Blog Action Day: The Environment

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic of choice is The Environment. The idea is for folks to discuss the environment as it relates to our current blog topic. Since my blog topic is….well….me this is going to be easy.

After some thoughtful discussion with John, I’ve decided to share where I think we, as a home-based business owners and a homeschool family, do in our daily lives to reduce our impact on the environment.

During the morning news we hear all about the traffic jams for those commuting to their place of work. In our business we commute from our downstairs bedroom to our upstairs offices. The only traffic jam you’ll find in our home is at the coffee pot. Just try putting your coffee cup in before mine and you’ll get an earful. Same as you would if you tried to cut me off on the freeway.

All kidding aside, because we don’t participate in the mad dash to an office outside of our home we as a single family are doing our part to help the environment. This is not to say that we never leave the house. Of course we do. We have outside appointments and our kids have outside activities. However when we travel is entirely up to us. It’s not often that you find us in rush hour traffic. We try to schedule morning appointments after 9am and afternoon appointments before 4:30pm.

I know that working from home is not an option for everyone. But there is an alternative to everyone traveling to work at the same time. Companies could stagger their employee arrival/exit times to alleviate traffic. Some folks are naturally early birds and others not so much. Those who are chirpy in the a.m. could work the 7am-3pm schedule and then others from 8am-4pm and lastly the night owls could wander in from 9am-6pm.

Scheduling employees into their natural productive time would be an additional bonus. I for example am the night owl in the group. While my sister Jackie is chirpy in the early a.m. hours. It would make sense to slot us into different work schedules since we are both productive at different times of the day.

What does this have to do with the environment? With less folks stuck in traffic at the same time there would be less smog, less stress and happier people overall. So I would be interested to hear what you are doing in your family to help with the environment.