One Small Step is our attempt to show you all how easy it can be to improve your health, and the health of the planet. Each week, we'll take one more little step and encourage you to take it with us. This week, I've finally agreed to listen to my husband and:

Get ultra-local.

Yes, I love the concept of the Eat Local Challenge, but this isn't just eating -- it's drinking coffee, and going to the dentist, and buying my favorite books. I guess you could call it "shop local." So today, when I went to get my hair cut, I didn't go downtown to the chic Aveda stylist where I got my hair done for my wedding (and the one who usually cuts my hair oh so well). Instead, I went to the corner barbershop -- literally, on the corner two blocks from my house. No energy was expended in getting there, and Tammy (along with "Bip", her partner) lives in the neighborhood. She gets her coffee at my favorite coffee shop -- she's about as local as you can get.

It was my husband's idea. I'd been encouraging him to go to the dentist about a mile up the street, instead of the one several miles away we'd been seeing; we've heard such great things. He went even further.

One Small Step is our attempt to show you all how easy it can be to improve your health, and the health of the planet. Each week, we'll take one more little step and encourage you to take it with us. This week, I'm thinking about my prodigious waste generation and commiting to:

Stop taking food to go.

I was on my way home from an errand (walking, naturally), and noticed that new, funky coffee shop on 28th. I'd run for a few miles and needed a cup of water and was entranced with the vegan cupcakes in the pastry case. "I'll take one to go," I said.

A few minutes later, I was walking down Holgate, holding an empty paper bag with a few traces of vegan chocolate frosting (awesome, by the way) and an empty plastic water cup. Suddenly I realized how much waste such a small decision -- to take my food and drink to go -- had generated. Had I stayed at the coffee shop for five minutes, I could have foregone the paper bag altogether and drunk deeply from a real glass, creating far less waste, saving money for the business owner, and even better: enjoying the ambiance for a little while.

I committed then to change my ways, and get it for here whenever possible. Maybe I'll see you at the Funky Door sometime ... the cupcakes are on me!

One Small Step is our attempt to show you all how easy it can be to improve your health, and the health of the planet. Each week, we'll take one more little step and encourage you to take it with us. This week, I'm taking a cue from my four-year-old and commiting to:

Pick up one extra piece of litter every day.

I live on a busy street, and as soon as my oldest son had gathered a repertoire of 10 words, he'd learned "whassat?" Naturally, his attention was drawn to the variety of delightful shiny colorful litter that decorated our sidewalk and we encountered on our daily walks. "Whassat?" he'd say, and I'd wonder if I could just say, "a culture of disrespect." But he saw it otherwise. Can you even imagine something so beautiful as a Gummy Lifesavers wrapper? An empty soda can?

He wanted to pick up these beauties, and though I wanted to rant and rail on the uncaring "neighbors" who left their trash behind, I had a minor flash of brilliance: I'll teach him to do his small part to make our world better. Every time he'd ask about a brightly-colored foil wrapper, I'd explain that it was garbage, and we'd make a game of searching for a place to put it.