Associates from Architectural Detailed Group participated alongside their families in the Earth Hour 2009 by turning off all lights at 8:30 pm local time for one hour. Form more information on the Earth Hour event please visit the Earth Hour website

During this last weeks of the year, is common to start making resolutions for the New Year, we’ve all said it, I’ll watch less T.V, eat right, exercise more, etc, we usually brake most of these by the 2nd week in January, so about 5 years ago I included a “green” resolution in my yearly list and surprisingly I have been able to stick to it.

First it was reducing our paper consumption, this was fairlyeasy, we called all our banking and credit institutions to stop any paperwork, received our bills online for everything available, requested no more offer letters etc. then we went to the DMA site (Direct Marketing Association) and requested to halt unsolicited mail, we also call all the companies from which we received catalogs and ask to join the online newsletters instead. We also cancelled our newspaper subscriptions and recycled computer paper. If we had paperwork to throw away we took it to work since the paper recycling bin was sent off to a recycling company that specialized in paper.

Next year, a bulb went off right before New Year’s so we decided to buy some CFL’s bulbs and start replacing them, we moved on to LED’s since then now that they are widely available and don’t give me migraines.

The year after that I took on a harder one, I changed all of our cleaning supplies for more friendly formulas, including my trusty clothes detergent that even got baby food carrots out of the cutest blue onesie. The ECO detergent might not clean as well, but my conscience is clear.

Last year I took on the biggest challenge yet, I decided not to buy any more bottled water, I bought enough take along drinking straw cups for an army and decided not to buy any more water bottles, (I only keep the ones for the earthquake kit at home) I am pretty prod to say that all 4 of us have lived a year with a take along bottle, the only time I bought a case of water was for my children’s birthday party, and we’ve only lost 2 bottles so far!

This year, I’ve decided to tackle an even bigger challenge, I am planning to stop my dependency on self closing bags. Yes after this boxes of sandwich, freezer and gallon size bags are gone I will do my best not to buy any more, or at least not in bulk. In preparation I have purchased paper bags for my kids lunches, and bought new reusable containers.

Wish me luck and let me know of your own Green resolutions, I would love to hear all about them.