Plastic is everywhere, including inside you! Reusable water bottles limit BPA and microplastic exposure, stainless steel ftw.

I enjoy volunteering and helping my community. I recently volunteered at the Oregon Food Bank and we packaged noodles. At the end, we packed enough pasta for more than 500 meals!!!

There's a local vineyard in Philomath, Oregon that we like to support called "Compton Family Wines". The Comptons practice regenerative agriculture on their homestead and in the local vineyards they manage, which includes minimal handling in the vineyard, dry farming, no tilling, cover crops, and incorporating animals for adaptive grazing.

I found some helpful tips to run the dishwasher at it's most efficient settings:
- Never run the dishwasher with anything less than a full load, and scrape but don’t pre-clean dishes before loading them in. Older models required pre-cleaning, but newer dishwashers have more efficient designs and souped-up filtration systems.
- Don't use the Heavy-Duty cycle settings: These ones usually bring tons of water to the task. Better to let particularly dirty dishes soak in the sink before washing. Also avoid the Sanitize cycle unless absolutely necessary.
- Do use the Auto (aka Sensor) setting that detects how dirty the dishes are and adjusts cycle length, heat, and water to match. And if you have an Eco cycle use that.
- Don’t use the "rinse" setting. This cycle just splashes extra water on dishes you’re not quite ready to wash, then runs through a full cycle later, when you are.
- Pick Air Dry instead of Heat Dry if available—it uses as much as 50% less power. No Air Dry setting? Turn the dishwasher off at the end of the cycle and open the door.

I found this fact about Ocean currents really interesting: "In cold regions, such as the North Atlantic Ocean, ocean water loses heat to the atmosphere and becomes cold and dense. When ocean water freezes, forming sea ice, salt is left behind causing surrounding seawater to become saltier and denser. Dense-cold-salty water sinks to the ocean bottom. Surface water flows in to replace the sinking water, which in turn becomes cold and salty enough to sink. This "starts" the global conveyer belt, a connected system of deep and surface currents that circulate around the globe on a 1000 year time span."

I was surprised to see i can still save water, despite how much we have already reduced our water consumptions. Getting the kids to do it ALL the time is gonna be tricky. But already they are getting used to not keeping the water running while brushing their teeth. Aerator swap is also a big factor. Rather than the standard 30%, now we have 60% less water consumptions at sinks where hands are washed consistently.

I use about the same oil i thought we did. Found a few contacts that deal with oil pickups at restaurants. Finding out what containers are best for storing and transporting and can drop it off at their site.

I would say the biggest impact was the amount of people who saw us doing it. People who are used to seeing me and the kids have fun playing with toys outside and riding bikes and scooters. Then to see us cleaning up the community with all the garbage that has blown everywhere was a big eye opener for them. By the time we made it half way around the community, we gained about 10 other people who was more than happy to join us.

Spent 8hours on a nature preserve helping native plants flourish