Seriously green.

It's hardly an original observation to say that environmentalism begins at home. But living in harmony with the Earth involves more than just turning up at the clear-cutting demonstration and mailing annual dues to Greenpeace. The serious environmentalist is green all the way through, not just on the surface. The four families in this story have made a deep and personal commitment to reducing, reusing and recycling -- in some cases, at the cost of considerable domestic comfort.

We're not trying to make our readers feel guilty here. But these paragons can inspire and instruct us with their stories. They've found ingenious and creative solutions to life's more mundane eco-problems. Anyway, relax. Despite all the hard work, they still seem to be having a pretty good time.

The Crandall-Hanifins of Hopkinton, Rhode Island:

Living as Simply as Possible

The chickens are out back feasting on Friday night's stirfry as the worms under the sink munch the morning coffee grounds. Aaron Crandall, 17, is elbow deep in a bag of potato chips, explaining between mouthfuls how it is that a couple of teenagers and their parents throw out only a 30-gallon bag-and-a-half of trash a month.

It's all in what you generate, he says, looking accusingly at the bag that holds the chips.

It once was that the Crandall-Hanifin family of Hopkinton, R.I., had a much harder time keeping their trash in check. For decades they confined their environmentalism to buying their food in bulk at the co-op they founded and ran, reading magazines second-hand, and buying their wares in wide-mouth bottles that could be used over and again.

But a not-so-funny thing happened in the sleepy town in the southwest corner of Rhode Island. In 1992, the Hopkinton landfill shut down. So did the one in nearby Westerly. Townspeople were pitted against each other in the debate over disposal. After much deliberation, the town officials decided that Westerly would build a transfer station for itself. Hopkinton townsfolk could only dispose of their trash in area-sanctioned 30-gallon trash bags that sold for $1.35 apiece at local supermarkets. The money would help pay for costs incurred by the transfer station and would force a direct correlation between what people used and what they paid to get rid of it.

The shortage of dump space also prompted major recycling efforts by the area. Where three years ago the Crandall-Hanifins stockpiled their newspapers for the annual Boy Scout drive, now they keep them in a shed out back for monthly trips to the dump. Magazines go there, too, along with cans, bottles, junk mail, office paper, cardboard and some plastics.

"It's a mindset. You just have to get in the habit," says Crandall's mother, Nancy Hanifin.

Not all people of Hopkinton are as trash-conscious as the Crandall-Hanifin family. Most families of four in the area generate about a 30-gallon bag every three days, says Doug St. Clair, foreman of the Westerly transfer station, who noted that recycling increased more than a third when the town instituted its pay-as-you-dump fee.

But the Crandall-Hanifins are not like most people. They live without running water or electricity in a tiny three-bedroom 250-year-old Cape by an old graveyard on the edge of the woods. Propane gas powers the lights in the kitchen and the refrigerator. The outhouse is, well, outside. An Ashley wood stove in the living room burns all day: heating the water in an old beer keg for the morning's showers, taking the chill out of the nighttime air when the family gathers to watch the black-and-white TV that's powered by the battery in Nancy Hanifin's 1983 Toyota.

"We like to live as simply as possible. To me the luxuries complicate things," says Brian Crandall, 42, a carpenter, who never ceases to be amazed that people are amazed at the way his family lives.

"A lot of my friends are aghast when they first come here, but I think it's great," says Kally Hanifin, 14, who says it's not so hard, really, to live without a hair dryer and other appliances synonymous with being a teenager. "When you grow up without it, you don't miss it as much." She's curled up on the sofa, sketching, chuckling about the frenzy that took over her community during last year's numerous winter power outages. At her house, it was business as usual.

In terms of trash, business as usual at the Crandall-Hanifins' includes "precycling," opting for the right packaging when shopping -- choosing a recyclable plastic milk container instead of a wax one, for example, or opting for recyclable cardboard instead of non-recyclable plastic. And there's less need to worry about food packaging.

With consumption, says Crandall, inevitably comes waste, and the Crandall-Hanifins are trying to keep theirs in check. "There's a whole lot that can be done for the environment. You can do something about it or do nothing,' Crandall says. "It's an individual choice. We're trying to do what we can."

The Burgers of Whitney Point, New York:

Waste Not

Environmental fanatics aren't supposed to have normal suburban three-bedroom homes with all of the modern conveniences, including a dishwasher, microwave and Marantz stereo playing Bob Dylan. Their daughters aren't supposed to be sitting in comfortable armchairs playing Nintendo Gameboys, munching Wise potato chips.

No, they're supposed to be shivering in unheated log cabins and living on raw tofu. But the Burger family, residents of this Central New York farming community, defy expectations. Their lifestyle doesn't differ markedly from that of the average American family's. And yet the average American family produces three tons of garbage, or 6,000 pounds, every year. The average citizen jettisons 4.3 pounds every day.

The Burgers produce three pounds a year. And their little garbage bags -- filled with cut credit cards, empty toothpaste tubes, used-up pens and, yes, potato chip bags -- are going to the Smithsonian Institution to be put on permanent display, right next to the Enola Gay. They've been in Good Housekeeping Seventeen, Garbage and Family Circle. They were on Nickelodeon, PBS, and if Linda Ellerbee's show hadn't been cancelled, they'd have been on her show, too.

Yes. the Burgers are probably the most famous recyclers in America. But you wouldn't expect such people to be so, well, normal.

Chris Burger, now a county legislator, says he and his wife, Cindy, were inspired by the first Earth Day, in 1970. "We were both in college, and we were protesting against what the big, bad companies were doing. We started to think about what we as individuals could do to change things. The biggest opportunity was in the waste we were producing."

In 1970, recyclers were pioneers, without convenient curbside service. "The Boy Scouts took the newspapers, and we had to go directly to a scrap metal dealer for the cans," says Chris. "There were all these big trucks coming in, and our little car. We got some funny looks. We found a glass manufacturing place that would take the bottles. Nobody would take the plastics, but we still separated them out and kept the bags out on the back porch -- just so we knew how much we were producing." They weren't famous -- yet.

Recycling was doubly hard for the Burgers because they were living in an apartment then. But in 1979, they bought five-and-a-half acres in Whitney Point and moved into a homemade Mongolian yurt on the property while Chris designed and built their ecologically correct house.

By the late 80s, the Burgers were filling their 32-gallon garbage can only six times in a year. They really started getting attention around the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, in 1990.

Jennie Burger, 16, who'd been reading Nintendo Power magazine as her parents talked, now perked up. "My friends think it's cool that we're kind of famous. But I don't think of saving the Earth every time I brush my teeth. Our family only talks about this stuff when reporters come."

By 1993, the Burgers were producing only a half can of garbage a year." I was raised to waste not, want not," says Cindy, who works at a local medical office. "When we were growing up they told us never to throw away something that still had some use to it. They toss out paper clips in my office, and I yell at them, `Hey, that affects the bottom line!' It drives me crazy."

In the greenhouse, where the mylar plastic windows rattle from the strong Central New York winds, is the garbage -- two small bags, set for national display. Jennie -- whose chores include washing and reusing plastic straws and sandwich bags -- offers an apology: "She," pointing at Debbie, "really likes these granola bars, and their wrappers can't be recycled." Debbie defends herself. "I tried other ones, but they're not the same." Cindy settles the matter. "We're not into depriving the kids over things like this."

The Burgers are proud of what they've done, and they're not going to stop reducing their already very light tread on the Earth, but they're not going to let it drive them nuts. "It's not like we're thinking about this all the time," says Cindy. "It's integrated into our lives. It's second nature, a habit."

The Peeples' of Freetown, Maryland:

Master Recyclers

There was the time Tobi Peeples gathered all the cellophane wrap from a month's worth of cereal and cracker boxes and sent the lot to the Nabisco Company, along with a note complaining about excess packaging.

Nabisco didn't respond.

There was the time a store manager came from behind a counter and wondered aloud to Peeples why anyone would pack their groceries in their own canvas totes when baggers could certainly do a faster and more efficient job packing store-provided plastic bags.

Peeples apologized for the inconvenience and bagged her own groceries anyway.

There was the time a neighbor happened upon Peeples' recycling bags, found months' worth of bottles and cans and accused Peeples of being a lush. Peeples patiently explained she was saving them and would recycle them at the dump. The skeptical neighbor reminded her the dump was more than 20 miles away.

Oh, how times have changed. These days, Peeples puts her recyclables curbside -- bottles and cans one week, mixed papers the next -- in a program launched just this year in Peeples' hometown of Freetown, Maryland, a farm community just seven-tenths of a mile below the Mason-Dixon line. The program was sparked by a grassroots recycling effort by Peeples and her friends, who met up regularly to deposit their recyclables in huge bins donated by the local food store and picked up by the town for the half-hour drive to the dump.

Now that the recycling program is underway, Peeples has taken her efforts elsewhere -- to the compost heap.

Ask me about compost. I really know my poop," says Peeples, a potter by trade who has become somewhat of a local celebrity for her knowledge of all things garbage. People come up to her in county-sponsored booths at local fairs, foul-smelling piles in hand, seeking advice on what went awry. Grade school teachers ask her to visit their classrooms and to show students how to set up mini-composters at home.

Peeples, who has two enthusiastic helpers in Jennifer, 16, and Amanda, 10, says her motivation is simple. "I certainly don't want the new dump to go in the empty field across the street and I'm sure other people don't, either," she says.

Peeples has been making similar statements for the past 25 years, starting from the time she was in the Ecology Club in high school. Then, people thought she was a militant, anti-establishment crusader, she recalls. Now that she's earned the title of "Master Composter," a title bestowed upon her after taking numerous classes on composting sponsored by Baltimore County, people are finally listening to what she has to say.

"It's very gratifying to talk to somebody and see the light go on," says Peeples, 40, a former mail carrier and preschool teacher who has experienced new-found success as a potter. "A lot of people who compost wear a suit and tie Monday through Friday and drive a BMW."

Sara Steck and Steven White of Berkeley, California:

Into the Bins

If you sent Sara Steck a Christmas card last year, chances are someone else will get it this December. Steck saves the cards that don't have writing on the flip side of the picture. She cuts them at the fold, writes her own message, and send them out the following year as holiday postcards. "I also use cereal boxes and things for postcards. I hate to throw anything away," says Steck, who has been watching her trash disposal for most of her life.

As a child, Steck, now 39, spent many summers camping with her parents in the Sierra Nevadas. "There you bury your food waste and you carry your trash with you." She still buries her food waste, sort of. It goes out on the back porch in the worm bin, which sits next to similar containers for glass and aluminum. Steck stacks newspapers on the front porch, and collects mixed papers in the kitchen and the second bedroom, which serves as a study for Steck, a teacher, and her fiance Steven White, a woodworker.

Steck has been recycling everything from cans to yard waste in her Berkeley, California, bungalow since she settled there six years ago. The only thing the city doesn't pick up curbside is plastic, so Steck and White try not to buy any.

The current contents of their lone trash bag, which dangles from a nail under the sink and once carried vegetables home from the supermarket: a soy milk carton that's laminated and lined with foil, a plastic seal that covered 4 cork, paper towels that were used to mop up the cat's hairball, a wax milk carton and assorted plastic wraps.

Steck and White accumulate a bag to a bag and a half of trash a week. The couple buys in bulk at the local natural food store, thereby cutting down on packaging. The plastic bags they bring the food home in get washed and reused during the next trip to the store. Steck and White use canvas bags to tote their groceries home from the supermarket. They bring their coffee bags back to the coffee shop to get refilled, they take cloth lunch bags to work.

"I think that people shouldn't deplete the Earth. I like the idea of not using things up and trashing them," says Steck. I've never seen a landfill other than in pictures. It's kind of depressing to think about."

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"Sure, we'll take back the plastic from the shirts," the woman said at the dry cleaner's. "We'll take back the hangers, too."

"Yes, there's a bin for plastic bags. Paper, too. They're over by the bottle section," said the woman who answered the phone at the supermarket where I shop.

"Oh yeah, we'll take your junk mail," said the attendant at my local transfer station. What about cardboard? "Yeah, but it's gotta be corrugated." And magazines? "Of course."

Who knew?

I thought I was as environmentally conscious as the next person. Maybe even more so. I thought I did my duty as a recycler, tossing bottles and cans and certain plastics in my recycling bin alongside newspapers, and leaving them out for our weekly curbside pickup.

And then I met the Crandall-Hanifins, and the Burgers, and the Steck-Whites and the Peeples'. And I've been subconsciously policing my trash ever since.

The paper towel I used to clean up spilled chicken soup. Couldn't have been a cloth napkin? That wax milk carton that went in the pail. Why didn't I buy recyclable plastic? Recycling is a frame of mind, it seems. The hardest thing to do is to think like a recycler, and then to take steps to make the actual practice easier.

I don't think I can go to the extremes to which some of these families have gone. I'm admittedly too self-indulgent and too dependent to give up long showers and my fax machine and too expended to wash out straws and plastic bags. But I can take small steps. I try to reuse paper or plastic bags, but I have so many stashed away to be reused that they're forcing the door open on the cabinet. Now that I've called the supermarket, I know I can bring them back during a monthly recycling trip.

When I go, I'll stop at the cleaners, bring that plastic that's all over the closet floor, go to the transfer station and bring my pile of used office paper and old magazines. Maybe I'll come home and have a nice cup of coffee. By that time my compost bin should be ready. The Crandall-Hanifins tell me worms love coffee grounds.

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* PRACTICAL TIPS

FOR THE EARTH-CONSCIOUS CONSUMER

Throwing out one can of trash a week for a family of four doesn't sound unreasonable. But one can every two years? The Burgers do it. They say the key is in the planning. And with some tips from experts, namely Neil Seldman of the Center for Local Self-Reliance in Washington, D.C., Athena Serifedes of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the National Recycling Coalition, maybe you can cut down your trash, too. The key is to reduce first, then to reuse, then to compost and, as a last resort, to recycle.

* Buy in bulk -- this saves not only on packaging that you would eventually have to dispose of, but it reduces tremendously the amount of industrial waste generated to make that packaging.

* Shop for durable, long-lasting products. Use a metal razor, for example, instead of disposables, or a metal roasting pan instead of a disposable one.

* Reuse whatever you can, including plastic cutlery, aluminum pie tins, glassware and aluminum foil.

* Buy products with recycled contents.

* Precycle -- make an effort at the supermarket to buy products with recyclable packaging.

* Leave the glass clippings on the lawn, and start a backyard composting bin for yard clippings.

* Instead of throwing away items like furniture, appliances and clothing, look for a place to donate them.

* Make recycling easy by putting containers in the rooms where you use the products. If you open the mail in your den, for example, keep a box nearby where you can put junk mail. If you want to save vegetable and fruit clippings for a composting pile, keep them in a container under the sink.

* Replace paper cups, plates and napkins with washable, reusable cups and plates and cloth napkins.

* Keep used paper in a stack and use the flip side for scrap.

* Try to buy items that are less toxic to the environment when produced. Use vinegar and water as a replacement to glass cleaner, for example.

* Keep in mind that trash generation is not confined to the home. Remember the amount of packaging when choosing a restaurant for take-out food.

* Just because your municipality doesn't pick up all recyclables on the curb, it doesn't mean there are not viable alternatives nearby. Check with dry cleaners, supermarkets, manufacturers, your local public works department and civic organizations to find out where recycled goods can be dropped off near you.