Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

real savings in your yard-care costs. For instance, you might be paying less for yard and garden maintenance. If you’ve been making your own compost and using it throughout your yard, you might be spending less on fertilizer and weed-control products. And if you’ve stopped buying poisons and you’ve started buying beneficial insects, you should see some cost savings there as well.

Here’s a good place to track your yard-care costs over time.

STILL MORE RESULTS

Many other changes can yield all kinds of great results. For example, if you’ve gotten your kids involved in gardening, they may have learned about the cycle of life or about where food comes from. They might even have developed an interest in cooking.

If you’ve switched from paying your bills by mail to paying them online, you’ve certainly saved on postage costs, and you might even have saved several trips to the post office, which can save time and gasoline.

Likewise, if you’ve switched from sending letters to doing more of your correspondence by e-mail, you’ll save stamps and paper and envelopes.

Switching from disposable batteries to rechargeable ones can mean money in your pocket and fewer trips to the store, too.

You also might have noticed some other benefits if you’ve started growing your own food or buying organic meat and produce at a store or a farmers’ market. For instance, there could be an obvious difference in the quality of the meat and produce, or in the flavors—even in how long produce lasts once you’ve purchased it. You also may feel an enhanced sense of community.

This chart is a great place to record these results—and others—that you’ve noticed as you’ve made lifestyle changes. Again, I’ve filled in a few examples to get you going.

THE BOTTOM LINE

By now, I’m sure you’ve proved to yourself—and perhaps a doubting spouse or friend—that making environmentally friendly choices is good not just for the environment, it’s good for your pocketbook, too.

Acknowledgments

Sue Elliott—Thank you for being my writing partner.

David Brower—You are a constant source of inspiration for me.

Gavin De Becker—Thank you for giving me confidence as an author.

Joe Brutsman—Thank you for creating Living with Ed.

Bud Brutsman, Jen Shields, Andy Robinson, Brooke Murdock, Kellie Weston, and the Living with Ed BCII Production Team—Thank you.

Greg Glass—Thank you for the work.

Copyright © 2008 Ed Begley, Jr., and BCII

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Clarkson

Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing

Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

www.clarksonpotter.com

Clarkson N. Potter is a trademark and Potter and colophon

are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Begley, Ed.

Living like Ed / Ed Begley, Jr.

1. Green movement. 2. Environmental responsibility.

I. Title.

GE195.7.B44 2008 333.72—dc22                                                                                                            2007038921

Photographs: BCII-Jennifer Shields

eISBN: 978-0-307-45197-2

v3.0_r2