Green or Gross?

I like to think I have a pretty decent environmental bent. When my now grown kids were little, long before communities picked up recycling, I organized neighborhood teams to collect recyclables and deliver them to the local recycling center. Every 6 weeks, it was our turn to go around to half-a-dozen houses and pick up their weekly recycling. BJ and Josh helped, which made me think I was raising little environmental ambassadors for the future. Today, they're pretty good . . . but not as good as their mother.

These days, some people might say I take things a little far, so I'll let you decide. Besides recycling everything I possibly can--including digging in our trash to retrieve items my less environmentally pure husband tosses out--here are some of my green practices. Weigh in and tell me 1) Way to go! or, 2) Way too far!

1) Composting in a blender - I bought an extra blender at a rummage sale years ago, and my vegetable scraps, fruit rinds and such go in there to be blended with water and added to the compost heap. This compost soup doesn't take long to turn into rich, black dirt once it hits my compost bin, and when it is eventually incorporated into my garden, my plants bow their little flower heads in appreciation. The container goes back under the sink, rinsed occasionally but rarely washed, ready to blend more green debris another day.

2) Paper towels (1) - I use rags or dishcloths a lot where others would use paper towels--that's a no-brainer in my opinion--but I can't swear off paper towels altogether. Still, throwing them away after one use when they haven't been used on a dirty floor or a puddle of grease seems extravagant to me. So, the towels I use to soak up the water from my washed fruit get draped on the clean dishes in the drainer, to be used to pat dry that next washed raspberry or green bean. I'm guessing my reuse factor for draining clean fruit is 1 x 6. Even when I've decided to move on to a new square of toweling, the old one will get one final use to spot clean a drip on the floor before finding it's way into the trash.

3) Paper towels (2) - Despite being chairperson of the environmental impact team at work for two years, we still have bathrooms with paper towels instead of the environmentally preferable air dryers. I need two pieces of toweling to dry my hands sufficiently after a thorough scrubbing, and I have been known to take those towels (dampened only with water from my clean hands, mind you!) back to my desk. They do end up in the trash soon thereafter, but only after they've helped remove a layer of dust from my computer and desk.

4) Paper towels (3) - I've pulled a hunk of toweling from the roll in the produce department of my local grocer, patted dry a cabbage head or too-wet bunch of green onions, then found another use for it. Usually, it travels home with me, gets tossed under the kitchen sink to be used for a future cleaning assignment.

5) Sanitizing wipes - The whole flu thing last year kicked the use of sanitizers way up, and I always grab one of the wipes from the dispenser at the Y when I arrive for my daily workout. I use it to wipe the screen and handles of my favorite treadmill, then I store it behind my water bottle so that it doesn't dry out while I go through my 40 minute routine. When I'm done, I wipe down the machine again with my still moist towelette. Some days I even take the now twice used wipe with me to the car, where I use it to dust my dash.

Quirky? Yes, of course. Frugal? No doubt. Environmentally sound thinking? That's an affirmative. But for the germ-phobic out there, the pristine, the highly sanitized, there might just be a "yuck" factor to consider. So, what do you think? "Way to go" or "Way too far"? Go ahead an "way" in!