Green Living Guide: 10 Tips For Living Green
Top 10 Ways to Green Your Home – Inside and Out
This Earth Day, and on each subsequent day, get thinking about ways you can improve the way you live on this planet. It’s easy to become complacent with your ozone burning habits, but take a step outside of the comfort zone. There are a WORLD of possibilities if you want to lighten your tread on this very expendable Earth we live on.
The following list is a small sampling of how to add some good karma to your life, oftentimes while saving money.
HOME IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS
1. In the battle of bamboo vs. oak; consider oak bamboozled
Bamboo flooring is a sustainable resource. We’ve all heard this, but what does it mean to be a sustainable material or renewable resource? Simply put, a resource is considered renewable if it is replaced by natural processes at a rate comparable or faster than its rate of consumption. Bamboo can grow anywhere from 24 inches to 48 inches per day, and in some extreme conditions, it can grow 39 inches in one hour, for short periods of time! Oak, in comparison, can grow up to 24 inches in one year. That means bamboo grows 365 times as fast as oak!
2. Buy a countertop made from recycled glass!
Seriously folks. Why do you like granite? Is it because everyone else does? Let me go on the record as saying that your super sexy granite countertop will be yesterday’s news within the next ten years. Hopefully sooner. There are a growing handful of companies that agree with me and have developed a product that is made of recycled glass and concrete composite. It’s similar to terrazzo, and it’s gorgeous. Oop, and sustainable.
The following are a couple answers to FAQs on Vetrazzo’s website:
“Our largest source of glass is the neighborhood curbside recycling programs. (See if you can spot last night’s Heineken bottle…)”
“Vetrazzo is comparable in strength, scratch resistance, thermal resistance, durability, and care and maintenance to granite. Vetrazzo can be used wherever granite or other natural stone surfaces are used.
Because Vetrazzo is made entirely in the US and is composed of more than 85% recycled material, Vetrazzo is one of the most environmentally friendly surface materials on the market. Most granite sold in the US is imported from developing nations where it is quarried under unacceptable worker and environmental protection standards and a tremendous amount of energy is used shipping it around the world.” – www.vetrazzo.com
3. Use paints with low or no VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds)
With all the products available on the market now, there’s no reason to use standard paint any longer. And nobody likes the smell that lingers long after the paint has dried. Take a look at Benjamin Moore’s website. They have developed a line of several low or no VOC paints, including Natura, Aura and Ben. www.benjaminmoore.com
LANDSCAPING STRATEGIES
4. Drip-irrigation
Drip what? Drip irrigation minimizes the use of water and fertilizer by allowing water to drip directly into the root zone through underground tubing. Conventional irrigation has an efficiency rate of approximately 65% (meaning that 65% of the water is used directly by the plants), which drip-irrigation has an efficiency rate of about 90%!
Using sprinklers is a waste, as plants and soil can only absorb a certain amount of water at a time, while drip irrigation eliminates any runoff water or watering of above ground plants, which does not benefit the greenery
5. Spread mulch around plants and trees
Did you know there is actually a purpose to that labored task that you take on every spring? Spreading one to three inches of mulch around plants and trees keep a plant’s root system cool and moist in warm weather. Mulching also helps prevent evaporation. Check with your city, as some cities provide free or low cost compost and mulching to residents.
6. Leave the Clippings on the Lawn!
Think your landscaper is lazy because he doesn’t bag your clippings? Wish your mom would let you mulch the grass and leave it behind instead of dragging the bag of clipping out to the back woods every other row that you mow?
Turns out your landscaper is onto something, and you have an excuse as to why not to bag that grass next time:
Not only does bagging grass add waste to landfills (needless!), it is detrimental to the grass that gets left behind. Forty percent of the nutrients that grass needs are lost when clippings are taken away and not left to compost naturally.
7. Harvest your rainwater
Collect rainwater and storm runoff in cisterns, barrels or storage tanks. This approach is called rainwater harvesting. This is as easy as placing a barrel at the downspout of your gutter. This water can be stores and used throughout the landscape for watering purposed, or brought inside to water houseplants. Residential and commercial cisterns are available for purchase, and they include pumps, purifiers and other gadgets, but a simple barrel will do the trick, and you’l be amazed at how quickly that barrel fills up!
8. Go grab some worms off your driveway during the next rainstorm!
Vermiposting is a combination of composting and using worms to help the process along! You already know what composting is. According to calrecycle.ca.gov, organic materials (those which can be composted) make up approximately two thirds of the waste stream.
Vermiposting is becoming popular, as worms eat over half their body weight in organic matter per day. Just think of how happy these little guys will be! In the meantime, without knowing it, they’re creating ‘castings’, a beneficial byproduct full of microbes and nutrients, which makes great plant fertilizer.
An easy video on how to vermipost can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LVbNarW9Ng
QUICK FIXES
9. Don’t you dare put that empty ranch dressing bottle in the trash
Recycle, recycle, recycle. It’s so easy to throw away that jar of empty peanut butter. They are SUCH a pain to clean out! But come on, there are worse things to worry about in life than cleaning out a peanut butter jar. Like for example, running out of milk with a full sleeve of Oreos left, the return of pterodactyls or receiving an “Unsatisfactory” in the penmanship column of your 2nd grade report card. These are the things that should keep you awake at night. Recycling? Not one of these thing.
So man-up, clean out that peanut butter jar, and on a larger scale – establish a system in your household for organizing recyclables. Check with your municipal department for whether they accept comingled recycling or whether they require presorted materials. See if your neighborhood has curbside recycling, and if it doesn’t, petition to begin a program!
10. Replace all your incandescent bulbs with CFL (Compact Fluorescent) bulbs
If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, now’s the time! CFL bulbs are the real deal. A handful of countries, including the US, have begun to phase out incandescent bulbs. The US in particular aims to take incandescents off the market by 2020. California passed legislation in 2007 (they’re always ahead of the rest of us…) to phase out by 2018. Way to go Arnold.
An Energy Star qualifiect CFL will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about six months. These bulbs use 75% less energy and last about 10 times as long as an incandescent bulb.
Resources
Conncoll.edu
Green Building Options
Stanford Green Living Guide
Recycling Facts Graphic.
Oberlin Green Living
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