Jeanne Blaisdell @ greensamaritan

It's St. Patrick's Day and I'm curious - how green are you? I'm not talking about how much green you are wearing or how much green beer you may drink tonight - but environmental habits of course.

From an article I came across on Environmental Leader last year, it discussed a study conducted by Porter Novelli on levels of greenness and profile of a small but powerful group they identified as the "Greenfluencers".

Quoting the EL article directly - "Based on the seven different types of behaviors and product/service usage patterns listed below, Novelli developed a “Green Gauge” to categorize respondents into four levels of “greenness.”

• Buying environmentally friendly products
• Buying products that use less packaging
• Using less energy at home
• Buying energy efficient appliances/insulation
• Punishing companies with bad environmental records by not buying their products
• Buying products that are made from recycled paper/plastic
• Recycling at home

Just 16 percent of the population are “Non-Green” and do none of these activities; almost half qualify as “Light Green,” doing between one and four of the activities; more than a quarter (27%) quality as “Medium Green,” doing five or six of them; and just 7 percent do all seven activities and qualify as “Dark Green.”

Where do you fall? I'm moving up the scale to a Medium Green, despite my confessions in my first post. I always use my reusable totes at the grocery store and carry one in my purse for smaller purchases. I recycle and refuse to buy bottled water. We have installed a rain barrel and use CFL light bulbs. I strive to be aware of and replace other bad habits with more environmentally sound ones, and yet know I still have room to grow.

So for all you do now, toast yourself tonight.  What can we do to make ourselves more greener on the gauge and/or influence a neighbor by this time next year?

Last year my goal was to increase my trips to the local Farmer’s Market. Why I could not remember to do this on a regular basis, I don’t know. Probably all those pesticides I have ingested over the years.

This year instead of participating in a community garden, we are planting a summer garden at home and hope to keep it going through the fall.

So whatever it you continue or begin to do, cheers to your green ways!

Jeanne also publishes The Green Samaritan, her personal blog encouraging kindness to the environment through refined, renewed and resourceful living. You can follow her on Twitter here and fan on Facebook here.