April 20, 2011

If you didn’t know, Earth Day is right around the corner! That’s right, April 22nd is officially Earth Day, but you don’t have to limit being green to just one special day. Here at Mermaid Cottages, we try to make every day Earth Day!We are all about living a little greener and showing Mother Earth how much we care.

Being green isn’t as difficult as it seems. It is really just a lot of little actions that add up to big benefits when they become habits. We do a lot of those little things to reap the green benefits around here!

First off, we make sure to do as much as we can electronically. We email everything, so there is less printing, which means less wasted paper! All of our cottages use Compact Fluorescent light bulbs, and we install Lo-flow water-saving devices in all of our bathrooms and outdoor showers. Everyone here contributes something to our green philosophy…some of our Mermaids and Mermen ride their bicycles to work, and we clean with all Eco-friendly products. We even do energy audits for all of our cottages to see how we can save even more energy. And outside our homes, we plant drought resistant local plants to help conserve water. We also participate in Tybee’s Community Garden project!

We want to do whatever we can to leave this planet a little better than we found it, and we encourage others to do the same. Just some ways you can help during your stay (and even when you return home!) are:

• Slay “Vampire Power” by turning off all lights, TVs, DVDs & computers when not in use
• Use the outdoor clothesline to dry your clothes (they smell good too!)
• Open the windows turn on the ceiling fans and enjoy the ocean breezes!
• Use Cold, not Hot in the washing machine
• Draw your curtains/blinds during the heat of the day
• Walk, ride bikes, rent scooters or electric cars!
• Recycle…glass, plastic, cans, newspapers: use the home’s green recycling container!
• Reduce and Reuse by taking your own bags to the grocery store.
• While brushing teeth, turn water off, and use a cup of water to cleanse mouth of
  toothpaste.

We could go on and on about fun ways to be Earth friendly! Find ideas-a-plenty on how you can be a little greener on our Being Green page over on our website! This Earth is the only one we’ve got…let’s all be good stewards. We didn’t inherit this planet from our parents, it is on loan to us from future generations, so let’s take good care of our gift! Happy Earth Day Y’all!