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In our April 2007 issue, we offer “green” products, projects, and tips that can make your home look beautiful while safer than ever before. Here we offer:
TIPS ON GOING “GREEN”
You can adapt a more eco-friendly lifestyle very easily. Follow tips from these experts:
John Shaeffer, president of Gaiam Real Goods:
- Don’t use your porch light unless you’re expecting guests. You’ll reduce light pollution as well as your energy bill. If you have your porch light on a lot, use the 3W LED bulb.
- Don’t drive aggressively. Speeding, rapid acceleration, and frequent braking use more fuel than more gradual acceleration and smoother driving.
- Plug your home electronics into power strips, and turn them off when not in use. Phantom loads (the electricity appliances draw when they’re plugged in and not used) can be much bigger than the device they’re powering.
Jenny Chapin, from the Natural Resources Defense
Council:
- In winter, leave shades and blinds open on sunny days, but close them at night to reduce the amount of heat lost. In summer, close shades and blinds.
- Find out which brands offer recycled paper products here.
Danny Seo, Country Home editor-at-large and author of Simply Green:
- Dry one batch of clothes after another. The residual heat from the first batch helps dry the second one faster.
- The next time you paint a room, go to The Home Depot and click on "paint calculator." Type in the dimensions of your room and it'll tell you exactly how much paint to buy. No more overbuying and no more waste!
- Bring your iPod back to any Apple store to get recycled. Your good, green deed will be rewarded with a discount on any Apple product bought in the store that day.
Crissy Trask, Webmaster of Green Matters and author of It’s Easy Being Green:
- Use a set of reusable cloth produce bags from Eco Bags when grocery shopping.
- Plant a grass species that will come back after a period of drought, instead of trying to keep a lawn green through irrigation during hot summer months, which is a tremendous waste of water.
- Park three to four blocks away from your destination or at the end of the parking lot. Driving up and down streets or circling parking lots to find a prime parking space burns up extra fuel. Driving less will add up, save you fuel, reduce emissions, relieve parking frustrations, and help keep you fit.
Michel Nischan, chef and author of Homegrown: Pure and Simple:
- Compost. Save all your dry vegetable scraps and peelings, mound them onto the tops of their empty planters in the fall, and keep them covered with dark plastic bags. Turn it in when it gets tall and add more. By spring, the old planter soil will be enriched and ready to plant.
- Have a vegetarian day each week. This is a great way to get more fruits and vegetables into your diet while giving your body a break from continually digesting animal proteins.
Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States:
- Carefully rinse the objects you recycle and discard to remove food remnants and odors. Packaging and containers that smell can be deadly to curious and hungry creatures, and containers can pose special dangers.
- Shop cruelty-free. It’s easy to find household and cosmetics products not tested on animals, and they often have the added benefit of being environmentally friendly and safer for you as well.
Ideal Bite:
- Wrap your water heater with insulation blankets to avoid excessive CO2 emissions. Eco-Impact: If 10,000 people wrapped their water heater in an insulting jacket, collectively they’d avoid the same amount of CO2 emissions as would be produced driving a Toyota Prius between NYC and LA more than 10,000 times.
- Protect your lips (and health) with natural lip balms like Mad Gabs and Burt’s Bees. Traditional lip balms are made using petroleum, and once the world's petroleum reserves are gone, they're gone. Also, impurities in petroleum have been linked to breast cancer.
- Switch to biodegradable doggie bags, which break down in as little as 30 days. By using plastic doggie bags to clean up after your best friend, that poop is, er, preserved. Eco-Impact: If 10,000 dog owners switch to biodegradable bags or a scoop, we'll avoid the use of over 18 million plastic bags every year.
- Spay or neuter your pets. It could extend their lives one to five years, on average, and reduce the nearly 8 million dogs and cats that end up in shelters each year. Eco-Impact: If 10,000 people had at least 1 dog or cat sterilized, we'd prevent up to 380,000 animals from ending up in shelters.
- Send and receive faxes electronically using services like myfax.com or efax.com. Eco-Impact: If 1% of all paper faxes sent in America each year were sent electronically, 73.5 million trees would be saved.
Lisa Harrow, author of “What Can I Do?: An Alphabet for Living”, offers some of her favorite Web links:
- If you fly or drive long distances, offset your carbon emissions by planting trees with Trees for the Future: www.treesftf.org
- Eco-mall offers a ton of green information and shopping choices: www.ecomall.com
- Get and give FREE items, eliminate waste, save money, and conserve landfill space with Freecycling, available in most bigger cities and towns. Membership is free: www.freecycle.org
- Donate your old books, and The Book Thing will give them away free to those who want or need them: www.bookthing.org
- The Children’s Health Environmental Coalition offers five easy steps to a healthier home: www.checnet.org
- The Eat Smart page of the Environmental Defense Network will help you decide the best fish to eat to avoid pollution and over-fishing; www.oceansalive.org/eat.cfm
- Minimize your exposure to chemicals in food by downloading and using the handy wallet card The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce: www.foodnews.org
- This site has guides to local markets and community supported agriculture associations (CSAs): www.sustainabletable.org
- Articles, information, and contacts for anyone interested in green roofs: www.greenroofs.com
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