Kick-off the Season with a New Green Routine

(Family Features) - A change in seasons brings a chance for families to make changes in their routines. With a heightened sense of environmental awareness, a new season is a great time to "green your routine" and establish simple, everyday eco-friendly habits with your family.

Green living expert and mother of three, Beth Aldrich, encourages families to try little things to make a difference every day, and to look for products and adopt practices that work for them and the environment. "How you treat yourself, your family and your home all add up to how we collectively take care of our planet," says Aldrich. There are many simple ways families can be more environmentally-conscious this fall without overhauling their entire lifestyle, including: 

• Swap-Out for Greener Staples: Harvest season is the perfect time to visit a farmers' market for fresh, local produce. Try to buy local, fair trade and organic foods when you can, since most food has to travel more than 1,200 miles to land on your grocery store shelf. If you can't make it to the market, try buying store brand organic. And, in general, buy from companies that use environmentally-aware practices.
• See Green to Live Green: Keep your family's eyes healthy while helping the environment by purchasing new "green" Airwear eyeglass lenses. Now manufactured using 100 percent recycled water and packaged in 100 percent recyclable cardboard, the lenses are greener than before.
• Change Your Light Bulbs: Daylight savings time means it gets darker earlier, and with one less hour of daylight people will be turning on the lights more often. Switch the light bulbs in your house to energy-efficient, inexpensive, compact fluorescent bulbs. If every household in America exchanged five light bulbs, the energy savings would be equivalent to taking 8 million cars off the road.
• Drive More Efficiently and Spare the Air: Team up with neighbors to cut down on carbon emissions, or consider purchasing a hybrid car. The combination of a small gasoline engine with a battery-powered electric motor doubles the mileage of conventional cars and reduces the more than 97 million billion pounds of carbon dioxide released into the air from fossil fuels each year.
• Reduce, Reuse and Recycle: Cutting down on waste can save 1,600 pounds of garbage a year. Clean out the clutter by recycling old school papers and giving away outgrown clothes. Before going shopping for anything new take inventory and identify what can be reused so you only replace what you really need.

In addition, Aldrich invites other environmentally-conscious people to submit the creative ways they are making their world a greener, more sustainable place through the "Lighter.Safer.Greener." contest. The grand prize is the latest in Airwear eyewear for their entire family. To enter the contest, and for more of Aldrich's simple, attainable green-living tips, visit www.LighterSaferGreener.com.