Everybody is writing about how to cope with the high price of gas and wouldn't you know it, the price is more than $3 a gallon again. Some are changing their habits and beginning to walk, bicycle, car pool, or take the bus, ferry or BART. Combining errands for one shopping trip instead of making several impulse trips will save on your gas purchases as well as give you more time for things you want to do.

I grew up on a farm and my mom planned one shopping trip to town each week. She took a list with her and dropped us off at the piano teacher for the morning. She didn't need to buy a lot of staples as we had milk cows and chickens. Mom baked bread and, with the help of my four siblings, spent the summer growing, canning and freezing fruits and vegetables for the rest of the year. Disposable packaging was not an issue as we reused canning jars, freezer boxes and bags.

Today, the cost of our food includes the energy used to transport it from all over the world to our plates plus the energy used to make the packaging. I was chatting with the candy maker at Lileds and he said that his chocolate boxes cost up to $2 each. He remembered the days when some customer saved their favorite boxes and brought them in for a refill.

Doreen, from Dr. Louie's dental office, told me the story of her friend, Autumn, who wanted to market her scones. The glue on the packaging that she chose came apart in the freezer and she had to find a freezable sticker or glue. The packaging costs were prohibitive for this small business to continue. We can all save energy by choosing the packaging as carefully as we choose the product that we are buying. If we cannot recycle the packaging, then we should not buy the product.

Unfortunately, there are many precut fruits and vegetables that are convenient but come in non-recyclable packaging. My Sierra Club friend, Nancy McCoy, called the other day alerting me to a new compostable plastic box that contained bell peppers from the 99 cent store. PLA (polylactide) plastic is a new corn-based plastic that is showing up as produce packaging and is used for a bottled water by Biota from Colorado. These plastics are only compostable if you have an active compost pile in your back yard or if your curbside yard waste program will accept it with your green waste. PLA is now labeled as a number 7 plastic, but the state is considering adding number 8 PLA to the acceptable recyclable plastics for California Redemption Containers.

There is a lot of energy used to make PLA as well as other plastic, but the energy saved by recycling is greater. According to the California Integrated Waste Management Board, by recycling we annually save enough energy to power 1.4 million California homes, reduce water pollution by 27,047 tons, save 14 million trees, reduce air pollution by 165,142 tons, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to taking 3.8 million passenger cars off the highway.

Most California cities, including Vallejo, have reached their 50 percent diversion rate, but we can't stop there; the more we recycle, the more we save. Our local library system has a great service of getting books, movies and music for you from other local libraries. You can log onto www.solanolibrary.com, find what you want, and place a hold. The library will notify you by mail or email when the items are ready for pickup at the library of your choice. You can check out movies for one week, music and new books for two weeks, and books for four weeks. Large print books, books on tape or CDs are also available. If you don't have a computer at home, you can call and ask a librarian to place a hold for you. What a terrific free service. Environmentally, it is better to borrow than to buy. Just think of all the trees saved by checking out a book and returning it for someone else to read instead of each of us having our own copy which we may only read once. If you live in the country but come to town once a week, this service would work for you and it is much cheaper that Netflix or Blockbuster.

So remember to keep your car tuned, tires inflated, drive slower, and enjoy the summer.