Before leaving for my hiatus, I asked you to give me your Reduce Footprints "Wish List": suggestions, ideas, and a general critique of the blog. Many of you obliged me with wonderful comments, which I have taken to heart. Here are the ideas which we are implementing this year:
Meet and Greet
The purpose of the Meet & Greet link-up is to grow our community, get acquainted with each other, and support green blogs and sites. It's also an opportunity to get a bit of blog visibility, both via visits from other participants and the possibility of a feature on Reduce Footprints. A weekly "party", however, doesn't seem to meet our goals. So, we're going to make this link-up a monthly event. On the second Monday of each month, we'll publish the link-up tool which will stay open for the entire month.Recipes
I love food! I love vegan food! Rather than offer you a recipe once a month, we're going to search out yummy dishes and publish recipes more often. Some will be my own creation and some will come from "guest chefs". If you have a vegan recipe which you'd like to share, please drop me a line (reducefootprints@gmail.com). And, as always, you'll find all of the recipes which we've published on the Recipes Page.Images
Holistic Nutrition and Wellness
This year we're going to discuss holistic nutrition and wellness, and how it ties in with green living. Stay tuned ... it should be fun!Reviews and Special Offers
Some of you enjoy these pages ... others don't. Since some people find them helpful, and because I believe that supporting Eco-friendly products, services, and companies is an important element of living green, I'm going to keep these pages going. It should be mentioned, however, that the greenest option is always NOT buying. But when purchases are necessary, they should be as Eco-friendly as possible. My goal is to give you additional information about products which you might be thinking about ... and to offer you discounts, freebies, etc. Click on the tabs above to visit both the Reviews and Special Offers pages.Change The World Wednesday (#CTWW)
We'll continue with our weekly challenges, hopefully finding new and unusual tasks to perfect our green-living efforts. If you have a challenge which you'd like us to take on, please let me know. The CTWW page contains the current challenge as well as previous activities and also offers tips and ideas.Guest Posts
I will continue to accept guest posts this year. Green living is a vast, complex topic. Listening to people "speak" on their area of expertise broadens our understanding of the issues. At the very least, it gives us something to think about.On Being Vegan
Many of you have expressed an interest in my vegan life. So this year I'll share more about how I became vegan, why I chose to do so, and how it works in my day to day activities. I'll talk about eating out, traveling, food choices, etc.As always, I thank you for your ideas and suggestions. This should be a fun year.
Okay, let's get things started with a poll. I'm curious about how green your holidays were. Did you avoid waste or was your bin a little too full? Did you burn fuel traveling or did you conserve by staying close to home? Did you give Eco-friendly gifts ... or perhaps, avoid gift giving? Did you eat local foods or indulge in delicacies from across the globe? We want to know.
Please answer the poll and then, using the comments section below, elaborate on your answer.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.
Sneak Peek: Children are our best environmental hope. Our next post discusses a charming way to encourage them to live a green life.
Images courtesy of Sura Nualpradid & Vlado / FreeDigitalPhotos.net