My eco blogging journey begins

I intend to make 2009 the year my family switched to living a more sustainable life. I live in Newcastle on the east coast of Australia with my husband and 20 month old daughter (i'll call her "Little Eco"). We live in an average sized home on a smaller than average urban block only 4 km from the CBD.

I have always thought of myself as being pretty green, but recently have started to realise my life is no where near as environmentally friendly as I thought, or would like. We have done all the easy things to make our life greener. For example we:

• use 100% accredited green power;
• have a solar hot water system;
• collect rainwater to flush the toilet, wash clothes and water the garden;
• have a vege garden to grow 'some' of our vege needs;
• use cloth nappies;
• have a few chooks which lay the odd egg; and
• put all the appropriate things in our council-collected recycling bin.

But to be honest, these small changes are just the fun and easy ones. We honestly have not done very well with those changes that require us to change the way we live our lives. For example - we often buy highly packaged food from our local supermarket chain just to save time. We drive our cars almost everywhere (again to save time). But this is going to change. I plan to blog our family's journey towards living a more sustainable life and decreasing our ecological footprint, particularly that of Little Eco. She is my main motivation for making these changes. It saddens me to think about what sort of earth we are leaving her. What will she think of us in 50 years time when she looks back at the way we lived our lives? At this stage of her life we have total control of how big her ecological footprint is. Is it fair to leave her with an ecological debt that may take her years of sustainable living and good deeds to pay off?

My greatest wish is that our journey will inspire others to live a more sustainable life so that my Little Eco can enjoy the quality of life with her children that we share with her.