “The Corporation”…
Buying organic really can be cost prohibitive for many families. The good news is that as more people buy organic, the demand is increasing, and the price is coming down. Also, organic dairy products have a much longer shelf life. A gallon of organic milk with have a six-week shelf life vs. a one- to two-week shelf life of standard milk.
Paper vs. Plastic comes down to preference. Most grocery stores offer plastic bag recycling. We save our plastic bags and take them back every now and then. The store takes care of the rest.
Paper bags can be used to collect newspaper for recycling or could be recycled with your household paper. We tend to mix it up; either way we are able to recycle the bag we get. Don’t leave out the Old Navy and Target bags! Throw those in with the plastic bags. The store should take them all.

In the end, there are many more things we could do. We do what we can, and look for easy ways to incorporate earth-friendly practices into our life style.