My husband and I both in our early 60s have always had a common sense approach in our desire to minimise the impact of our lives on the earth. However our learning curve has increased dramatically with the scientific information that is more readly available today, all of the venues of getting information that has increased our awareness what individuals can do, and realizing that our government currently does not protect us that we have to take the responsibility to educate ourselves and share this information with others so that we can make good choices. About 5 years ago I joined a group that required us to once a month share a list of what we were doing to live a green life. When I first started my list was small – no pesticides, careful in use of electricity and water and we composted. Over time I learned from others things that I could do that I never even considered before and these elvolved to associated areas. Not buying bottled water led to one day looking in my grocry basket and around my house at all of the household items, food, beauty and cleaning supplies that is plastic or comes in plastic containers. Now we shop wiser for example we use shampoo that comes in a bar like soap, powdered dishwashing and laundry detergent in card board boxes, and condiments and cleaning proucts that don’t come in plastic bottles. My main cleaner at the moment is steam. One of our goals is freeing our house of plastic and other synthetic materials of any kind. My husband even takes his medicine bottles back to be refilled instead of throwing them away. If something comes in plastic of any kind we really try hard to find a substitute that doesn’t involve plastic. I am looking forward to what I can learn from this group.