Guest Post: A Green Home is Easier than you Think

 A Green Home is Easier than you Think- by Brianna Perkle

While I very much want to have a green home, I’ve sometimes been confused and a little flustered about the best ways to make it happen. I’m not super-organized, and I didn’t want the effort to take over my life. Luckily there are lots of ideas that are just a few clicks away.One of the simplest things to do is recycle. It was easy to set up bins to separate each type of recycling as I went along, and trash day has become a breeze. On the flip side, I also try to buy things with containers made of post-consumer recycled products.The inside of my house has been “re-energized” with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and tighter seals around windows and doors to prevent excess energy usage.

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When I remodel my kitchen in the coming months, the focus will definitely be on green alternatives. I’m replacing the lot—dishwasher, fridge, microwave, and stove—and the new versions will all have an energy star label. This means they’ll use less energy while still providing me with excellent results.

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Green cleaning products can now be found in almost every major grocery store. These new cleaners not only keep toxins out of the environment but out of my lungs as I use them. Those with asthma or other breathing issues find this especially helpful.

In my search to be live green, I found many other ideas that are simple and easy to accomplish.

• Buy USDA Certified Organic coffee. This means it has been grown with sustainability in mind.
• Put your computer in sleep mode if you’ll be away for more than 20 minutes, or set it up to automatically sleep after that much time.
• Bring your own bags when shopping. Some retailers will now pay you for not leaving with one of their plastic bags.
• Plug your electronics into an energy-efficient power strip, and shut the strip off at night to prevent a constant energy drain.
• Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. You’ll reduce the amount of wasted water and lower your water bill.

It takes some thought and effort to have a green home, but it’s not difficult and the results will have an impact for generations to come. Start with a few small steps and let the good feelings push you to do more. If I can be green, anyone can!

Happy Earth Day! What’s in Your Closet?

With earth day approaching, I decided to start by doing something motivational, that actually doesn’t really help the earth… But it gets me in the spirits of earth day! I created a fake outfit on a shopping website. More on that in a bit. I actually treat every day like Earth day, trying to recycle, buy organic food item, pick up garbage on the street to throw away, don’t buy things that I don’t need, and don’t throw too much garbage out. I like to make things I need instead of buying too many impulse items, and I look for used items before new things, if the case permits. I digress.

So, I got an email from Polyvore, a clothing and design website where you can easily create a board with clothing items, or home design items, to get your creative juices flowing with a simple drop and drag method, and you can also shop from the site with the items you see. It’s pretty fun. They are having a contest for earth day, with contestants creating an outfit for for the occassion. I chose all organic items for my outfit. Organic cottons, beeswax lip balms, organic tea, and stones. No leathers, weird unnatural plastics, or polyesters. I know it’s easy to just choose green colored items, but I wanted take it a step further to choose actual earth friendly items. Which has me thinking about my real clothes. How earth friendly am I?

I’m pretty earth friendly, actually, and here’s how I know:

• I buy from thrift stores at least 50% of the time. (Some things, you shouldn’t buy used…)
• I buy from places like TJ Max, where they buy overstock items and keep them from being wasted. (I got Teva’s for $40 instead of $135!)
• I don’t by what I don’t need. I don’t “go shopping” for the sake of doing so. If I’m bored, I watch TV, read a book, clean the apartment, or go for a walk.
• I buy things that are comfortable, usually made from cotton. I should take the time to check labels of clothing more often, but I’m such a picky shopper, if I actually find something I love, I will buy it. It’s a rare occasion.
• I’m not an impulse shopper. I’ve never had the urge to spend money for no reason. I’m too practical for that.
• I recycle my old clothes, unless they are in terrible shape. Then I try to make something out of the old fabric.
• I shop for what I need in person, instead of buying online, cutting back on shipping. I know, I know, clothes are “shipped” to a store in the first place. But let me have this one.

So here’ s my outfit I put together:

Organic Earth Day Outfit by roxanne-hembd featuring slim straight leg jeans

My fun outfit! It’s got layers for any weather. Of course the umbrella is nesessary. You never know when it’s going to rain in April, or in Wisconsin in general. There’s another fun site, www.practicallygreen.com where you can take a little test to see how “Green” you are, and find out what you can do in almost every situation to become a little more earth friendly. I recommend it to everyone. Especially home owners.

Happy Earth day!

Create Less Waste!

I was recently going through the April 2010 issue of Glamour Magazine and came across an article about “How to Create Less Trash”. I’m a huge advocate of being kind to mother earth, not wasting things that don’t need to be wasted, and creating a smaller footprint on the earth. After all, someday our kid’s kids will live here, and I would like to think I contributed to making it a cleaner place.  And if we all pitch in, then hey, wouldn’t all of those small differences amount to a big difference? I think so.

Try a re-useable sleeve. 

1. Use a re-useable mug instead of a paper coffee cup. Not only will you help out the trees, you will also save money on your drink at most coffee houses for bringing in your own cup. Side note: Using three paper cups per workday creates a 780 cup pile of trash a year. Yuck.

2. Think before you buy. Every day humans waste about 4.5 lbs of junk. Not all of that can be recycled, but a lot of that can. So as not to contribute to the heaping landfills, If you don’t need something, don’t buy it. Or if you do, make a wise purchase and get something with a recyclable package.

3. Recycle your old gadgets. You can take old cell phones and batteries to places like Best Buy to be recycled. Or check out Electronic Take Back Coalition to find a place near you. Or hey, make some money and try Craigslist or e-bay to sell your old goods.

4. Use old clothing rags or cloth in general to clean your house. Instead of using disposable cleaning wipes or tons of paper towels a day, (which sit in a city dump instead of de-composing) try using cloth rags for cleanups to save an average of $72 a year. Or cut up an old fraying towel and make some of your own rags.

5. Use hand dryers in public places. Instead of wasting a good hunk of paper that isn’t recyclable the way other paper products are, (and just sits in a city dump releasing methane), use the hand dryer, when applicable.

6. Drink tap water. This is a no brainer. You can save an average of $650 bucks a year by getting a refillable water bottle and drinking tap water. Plus the production of plastic water bottles uses up a shocking amount of energy. Tap water is just as good for you as bottled water, and saves you money. And if you must get a plastic bottle of water, look for those that use less plastic, or say that they are made with recycled materials, and are recyclable.

7. Eat your leftovers! You can save an average of $500 a year by just taking your dinner leftovers to work with you instead of eating out every day. Not only do you save money from not having to buy lunch, but think of all of those to-go containers that won’t be used because you are eating leftovers, and think of all of the food you won’t have to throw away! Win-win-win!

8. Go organic, when you can. If every one of us converted 10% of our diets to organic food, that would be the equivalent of taking 2 million cars off of the road. Just look for the green ”USDA Organic” label on the product.

9. Eat more whole foods. As food expert Michael Pollan has said, “If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t.” Processed foods create more pollution, from factory equipment, to packaging, transportation, etc… Whole, un processed foods are better for your body and don’t contain the fertilizers, pesticides (in produce), antibiotics and hormones (in meat) and other toxic chemicals that will soak into and sit in your body instead of being processed naturally and healthily.

10. Buy in bulk. If you must get packaged items, why not get more at once to save money, and save the packaging of many small items. Get a big bag of crackers, yogurt, and cookies and pour into re-usable containers for lunches instead of getting those individual serving sizes.

Check “The Vegetarian Blog’s” website for more Vegetarian Ideas.

11. Have 2 vegetarian meals a day. You’ll save about $80 a year this way. Raising livestock produces more greenhouse gasses each year than every car, ship, plane and train combined. (Think on that for a second…) Plus, meat is more expensive to purchase than grains and soy. Save a chicken, and some money! Or, if you are to dine out, check out www.DiscoverVeggie.com to find vegetarian dining selections in your city.

12. Choose chicken over beef. I’m a pescetarian (fish only) so this doesn’t affect me, but it’s good to know that pound for pound, beef production creates 13 times as many green house gasses as chicken production. Swapping chicken for red meat once a week for a year translates to the same pollution savings as nixing a 340 mile road trip in an SUV.

13. Eat what’s in season. You can find most fruits and veggies in the grocery store year round, but some have been shipped from far away warmer climates. When you can, hit up a farmer’s market and get local, in season produce. Check out Simple Steps to see what’s in season in your area.

14. Shop Green. Go for organic cotton t-shirts instead of conventionally grown cotton (less pesticides and fertilizers) Check places like H&M and Levi’s or Elieen Fisher for some options. Go for natural fibers over synthetic fibers. How will you know? Check the fiber content on the tag. Look for silk, hemp, jute, linen, cotton, or wool. And offer to leave the cheap plastic hangers that come with your clothes at the department store if you are just going to throw it away. They could re-use it.

Check out Alternative Earth for more on Green Clothing.

15. Try recycled Clothing. I love to go to the local Goodwill or St. Vincent’s to see what retro tops or broken in Jeans I can find for a fraction of the price.

16. Clean your clothes right. No matter what clothing you get, wash your clothes in cold water. You can find detergents for cold water that will clean just as well as in hot water. You’ll also reduce energy use and emissions, and extend the life of the pieces you love.

To check out where to get this cool bag, and many others, click here.

17. Bring your own shopping bag. This almost doesn’t need to be said… Plastic bags are terrible for the environment and are over populating our landfills, and thus, you should bring your own shopping bag whenever you can. And I don’t blame you for wanting those plastic bags sometimes, they make great trash bag liners, and have many other uses. Just don’t throw them away without re-using them!

So, with all of these useful tips, I hope you can find ways to reduce your footprint, and create less waste, keeping mother earth a clean place for generations to come. Happy Green-ing!