Category Archives: green around the world

Ringing in the New Year With One Easy Eco-Resolution

Posted on January 2, 2012 by | 112 Comments

Everyone starts a new year with plans to improve–lose weight, save money, take a risk, accomplish a goal.  Enviro Girl thinks everyone should start the new year with an Eco-resolution, one small thing they can do to improve the environment.  The small things add up, as illustrated in this recent post over at Fake Plastic Fish.  Here are some free, incredibly convenient and easy Eco-resolutions for you and your friends to try:

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Posted in 3 Rs, fast facts, green around the world, issues, living green on a budget

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Buy Nothing Day: Celebrate it with us!

Posted on November 21, 2011 by | 6 Comments

Nothing, not even a week in Italy with George Clooney, could induce Enviro Girl to go shopping on Black Friday.  The last predictions she read indicated 77 million people planned to shop that day, mostly with plans to buy stuff for themselves.  Consumption and consumerism has shaded most people’s Christmas season.  There’s no escaping the message from the advertisements:  buying stuff will make us all happier.   The reality is that going on a spending frenzy at the mall has absolutely zilch to do with joy or peace on earth.

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Posted in 3 Rs, eco holidays, green around the world, issues, living green on a budget, websites & blogs

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Get Your Spook On With A Leaner, Greener Halloween

Posted on October 17, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Americans will spend an average of $66.28 on Halloween this year if past years are any indicator–a grand total of $6 billion!  A portion of that $66.28 will get spent on consumable stuff, mostly candy.  The rest will get spent on costumes, decorations and miscellaneous crappe.  Now, much of the candy will get eaten, many of the costumes will get recycled, but a lot of packaging and excess stuff will end up in landfills.  While Enviro Girl doesn’t consider herself a huge holiday Scrooge, she won’t spend the average on Halloween.  Consuming less and spending less can make Halloween a greener holiday.

For starters, Enviro Girl’s family will recycle costumes.  Instead of buying a brand new concoction of nylon/vinyl/plastic from a Big Box Store, Enviro Girl and her family will raid the toy bin and their own closets to create costumes for trick-or-treating and parties.  Enviro Girl will use lipstick and eyeliner on her sons to give them zombie/football player/vampire faces.  They’ll use glue, thread and safety pins to patch together their various accessories and get creative reusing stuff out of their garage and basement. Team Testosterone will go trick-or-treating using the same canvas bags they’ve used for the past 4 Halloweens, no need to buy treat bags or buckets.

Enviro Girl grew her own fall decorations–lots of pumpkins and gourds.  She and her sons made some bats and other spooky creatures out of construction paper, paint and old egg cartons.  Many websites have great ideas on how to brew up your own, unique Halloween decorating on the cheap.  An old white sheet can make ghosts that hang from tree branches or drape in front of windows.  White chalk can outline cadavers on the driveway or etch skulls on framed photographs.  Enviro Girl even filled old canning jars with beets and carrots from her garden–adding some colored water made them look like eerie science experiments.  Check out Family Fun Magazine or Martha Stewart for more cheap decorating ideas.

Halloween is not for gifts–there’s no need to spend money on trifles and trinkets.  The objective for this holiday is to get your spook on and raid the neighborhood for treats.  To this end, Enviro Girl will give no presents–her sons will contribute home-baked goods to their classroom parties and she’ll give candy to the little ghouls and goblins on the front porch come Halloween night.  Her family will go trick-or-treating and the boys will load up on candy.  This October they’ll go to a “haunted zoo” to enjoy a scary hayride while admiring the carved pumpkins and animals all over the zoo.  They’ll attend a few Halloween parties where people will dance and play goofy games while wearing costumes.  They’ll carve pumpkins and bake cookies.  They’ll watch a mildly frightening movie (or two).  On the consumption scale, these activities rank fairly low.

Enviro Girl will spend about $20 on Halloween shopping this year–on candy and recipe ingredients, consumable goods that leave change in Enviro Girl’s pocket.  Treading light on the planet means consuming less so you throw away less.  You can spend less and use less while making Halloween just as much fun, spooky and thrilling.

Tell us, reader.  What will you spend on Halloween this year?  Can you match Enviro Girl’s $20?

 

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Posted in 3 Rs, eco holidays, eco kids, green around the world, living green on a budget

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Office Eco Tips

Posted on October 7, 2011 by | 1 Comment

EcoLassie knows that most offices are pretty savvy these days in terms of recycling paper and other products they use on a daily basis. Many also encourage the practice of not printing out emails or other documents that can be read on your screen.

But there are always nifty ways to turn that eco-style up a notch. Here are a few you may not have thought of to put into practice in your workplace:

If your office has a vending machine, make sure it uses recyclable products. But a far better option is to ditch those machines altogether and allow workers to make their own beverages. You will be surprised at how much you cut down on recyclables by ringing in your own mug, too. And toss in a few volunteers from your cabinet lurking at the back that no one uses at home anymore for visitors. Even Starbucks gives a cup discount for customers who bring in their own mug!

 

 

 

 

Start a carpool at your office for co-workers who live within range of reach other. Better yet, ask your employer to provide a bicycle rack outside so those who live within cycling distance can take advantage of saving money, gas, and emissions while they get their daily exercise.

Try soy-based inks if you use a commercial printer. Besides being better for the environment, soy-based inks support US crop growers The good news is they produce shaper colors, too, without the same level of emitted toxins from petroleum inks. These also allow for better recycling as their ink is removed easier.

Finally, turn off the machines you can when you leave for the night. Activate the sleep mode for things like printers and copiers. Some fax machines have a sleep mode, too. Use power strips for ease in turning machines and things like your desk cell phone charger off when you go home. Just hit the “off” button on the power strip and you’re set.

It’s easy to conserve, recycle and save when you take stock of your environment.

 

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Posted in electronics, fast facts, green around the world, in the office

Bike Commute Challenge

Posted on September 23, 2011 by | 2 Comments

The weather has started to turn, there’s a crisp edge to the air. Even the leaves are dropping from the trees. You can hear them crackle and crunch beneath school kids’ feet, as they head back to class.

It’s that time of year again.

Yes, Bike Commute Challenge.

You see, here in River City, we take sustainability seriously. Hundreds of people commute by bicycle every day to work and back. It’s an easy way to save money: no need to pay for parking, no money for car insurance, heck, no need for cars, gas or maintenance. And, that doesn’t say anything about how much less your carbon footprint will be. But, just think about it for a moment. You can reduce the emissions your car would be putting out into the air, simply by riding to work. This is one way you can do your part to save the planet . . . plus, you’ll be getting yourself in shape – all at the same time. So no need to pay for a gym membership either. Think of how much you’ll save: money, maybe time and the planet!

So don’t let your bike go to waste sitting on the sidelines.
Get out there and ride to work! And, if you aren’t lucky enough to live in River City, then check with your local community to find out whether they have a bike commute challenge and, if they don’t, why don’t you get one organized…I challenge you.

Even the Green Queen has been riding to work. Of course it’s an easy downhill ride and that helps. She hasn’t quite gotten up the guts to ride back home – all the way uphill, yet – this year. But, that’s coming. She’s lucky to be able to take her bike on the MAX (the citywide transit train) if she chooses.

But Portland has always been one innovative city. City planners have been creating a bike encouraging city. Just look at some of the unusual aspects of city planning going on here. Cars have to sit and wait behind the bikes. And, people can often get to work faster on bikes than in cars, locked up in gridlock.
So, what more do you need to hear to get you pedaling yourself to work? It’s time to JUST DO IT!

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Posted in green around the world, health, transportation, Uncategorized

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Too Much Light in the Night

Posted on September 19, 2011 by | 4 Comments

Like most eco-warriors, Enviro Girl recycles, picks up other people’s litter, avoids flushing harmful chemicals down the drain and tries to reduce her emissions by sharing rides and consolidating her driving errands.  She’s aware of pollution in all of its forms, even pollution most people don’t think about:  light pollution.

If you step outside at night, can you see the stars in the sky?  If you can’t easily pick out the Big Dipper, it’s due to light pollution.  It’s true–too much light is an environmental hazard, causing problems beyond making urban stargazing a difficult hobby.

Light pollution is simply too much light at night, usually unnecessary light or wasted light, that disrupts the habitat of all kinds of creatures.   Why is too much light at night a problem?

For starters, it’s often a waste of energy.  What’s the point in completely illuminating an entire area reaching up to the clouds?  Sure, some night lighting is essential for safety reasons, but much of the light we create at night serves no useful purpose.  Enviro Girl has several outdoor light fixtures at her house, but she only turns them on as they’re needed, not every night.  And inside her entire house, only one windowless bathroom has a small nightlight that turns on when the room grows dark–all of the other lights go off at night.

Energy use aside, too much light at night disrupts human sleep patterns because light is part of the biological prodding that wakes us up just as darkness helps us sleep.  Light at night messes up migrating birds, feeding patterns of nocturnal creatures and insect breeding.  Take a firefly for example.  A firefly finds a mate by flashing at night–when there’s too much light, there’s no way a firefly can find a mate.  Many firefly populations have disappeared because they’ve no safe place to live.  Nocturnal mammals rely on darkness for cover–when everything is bright at night, they become easy prey and their numbers diminish. Nesting sea turtles rely on the cover at night to lay their eggs–but the bright artificial lights on many beaches confuse the turtles, who now cannot find a safe spot to nest.  According to National Geographic, this results in hundreds of thousands of lost hatchlings a year--just in Florida!  It’s easy for Enviro Girl to pull a shade and restore darkness so she can sleep at night, but the animals, birds, insects and fish do not have this capability.

Light pollution makes the night sky impossible to see in many parts of the world, it also makes it impossible to study.  The constant haze of light separates people from amazing views of the night sky just as much as noise pollution can separate people from the sounds of nature.

What’s both frustrating and encouraging about light pollution is that it’s an easy problem to fix.  By redesigning light fixtures, we can save energy, preserve our view of the night sky and reduce disrupting nature.  The worst kinds of night light include globe lights, billboards, under-lit signs, wall-mounted non-directional fixtures and mercury vapor lights (commonly known as “barn lights”).  A small detail like designing night lighting to light from above to below instead of from below to above makes all the difference.  Check out these two images:

See how the “globe” fixture lights up the road–not only are there TOO MANY lights illuminating the area (Enviro Girl is hard-pressed to find any value in making it look like broad daylight 24/7), half of the light produced goes into the night sky, serving no discernible purpose.

This image shows a well-lit sidewalk.  Almost all of the light produced is targeted to a specific area and very little is escaping into the night sky.  The area is safe without much light reflecting above or beyond where it’s needed.

Enviro Girl appreciates the need for some night lighting to keep people safe, but most of the night lighting she encounters is purely for cosmetic or commercial purposes.  She’s happy to do her part by keeping her neck of the woods dark and welcomes nocturnal creatures who need darkness to survive.  By keeping her lights off at night, bats, owls, rabbits, mice, toads, frogs, raccoons, foxes, skunks, coyotes and yes, even those wonderful fireflies can survive.   She also saves on her electric bill, reduces her carbon footprint and preserves the incredible view of the starry sky.

Enviro Girl encourages you to do nature a favor and examine your use of night lighting.  Can you help reduce light pollution?

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Posted in 3 Rs, electronics, green around the world, issues

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Eco Back to School: Green Schools, Green Classrooms

Posted on August 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

We insure our children’s safety in a thousand different ways every day.  Car seats.  Bicycle helmets.  Mosquito repellent and sunscreen.  Safety locks.  Flu shots.  Teaching them “stranger danger” and how to avoid being bullied on the playground.  Playgrounds with rubber mats and inches of mulch to pad falling children and prevent injuries.  Nationwide recalls on Happy Meal toys posing a choking hazard.

Despite all these measures to keep children safe, most of us think nothing of sending our children to toxic school buildings to spend 7 hours a day, 180 days of a year, for 12-13 years of their lives.

What makes a school a healthy learning environment for millions of  children attending them and the  teachers and support staff working in them?

“Green schools ” need to take things further than providing recycle bins in every classroom and installing energy-efficient light bulbs.  Most school buildings are industrial boxes with few windows and even fewer that open.  Older buildings, while not full of asbestos any longer, often have poor ventilation and high levels of pollutants.  Environmentally healthy schools provide a safe infrastructure and an environment that combine to produce healthy and safe students.


Green Schools, or  Environmentally Healthy Schools, by definition, should include:

*Daylight.  Simply having windows in classrooms alters mood and behavior and reduces electrical use, which saves money and energy.

* Transportation.  Efficient, safe, and emission free are good guidelines.  Safe walking paths are ideal since they leave the least environmental impact (emission free!) and give children a chance to exercise and enjoy fresh air.  Enviro Girl lives in a rural district and she simply asked her school’s principal to have the buses turn off their engines while waiting for students at the end of the day.  By turning off their diesel engines, the air is cleaner, there is less noise pollution and the bus company saves money on fuel.  Encouraging car pooling is another way to reduce energy consumption.

* Good air quality.  Adequate ventilation and reduced environmental toxins mean healthier students.  Simply being able to open windows improves circulation.  This can also help reduce mold.

* Temperature control.  A well-constructed building won’t have drafty classrooms or overheated classrooms.  Radiant heat is one excellent way to efficiently heat large buildings because it maintains even temperatures and uses less fuel.  If your school district is building a new school, chime in on the heating/cool system to maximize your taxpayers’ investment.  Likewise, if your school buildings have extreme temperature fluctuations, advocate for an energy audit to discover if there are more efficient ways to heat/cool the school.

*  Water use.  Safe drinking water should be available at water fountains or spigots.  Low flow toilets and faucets reduce waste and use.  The greenest schools encourage students to bring their own water bottles and refuse to sell bottled water and soft drinks out of vending machines during the school day.

* Access to nature.  Fresh air, exercise, playground areas, “green spaces” for learning make children physically healthier and more able to think and learn.  Trees provide wind, dust and noise barriers while creating shade.  Gardens and native plantings can educate students in a range of topics, including nutrition and biology.

* Healthy food.  The Eco Women could write a week’s worth of posts on this issue, but chemical free, unprocessed, locally produced, nutritious food should be available for students.  Many schools have instituted “healthy snack” policies and banned vending and soda machines.  This is a good start.  The bigger issue is the food served on those cafeteria trays.  Many school cafeterias serve high-salt, high-sugar, high-fat foods like chicken nuggets and canned vegetables.  Enviro Girl was glad her children’s school began contracting with local farmers to make fresh produce available.  It’s a small step in the right direction, even though they have miles to go to make hot lunch healthy and palatable.  Most schools have hired out the cafeteria to a large corporation (like Aramark).  Aramark does provide healthy meal options to customers demanding them.  It’s a small thing to rally parents to put fresh fruit and vegetables on those cafeteria trays.

* No bad chemicals.  Chemicals are used all over school buildings–waste management, pest management, cleaning supplies, mold control, laboratory waste management.  Environmentally healthy schools adopt integrated pest management (IPM) and use nontoxic cleaning supplies.

* Curriculum.  Lessons in all subject areas should include environmental knowledge and awareness of environmental issues.  From Biology to Social Studies, Language Arts to Health, students should learn how their behavior and actions affect the world around them and how nature and people are deeply connected.  For teachers, Planet Pals and The Sierra Club are great resources.

All of these elements combine to make our students healthier and improve their ability to learn.  These factors also combine to make public education cost-effective by reducing consumption.  According to Building Green Schools, the cost benefits include: less electrical use, lowered emissions, and reduced illness.  Whether lobbying for nontoxic, biodegradable cleaning supplies, new ventilation systems, or improved lunch programs, there are many ways parents can advocate for a healthier school environment.  The majority of our nation’s schools don’t meet the healthiest, greenest standard.  These issues encompass more than the physical structure of a school.

Is your children’s school green?  Which of these areas might your school improve?

By coordinating parent support for these issues and lobbying your school board, your school’s administrators and your school’s PTA/PTO, you can make your school greener and healthier for everyone learning and working there.  By tackling one issue, one project, one area at a time, this challenge is less daunting and the payoff is immediate.    It’s about a cleaner planet AND our children’s safety.

All images are from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Green School Poster Program.

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Posted in 3 Rs, green around the world, health, issues, living green on a budget, school, transportation

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Solar Lighting For Any Occasion

Posted on July 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Enviro Girl has seen lots of outdoor solar lighting options–they’re available at any Big Box store and through most gardening catalogs.  What she’s struggled to find is affordable solar lighting for indoors.  It seems like the only way to power your house via solar is by hooking into a big, expensive system.  Enviro Girl has long wondered why the technology for solar-powered calculators (around since the 1980s!) can’t be applied to other appliances.

Imagine Enviro Girl’s delight to discover a company bringing this technology to homes around the world to power lights and charging stations–Nokero has committed to the task of developing low-cost solar-powered technology.

Most interesting to Enviro Girl is the Nokero 200, a solar-powered lightbulb that costs $20 and gives up to 6 hours of light.  She’s buying a couple of these lightbulbs, one for camping and another for her sons’ tree fort.  She’s going to check her husband’s cell phone for compatibility with the P101 Power Panel, too.   Enviro Girl will watch this company with interest, she’s confident they’ll develop even more low-cost solar solutions for home use.

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Posted in 3 Rs, electronics, green around the world, issues, living green on a budget

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Reduce Your Energy Bills in Under 1 Hour

Posted on June 22, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Last Christmas Enviro-Girl and her husband gave Mr. D’s mom a healthy credit on her electric bill instead of another candle or Christmas sweater or cheesy framed picture of her grandchildren. Mr. D’s mom lives alone in an old farmhouse on a fixed income so any way they can help gives her freedom to golf a little in the summertime or buy an impulse item at the local supermarket. Enviro-Girl estimated that the credit with the electric company should last her MIL the entire year and next Christmas they’d repeat the deposit. She came up with her estimate based on her electric bill for her family of five living in a house about twice the size of her MIL’s. Imagine her shock when she learned recently that Mr. D’s mom would run out of electric company credit in September!

Enviro-Girl suggested that her mother-in-law get an energy evaluation — most utility companies will send someone out to audit a household or business at no cost. While in college, Enviro-Girl and her roommates did this and got loads of free stuff to winterize their slum — plastic for wrapping windows, caulk and tape to keep the drafts sealed. Mr. D’s mom had never heard of such a thing, which does not speak well of the electric company in Iowa. In Wisconsin many utility companies heavily promote these services. By reducing customer use, utility companies keep their customers’ bills down and have an easier time meeting energy demands.  Enviro Girl also learned that many public libraries will check out electric meters that you can plug into any outlet to gauge the amount of electricity you use for various appliances.

Web sites like National Grid and Energy Right will allow you to self-audit your energy use and suggest ways to save money and energy.

Assessing energy use and suggesting ways to reduce it is best handled at a state or local level — in Wisconsin we spend more keeping warm than folks in Florida — and they spend more keeping cool. Obviously some fixes like improved lightbulbs or Energy Star rated appliances will help lower your utility bill regardless of where you live.   An energy audit doesn’t take much time, an hour or less, and can improve your energy efficiency by pointing out ways to conserve all over your home–from bedroom to attic.   Click on one of the links above or call your utility company and schedule an evaluation TODAY!

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Posted in 3 Rs, electronics, green around the world, house stuff, issues, living green on a budget, quick link

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An eco royal wedding?

Posted on April 28, 2011 by | 3 Comments

Like millions, no billions, of other people around the world, Recycla is eagerly anticipating tomorrow’s wedding for Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

This morning, Eco Karen has a very interesting blog post about the eco aspects of the royal wedding, including the following:

  • The bride is wearing a recycled engagement ring in the form of the late Princess Diana’s famous sapphire and diamond engagement ring.
  • All of the paper used for the wedding is either recycled or FSC-certified.
  • Food for the wedding reception and other events will be locally grown and some will be organic.
  • The flowers will be seasonal and, where possible, plants and flowers used will be live (not cut) and planted afterward.
  • Guests are being asked to donate to charity instead of buying gifts.

Now, all that said, Recycla is not naive and she understands that a great deal of effort, energy, materials, and money are going into this wedding. She does not for one minute suggest that you believe it is carbon neutral. However, she offers kudos to the bride and groom for at least trying to minimize the impact of their big day. After all, he is the future king of England and a certain level of pomp and ceremony are expected of him on what will be one of the most important days of his life. So the fact that the bride and groom are thinking about Planet Earth at all is commendable.

Tell the Eco Women: What do you think of the royal couple’s attempts to be eco with their wedding planning?

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Posted in green around the world