Go Green and Save Money or Save Money and Go Green?

This post is part of August’s APLS Blog Carnival. Learn how to go green and save money by visiting Going Green Mama on August 19 to read all the submissions.

I appreciated the opportunity to write about this month’s APLS topic “Green on the Cheap,” in large part because it has given me the opportunity to make a public confession. I didn’t begin my green journey because I was troubled about the plight of polar bears or was appalled at the size of my carbon footprint. Nope, my initial reasons for going green had nothing to do with living an eco-friendly life. I simply wanted to get out of debt.

When Richard and I met, I was up to my eyeballs in debt and so was he. The combination of our student loans and credit card debt reached an overwhelming total. (You can get the still-embarrassing-to-me details here.) Once we stopped hyperventilating, we made a plan to pay off the debt. After many years of hard work, we are not only out of the red but are firmly in the black. And along the way, we also became green.

How, you ask? Through three R’s that may already be familiar to you.

Reducing
One of the first things we learned was that we didn’t need as much as commercials and advertisements told us we did. All kinds of purchases, from a new car to a new pair of shoes, were nixed because the money was better spent paying down our debt. And most of those denied purchases were never missed. Even the items we still wanted to buy lost some of their luster when we calculated how much longer they would make our debt payback period.

Reuse
We also learned that there are lots of alternatives to buying new that don’t have the benefit of a marketing campaign behind them. Instead of the mall, thrift stores became the source of cute t-shirts. We even found a bonus since Richard prefers his t-shirts pre-faded! Rather than visit a bookstore or Blockbuster, the library filled our need for books to read and movies to watch. And driving through our neighborhood became a treasure hunt once we became comfortable with the idea of picking up curbside discards. On trash days, our girls scan the curb with their eyes peeled (“But my eyes aren’t really peeled, Mommy!” my youngest says every time), on the lookout for handy items. Just last week we picked up a file cabinet!

Recycle
We also changed the way we viewed our possessions. Where once a pair of old pants had been just a pair of pants, now they were pants that could be recycled into a pair of shorts, a yoga bag, and fabric for mending other pants. Anything that broke or wore out was examined for possible other uses and most of the time there were multiple possibilities.

While these changes were all made to save us money, they also triggered a re-examination of our values. When we stopped to think about what was important to us (rather than simply do what we did the day before), it turned out that having a happy, healthy family, and allowing others to do the same, was much more important than any possession. Which meant I was now worrying about polar bear mammas and my carbon footprint’s effect on families in Kazakhstan.

I deeply appreciate and admire all the folks who live a green life because it is the right thing to do but am glad there are many paths to becoming green. Whether people go green and save money, save money and go green, or travel another route to green living, we need everyone, no matter how they get there, to join in the push for a healthy planet.

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