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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think about this all the time. We'd like to compost but getting all the bins can be expensive and I don't know if we have the time to take it to a compost center ourselves, but the services that come to your house can be pricy. A lot of more eco-friendly products are more expensive. I'd like to reduce the amount of red meat we eat, but making filling meals without meat takes more time and the ingredients can be more expensive. I'd like to switch more of our short car trips to walking/biking, but this would work best with an electric-assist cargo bike and they are pricy, too. And on and on.

Some eco-friendly things are more cost-effective though. I try to go hard on those as much as I can. We've really reduced how much we buy in general in the last few years, almost entirely eliminating new clothes (we buy used and try to do so locally whenever possible), new kids gear (buy nothing groups and soliciting hand me downs from friends), books (library and used book stores), and other consumer items. We choose to live in a small home (condo) that is walking distance to a lot of stuff (school, store, public transportation) which reduces our carbon footprint. All that stuff costs less than the less "green" alternatives, for the most part. The main thing it costs is time and effort.

But everyone has their limits. There is only so much we can do. What we really need is the political will to make policy change. Individual choices are nice but I'm not even sure how much they move the needle unless you get many others to make the same choices.[/quote]

We compost and don't have any fancy bins. But we have a large (for suburban NoVA) yard. We have a garden fence staked into the ground (roughly 3' x 3'). We put food scraps, drier lint, cardboard, coffee grounds, etc. in it and layer with leaves, old potting soil, etc. Chop the food scraps smaller to have it break down faster (or not). Keep it moist (we have a rain barrel and so predominately keep it watered with that)  and mix from time to time. We are going to have so much "free" dirt next year for gardens and potting.

We also keeps some leaf piles over the winter in the less used corners of the yard, and the rest get raked into the beds for winter. We have not had to purchase mulch in several years--saving money and sweat. Bonuses: the leaf cover keeps weeds minimal and, b/c they are nesting spots for lots of insects and animals, we've seen the return of lots of moths, fireflies, and other insects. With those food sources, we've seen an increase in songbirds. It all goes together.

We're just one family but if others made small changes it would help. Though I also agree that it is the corporations that need to make changes to effect big change faster. [/quote]

This what we do and have done. I grew up composting and leaving areas of the yard with leaves etc.  We just continued the practice as we became adults. [/quote]

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