After the excess of the holiday, Girlawhirl's got to get back to basics. She's getting back to her regular exercise routine, eating more vegetables and far fewer cookies and forging ahead with the greening of her life. She was able to introduce recycled paper products into all of her holiday gatherings, made sure that her wrappings were kept to a minimum and generally tried to keep it ‘small' in a season where the mantra is often bigger is better…
And as consciously as she tries to live, she realized over the holidays that so many of the practices she and her Super Pals follow as second nature, like recycling plastic bottles, many of her relatives haven't even started doing. Case in point: at a family gathering Girlawhirl was appalled at all the glass and plastic bottles going into the trash. There was no separate container for them. She set up a paper bag and started collecting them. Pretty soon a couple of bags were full. Girlawhirl took these bags with her as she left the party and stopped at a recycling center on her way home to drop them off.
It all showed her that getting started is the hardest part. For friends and relatives who haven't even begun, Girlawhirl's sending a special “ring in the new year” gift from gaiam.com. It's called a Global Warming Action Kit and it's designed to save 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of carbon emissions per person each year.
It comes in large and small sizes and contains the basic building blocks to make every day a little greener: compact fluorescent light bulbs, a stainless steel water bottle, a low flow shower head, and a Solar Living Sourcebook. The larger kit contains all that plus a solar flashlight, rechargeable batteries with a fast charger, and a solar hat fan.
Girlawhirl found Global Warming Action Kits in her online shopping mall at gaiam.com