I have an online subscription to 'The Ecologist' - a fantastic source of information on all things environmental. The only problem is that I usually end up being depressed every time I log in. There are so many articles on all the things that are going wrong: global warming, disappearing wildlife, scary farming methods, lack of natural resources, mountains of waste etc, etc.
It always make me wonder if our efforts are in vain, are we actually too late.

We are now back in Scotland after a great time in Denmark, but the holiday did make me think about the issues that occur when you go visiting - how do you keep up your green ways outside your normal daily life?

(This blog was originally written on the 4th April, apologies for the delay)

I am currently in Denmark. Yes I have increased my carbon footprint for a trip to see the family, but I think I have already said enough about that decision, so this blog has a different theme. This is my first trip back since we started our project and it is interesting to see this Scandinavian country through green glasses.

Saturday was Earth Hour: switch off your lights for an hour in the evening - so we spent an hour in a candle lit house. It was quite nice, it reminded me of spending time in my grandparents little summerhouse during my childhood. The house had no electricity, and to us kids there was something exiting about lighting petroleum lamps and candles in the evening, on special occasions we even got to light little plastic lanterns with tea lights in them on the patio - a 'beautiful' sight.

Due to a very generous donation from my mother in law we are currently in discussion with a plumber to get our bathroom sorted. This has flagged up a couple of interesting things to me. We are getting a new suite fitted and looking through the catalogue of various options, we reasonably quickly agreed that an eco suite with built in water saving features would be the best option. It has a shallower bath, but as only the kids use the bathtub, that shouldn't really matter and the toilet uses only a third of the normal average amount of water to flush.

Over the last few months I have had a few comments regarding the success -or more precisely lack of success- of our green project. It has even been suggested that I am not helping the green cause by describing the difficulties I sometimes have. I feel the time has come to defend myself!

Dilemmas
This has been a week of dilemmas - so many answers to find.

First of all there were the personal dilemmas. Like should I be proud that my son is reducing the washing pile, or concerned about how dirty he looks when he yet another day insists on wearing the same Superman T-shirt?

We are now half way through our year of trying to become green, so has anything changed over the last 6 months? I think it is time for a stock take.

Recycling: We have always been pretty good on the recycling front, but I think we are even better now - hardly anything goes in the bin that could go somewhere else, we recycle, compost, reuse, donate, freecycle etc.