Green Is The New Black Volume III

The "five green tips" series continues!  To see volume I click here.  Volume II in the series can be found here.

It truly is easy being green.  Anything you do to improve your carbon footprint is a win!  You don't need to go "off grid" and become a vegan to live lightly. It's all about making good choices that are easier on the earth. Regular people like you and I with busy lives, children and careers who have been entrenched in a society that promotes consumables and waste CAN make a difference! Here are some more easy ways you can help:

11. Meatless Monday's. Eat just one less meal that contains meat per week and save 300lbs of CO2 per year.  You don't need to become a vegetarian, but if you replaced one steak dinner per week with a meatless alternative, you would not only save CO2, but you'd save 40,200 gallons of water in a year--that's roughly equal to the water used to take 1300 showers. For more information you can visit the Meatless Monday website.

12. If every North American citizen recycled only half of their annual waste, we'd recycle a 280 million TON mountain of trash--the equivalent of 550 Empire State buildings.  Here are some quick stats on recycling to explain the benefit: recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100 watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours or a TV for 2 hours. (EPA, 2008). Glass can be recycled forever.  Americans throw away enough glass bottles and jars every week to fill both the former world trade centre towers...imagine the impact to our landfill sites.  Plastic is also prime for recycling.  If every North American recycled just one out of every 10 plastic bottles, it would keep 200 million pounds of plastic out of landfill sites. 

13.  Paying bills online saves time, postage and trees.  If everyone switches to online banking, we could cut 2.1 million tons of CO2 a year!

14. Use cloth shopping bags. Over 500 billion petroleum-based plastic bags threaten wildlife, waste energy, pollute oceans, and clog our landfill sites each year.

15. Install ceiling fans to keep you cool in the summer. When winter rolls around, run the fans in reverse to push the warm air down and conserve heat. Remember, a two degree adjustment to your thermostat can prevent a TON of CO2 per year!

Do you have any ideas or tips, leave a comment and let us know about it! You can also tweet with us on Twitter.

Carbon Brutal To Carbon Neutral In 4 Easy Steps

I just posted a new article on Squidoo about living a greener life.  You can check it out by clicking on the title of this blog post. Let me know if you find it helpful!

Green is the New Black!

You don't have to wait until Earth Day to make some relatively small changes to your habits that can have a big effect!  Here are a few of my favorite "green" tips:

1. When you are in the market for a new computer, why not consider a laptop.  It saves space, is portable, and uses 5 times less energy than a desktop!

2. This is one of my recent favorites! Instead of sending your old rugs to the landfill, check with local animal shelters to see if they can use them. Old towels, blankets and sheets are also appreciated.

3. Buy shade grown coffee. It's grown naturally right under the rainforest canopy, preserving forests from clear-cutting and leaving more trees to absorb CO2.

4. The power of one: If every North American home replaced just one light bulb with a CFL bulb, we'd save more than enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year!

5. Washing clothes in cold water eliminates 2lbs of CO2 per load. In my household full of kids, that really adds up over the year!

Do you have any green tips you'd like to share? Please leave us a comment or chat with us on twitter.

5 Tips for Sustainable Living (That Real People Can Do!)

So often I come across blogs offering tips for living a more sustainable lifestyle, but the tips that they offer are not necessarily realistic for busy moms and dads.

It would be great if we could all ride our bicycles everywhere we go, but that's just not realistic for everyone. Electric cars? Another great idea, but not (yet) realistic for people who have to travel long distances.

I think we would all choose live in a way that is better for the planet provided it's realistic and convenient.  In light of that, I've put together five tips for sustainable living that are practical and realistic even if you have a crazy busy lifestyle.  It doesn't take a significant amount of effort to make a difference for the planet.

Here are my tips (in no particular order):

1. Buy a programmable thermostat. Did you know that this is one of the easiest things you can do to help fight global warming? They are relatively inexpensive (ranging from $30 to $300) and you can easily recoup the cost in the first year of using it. Create a program to lower the temperature of the house while you are at work and then have it start to warm up the house before you come home. Do the opposite in the summer.  Most will also let you create a different program for weekdays and weekends.  Once programmed, it takes no further effort. You'll not only save energy, but you'll save money too.

2. Buy Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL).  They are a bit more expensive that normal lightbulbs but this is offset by the fact that they last longer and more than pay for themselves in energy savings. If every North American home replaced only one incandescent bulb with a CFL bulb, it would reduce greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars in one year.

3. Use food grade stainless steel or reusable plastic water bottles that are tested and don't leach BPA.  I started using stainless steel bottles this year and my kids have been using BPA free plastic instead of disposable water bottles from the grocery store for a few years now.  I've found them far more convenient than expected. Not only are they BPA free but they can help reduce landfill.  You may be surprised to learn that North Americans sent upwards of 38 million plastic water bottles into landfill sites in 2006 alone.

4. Buy products that you know are better for the planet.  Fair Trade coffee now can be found in major Retailers at an equivalent cost to other good coffees.  Look for clothing, bedding, decor and other products from Retailers that screen their vendors for earth friendly practices.  You'll find a variety of eco-friendly, organic, fair trade items at EcoStylish Living. Shop smart. Spend your money with Retailers that sell products that are better for our planet.

5. Save money. Save trees. Go paperless.  Do your banking and credit cards online. Have them email your monthly statements to you instead of mailing them.  You could also move your magazine and newspaper subscriptions online.  Most major publications have this option available. The advantage is that you'll actually get your news faster than you did with a traditional newspaper.

I'd love to hear your ideas and tips.  Please leave a comment or chat with me on Twitter.

Are Bamboo Products Environmentally Friendly?

Bamboo has attracted some controversy in the past year about whether bamboo products, and in particular bamboo fabrics, are truly environmentally friendly.

There is no question that Bamboo is one of the most interesting and sustainable resources we have available to us. It is the fastest growing plant on earth reaching 50 feet tall within 5 years versus a hardwood tree that can take 30 years to achieve the same height. It produces more biomass and 30% more oxygen than a hardwood forest of a comparable size. As a result, it very effectively sequesters carbon (up to 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare) which helps reduce global warming. It can be selectively harvested so that it renews without replanting.  You may be surprised to learn that it is actually a grass, not a tree.

The truly fascinating thing about Bamboo is how versatile the plant and fibre can be for manufacturing.  You can find bamboo used for decor (furniture, baskets, dishes, decorations, etc) and clothing, but you can also find it used for flooring and other building materials.  I have bamboo flooring in my office and I love it.  It's truly beautiful.

The controversey does not centre around the use of the wood, but rather in the use of the fibre for clothing and bedding.  Bamboo fabric is luxuriously soft and far less expensive than silk and cashmere.  That, combined with it's "eco-friendly" reputation, has led it to become very popular in the fashion industry.  The issue with bamboo clothing is that the manufacturing cycle to process the fibre requires the use of heavy chemicals, some of which are toxic. Very, very little of today's bamboo fabrics could qualify as organic. I still believe the future is bright for this product.  New technologies are being developed that will eventually remove the harsh chemicals from the manufacturing process. At the moment, they are very expensive and it will take time to get to an affordable solution.  In the meantime, the source of the fibre continues to be a very sustainable source.  We truly struggled with whether we should carry bamboo fabrics at  EcoStylish.  After doing research on the vendors available we found one that we can believe in and who meets our strict criteria. We love that we can validate that they use sustainable practices. They travel to China twice a year to inspect the factory and talk with employees to ensure their code of conduct with regards to fair treatment and environmental policies are being followed.  The factory operates with a 97% closed loop cycle (which is fantastic for this industry) to recover the chemicals and reuse them.  The fibre leaves the process with no chemical residue and all clothing and bedding from this manufacturer are Oeko-Tex certified which is an industry standard that screens to ensure there are no harmful chemicals or residues in the fabric.
They also use AZO free dyes and microorganisms are used in the water to help purify it after the dying process.  The water emerges ph balanced, pure, clean and ready to be reused.  This manufacturer also gives back through charity, recycles, uses electric trucks, and purchases carbon offsets.  We are confident that they are a socially responsible company and we feel very good that they've gone above and beyond to ensure that their clothing and bedding have the smallest possible impact on our planet.  

Please let us know what you think by leaving a post or by talking to us on twitter.

Photo (c)Tomo.Yun (www.yunphoto.net/en/)