To live green, think outside the box. Then recycle the box.

I don't claim environmental sainthood by any stretch, but I'm giving it a shot.

There are a lot of people who are environmentally focused. What makes me different? I've sunk my teeth into this problem. I want to get to zero waste and zero carbon footprint across the board.

The numbers are staggering. Glaciers are disappearing. The last remaining stands of pristine forests are being clear-cut for facial tissue. Every day, 350,000 computers are thrown into the garbage in the United States. The list goes on and on. I cannot sit still and watch this continue, so I take action.

The hard part is establishing a green routine. It's like being in Weight Watchers: You have to monitor what you really need and what you take in. But once you make the decision to change, the rest is easy.

When I was a ski instructor, people would freeze when they looked at the whole mountain. "Don't worry about the mountain," I told them. "Just look at the next three meters." And they would look at what they were doing in a new way.

If you took all the food you would eat in your lifetime and put it on a table in front of you and someone told you to start eating, you would not know where to begin. But you do begin. Every day you eat and take one bite at a time. We cannot swallow the mountain, but we can take a bite out of it, every day. Once you make the decision to change, the rest is easy.

Years ago, I joined Weight Watchers and lost 40 pounds. We need a "watt watchers" for our energy use. We need to work on our consumption every day, and change our habits.

I like to think out of the box. It is fun, rewarding and easier than you think. Here's our routine:

I make sure I have my travel mug, plastic ware and containers for any "to go" food during the day. We set up a recycling area in the kitchen where we make space for plastic scraps that the regular garbage hauler won't take.

We separate our orange juice containers into their parts: plastic, paper and metal. We compost the paper, recycle the plastic and take the metal to a scrap yard. We break down cereal boxes: The boxes themselves go into the paper, and the plastic insert goes into the mixed plastics.

I recycle my razors. I take them apart with a pliers and put the metal strips into metal and the plastic in the scrap bag.

We don't use regular deodorant, because most of the ones that work have heavy metals in them. Look at the labels. It's disgusting. What do we do?

We use a recipe I found on Google: one part baking soda to six parts cornstarch. It works better than any deodorant I have used. No odor. No mess. Apply with a wet rag after you shower and store in a butter tub.

We use 100 percent recycled toilet paper. We purchase bulk shampoo. Baking soda is magic and nontoxic, and we use tons of it for everything from cleaning the oven to removing stains. It's fantastic for getting permanent marker off wood and tablecloths.

All leftover food from breakfast goes into the composter. We donate all usable clothes or household items that we don't need.

We buy in bulk at the Mississippi Market in St. Paul once a week, and reuse all our containers for items like syrup, vanilla, oatmeal, trail mix, etc. We buy only bulk vegetables with no packaging or as little as possible. We save our twist ties and reuse them. Egg cartons, canola oil containers, bulk dairy -- anything to get rid of packaging.

All this reduces our garbage to mere scraps of plastic foam (no solution yet), broken rubber bands and worn-out socks. Last week we took our garbage out for the first time in three months. I bet if I had more time I could have figured out something to do with what we threw out. I can get rather obsessive about this stuff.

We heat our home with geothermal and a solar thermal heat exchanger. We have a programmable thermostat. The difference between geo and gas heat is that it takes the geothermal longer to get to temperature. We can shut off our heat when it's 0 degrees or colder and lose only 5 degrees all day. It takes the geothermal about 30 minutes to an hour to get up to temperature in our house, so it's off all night and all day. We only need to heat up the house twice a day. We have fairly standard insulation, but we've added reflective window film on all south-facing windows and insulated window covers on about half our windows.

So, I've made it through breakfast with no waste. Our coffee grounds are in the compost. All lights in the house are off, and we are out the door.

My wife still has a standard Prius but we have a few bills to pay off before I upgrade hers to all-electric function. Mine is converted already. It has a 10,000-watt battery in the spare-tire space. I put my younger child, Rachel, in the back, unplug the car with the heater pack, get in, push the Power button, hit the kill switch on the gas motor and I am running without gas. I drop her off at the sitter's and head onto the freeway at no more than 52 mph, the maximum the Prius can go in EV mode, to my office downtown. I stay off the freeway for most of my driving.

At work, I plug the Prius into the solar-powered building and head for my office. The heat is set at 50 degrees and takes only a few minutes to heat up. I have a composting system in my office for small scraps and wastebaskets for metal scraps, CFL bulbs, batteries, plastic bottle caps and all plastic waste that the normal carrier won't take at our rental buildings. The heat at our buildings is tightly managed, giving the tenants some control of the temperature but only in a range of 4 degrees, between 68 and a maximum of around 72-75 degrees.

Each building has been fitted with a white reflective roof, day/night sensors on lighting, low-watt bulbs and low-use water fixtures. One building was costing $4,000 per month for energy when we acquired it in 2006. Now it costs less than $800.

We are aggressive in creating incentives for our tenants to save energy. We give out and install low-watt CFLs in all fixtures, and we pay the lowest electric bills each month. This gives the tenants something to shoot for. We also try to keep tenants in the loop on what we are doing by sending out a quarterly newsletter on conservation tips, what we are doing or planning, and the winners of our incentive programs.

We ask our tenants not to throw away usable household items or furniture. We find homes or give them away online. We developed rain gardens and holding ponds to keep runoff from our lots and buildings to a minimum.

My wife has begun to dread Christmas. My values do not allow for frivolous overconsumption. Re-gifting is sacred, as is making our own gifts. I am a potter and I make many of my gifts. Our cards are made from scrap wrapping paper and fabrics. You get the picture.

When you start thinking of the whole effect of sustainability, you realize your actions can have an immediate impact on the environment. I changed the reading light by my daughter's bed to a 1.8-watt LED bulb, and she thinks it's cool. She is 8 years old and understands she can make a difference.

Tonight, I read her book "Zen Shorts" to her, kissed her good night and said, "See you at breakfast." Tomorrow, we take another bite out of the mountain.

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Dale M. Howey runs a rental property company, D&E Management, in Minneapolis. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Roseville and is a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.

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