Here' s another One in a Million success story! Carolyn, a Phoenix, Arizona wife and mother of two sons aged five and seven, spent the last year shifting her spending to greener cleaners and organic food. Here' s why:
"Early in 2008 I read anarticle in the Arizona Republic about the One in a Million campaign and it matched my own thinking so well that I went right into the computer and registered.
I feel that, even though I can' t solve all the problems on my own, I should do whatever I can and if other people do the same the cumulative effect could really make a difference. I tell my husband this is my way of taking care of great grandchildren I won' t be around to take care of directly.
I focused my spending shift on food and cleaners because it was an area of my spending I hadn' t really made any changes in yet. Also, I have been trying to green my life for awhile so I' d already done many of the obvious changes. For instance, among other things, I had already replaced all the light bulbs in my house (and my parents house) with compact fluorescent bulbs, I' m a vegetarian (which reduces a bunch of green house gasses) and we had replaced the 25 year old energy sucking air conditioner with a new high efficiency unit.
Though I was trying to have my family eat healthy, I hadn' t really evaluated our food (or our cleaning supplies) for their environmental impact. The shift was kind of tough at first, I found that some of the places I had been shopping weren' t going to work out for things I was used to buying there because the greener alternatives they had available were just way to expensive. So I had to go hunting, sometimes trying new stores altogether, sometimes looking at stores I already went to for things that I didn' t normally buy there.
I have to say that Target and Trader Joe' s have really come to my rescue on more than one instance. Trader Joe' s has such good prices on so many organic things and Target is constantly increasing their inventory of environmentally friendly cleaners as well as organic food. Shopping habits aren' t easy things to change, but now I' m not going back, this has become my new normal routine. I haven' t decided on our green goals for the new year yet, but I am so pleased with what we have done so far that I definitely want to make additional changes to keep us getting greener all the time."
How did Carolyn shift her spending?
Date Item Money Spent
all year organic foods $ 755
all year non-toxic cleaners $ 350
Total …………………………………………….. $ 1,105 (or more)
Want to join the campaign? Sign up here; you' ll get a handy balance sheet you can download to help you keep track of your environmentally friendly choices. The idea isn' t to spend more money; it' s to shift money you already spend to greener products and services. Once you' ve shifted $1,000, send us your story so we can share it with others.
Thanks to One in a Million, over $3 million in spending shifts have already occurred.
Here' s another One in a Million success story! Carolyn, a Phoenix, Arizona wife and mother of two sons aged five and seven, spent the last year shifting her spending to greener cleaners and organic food. Here' s why:
I feel that, even though I can' t solve all the problems on my own, I should do whatever I can and if other people do the same the cumulative effect could really make a difference. I tell my husband this is my way of taking care of great grandchildren I won' t be around to take care of directly.
I focused my spending shift on food and cleaners because it was an area of my spending I hadn' t really made any changes in yet. Also, I have been trying to green my life for awhile so I' d already done many of the obvious changes. For instance, among other things, I had already replaced all the light bulbs in my house (and my parents house) with compact fluorescent bulbs, I' m a vegetarian (which reduces a bunch of green house gasses) and we had replaced the 25 year old energy sucking air conditioner with a new high efficiency unit.
Though I was trying to have my family eat healthy, I hadn' t really evaluated our food (or our cleaning supplies) for their environmental impact. The shift was kind of tough at first, I found that some of the places I had been shopping weren' t going to work out for things I was used to buying there because the greener alternatives they had available were just way to expensive. So I had to go hunting, sometimes trying new stores altogether, sometimes looking at stores I already went to for things that I didn' t normally buy there.
I have to say that Target and Trader Joe' s have really come to my rescue on more than one instance. Trader Joe' s has such good prices on so many organic things and Target is constantly increasing their inventory of environmentally friendly cleaners as well as organic food. Shopping habits aren' t easy things to change, but now I' m not going back, this has become my new normal routine. I haven' t decided on our green goals for the new year yet, but I am so pleased with what we have done so far that I definitely want to make additional changes to keep us getting greener all the time."
How did Carolyn shift her spending?
Date Item Money Spent
all year organic foods $ 755
all year non-toxic cleaners $ 350
Total …………………………………………….. $ 1,105 (or more)
Want to join the campaign? Sign up here; you' ll get a handy balance sheet you can download to help you keep track of your environmentally friendly choices. The idea isn' t to spend more money; it' s to shift money you already spend to greener products and services. Once you' ve shifted $1,000, send us your story so we can share it with others.
Thanks to One in a Million, over $3 million in spending shifts have already occurred.