IT'S EASY BEING GREEN

Back in April I celebrated my first Earth Day by deciding to save the planet. Step one was to adopt two new habits from a list of 50 easy ways to be green: 1) no more plastic bags and 2) encourage others to take action.

I really only use plastic bags for one thing (um, you know - poop) so making that change was pretty easy. I just asked my human to start using bio-degradable poop bags. "But I already recycle old plastic bags from the grocery store to pick up your, uh, stuff. Isn't that enough?", she said. I wasn't sure, so we checked with Google and the answer was a great big Noooo! Google says reusing plastic bags is a great idea, but not if they still end up in the trash. Plastic in landfills doesn't go away - one look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch shows that.

At first my human wasn't a fan of the biodegradable bags (said they were "scary flimsy!") but then she found Mutt Mitts and swears she'll never make a poop-tomb again. A lot of city parks use the Mitts - make friends with your local parks department and you may be able to buy in bulk for less money. With this one simple change, we'll keep almost 2,000 plastic bags a year out of the dumps.

So that leaves #2: encouraging others. Which means it's your turn to do something. Just one thing, even if it's a little tiny one. If you need some more ideas, here's another list of 50 ways to be greener. Once you've mastered one change, pick another. Pretty soon, we'll all be saving the earth without even trying!

Remember: what happens on earth, stays on earth.