GREEN RICHES: HELP THE EARTH
& YOUR BUDGET
By
Jackie O’Donnell
Cover photo: Berry Creek Falls (Big Basin, CA), by Brian O’Donnell
In thanksgiving for God’s good, green Earth.
Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget
Copyright © 2009 by Jackie O’Donnell
All rights reserved
Smashwords Edition 1.0, October 2009
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Visit the author and sample her writing at www.JackieODonnell.net.
Other works by this author:
Paperback: Small Things Count—Simple Ways to Live Christ’s Love Each Day
(www.SmThingsCount.com)
Other e-books: go to www.smashwords.com and search “Jackie O’Donnell”
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“This we know... the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to earth. All things are connected, like the blood which connects one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” (Chief Seattle, 1854)
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Table of Contents
1 - Introduction
2 - Around Home
3 - Family Activities
4 - Out and About
5 - The Careful Consumer
6 - For the Greater Good
7 - The List
8 - Conclusion
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1 - INTRODUCTION
In these economic times, the old question “What’s in it for me?” is often not shameful selfishness but simple reality. So when we’re told we need to Go Green to save the planet, we wonder how we’re going to get ourselves and families through another week, let alone making sure our grandchildren inherit a clean, green world.
We’ve all heard the debate over global warming. We’ve read conflicting facts and opinions by the experts about how much of it is being caused by human activity. If scientists can’t agree, why should we put ourselves, and our shrinking wallets, to the task of preserving the Earth?
Because we can see how dirty our life-sustaining air and water are getting. We are aware that certain beautiful animals have lost their habitats and died out. And because, in this case, we can have our luscious green-apple pie and eat it, too.
There is so much we can do to save ourselves time and money and enhance our lives while still having a positive impact on our earthly home. The ideas presented to you here are not designed to be all-inclusive but to get you thinking in a new light—beyond fluorescent. Many of these ideas will be new to you, others not so new. What will be very different, however, is how you are invited to look at them. In the past you may have dismissed them because you thought they were too much trouble or cost too much. Accept this invitation to examine them with freshly cleaned glasses. Read about specific ways in which you and your family personally gain right now by carrying out the suggestion, as well as how your actions will make a difference to the world your grandchildren will live in.
To give you a clearer picture of the impact of our actions, we’ve included a number of facts and figures. These have been taken from a variety of sources, from studies made by the EPA and other organizations, to data from power companies, to both sides of the global warming issue. When specific dollar-amount savings to you are mentioned, they are for an average family of four living in a typical American community, whatever that is. Your actual savings, of course, may differ. But the figures give you the general idea.
Additionally, when savings to the United States as a whole are cited, remember that you are part of the population which reaps those benefits. If you want to know more precisely what the savings would be to you and your household, you’ll have to dig out a calculator and your bills, look at unit prices and your consumption, run the numbers, then figure the amount you’d save.
The suggestions in this book are not organized in the form of lists of item after unrelated item. Rather, the approach is a problem-solution mode, which is more like how you handle situations in real life. One problem may be how to cut down on your food bill and on wasted food that ends up in the landfill. You’ll find a set of solutions, with information about how much good they will do you and the environment. Or you want to fight the flu and colds. Read the section giving advice plus why the recommendations are beneficial to both you and the earth. For those of you who can’t live without general lists, we’ve included one at the end, giving short ideas to stimulate further thinking.
The suggestions have been divided into six areas: Around Home; Family Activities; Out and About; The Careful Consumer; For the Greater Good; The List. To get started, try choosing a single problem area each week for five weeks. This will establish a new mind-set, stimulating your brain to come up with ideas of your own.
Try it. You have nothing to lose. You’ll learn to like the personal rewards, the green earth, and the feeling that you’ve done something worthwhile.
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2- AROUND HOME
Because we spend most of our lives in and around our homes, this is where the greatest potential impact can occur. On the other hand, it’s home, the place we take for granted. We relax there. We also create tremendous waste there.
The suggestions in this section deal with daily family activities. Naturally, we’ll take a close look at the appliances we use. Additionally, we’ll discuss areas like cleaning, cooking, decorating, handling unwanted mail, gardening, and just plain having fun. Finally, we’ll remind you of some wasted freebies that we all tend to overlook.
These are in no particular order. They’re not grouped into subjects (e.g., all appliance-topics together). This is on purpose, to get you to consider and apply one specific problem-area at a time before moving onto another. Hopefully, you’ll say to yourself, “Yup, that’s my situation. And now that I think about it, I could also. . . .”
Go for it!
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Tame Those Little Household Gizmos
The Dept. of Energy predicts that most of the growth in energy use in the U.S. over the next 20 years will come from small electric household gizmos. They already account for a fifth of all electricity we use in our homes, using five times more power today than the average 1950s home. And that figure is growing.
We can reduce our use of nonessential electricity-eaters. Do we really need a can opener, pencil sharpener, or toothbrush that’s powered? Even the battery-operated ones must be recharged. Likewise, have we allowed some things to become so much a part of our lives that we hardly notice them, even though they add to our energy use? For example, instead of using a couple of lightweight, yet warm, blankets on our bed when it turns chilly, we dig out the electric blanket, frequently using it from when there’s just a hint of winter in the air far into Spring. Sometimes it’s only turned on low, but it’s on. That blanket, when used 8 hours a day for 120 days a year, burns 175 kilowatt hours. Or rather than towel/air drying our hair when staying home alone or planning to wear a coif-smashing hat, we run a hair dryer, sometimes twice a day. 15 minutes a day adds up to 100 kilowatts a year. Then, again, we keep that radio or TV on as background noise. Only 2 hours of radio a day equals 73 kilowatts, while 3 daily hours of TV takes 264 annual kilowatts.
We don’t need to do away with all of our electric spoilers, just the non-essential ones, and cut back on our use of others.
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Fresh as All Indoors
Because most of us spend 90% of our time indoors, we want to keep our interior air clean. There is an eco-nomical way to do that. Air purifiers are not the answer. All use energy and some produce a quantity of harmful ozone equal to or greater than what we’d get by sticking our heads out the window. The ionizing purifiers are better along these lines, but they can interact with additives in cleaning products, defeating the purpose of having the machine. Best bet if you must use one, of course, is a model with a carbon or HEPA filter.
On the other hand, nature has provided for us. Why buy air fresheners that perfume our homes when plants will do the job while adding warmth and charm to our living space? Plants absorb chemical vapors, like those given off by household cleaners. Happily, the plants which do the best job include ones we often give and receive as gifts (keep that in mind for the next gift-giving occasion). These include Christmas cactus, poinsettia, spider and rubber plants, areca and lady palms, philodendron, Boston ferns, and English ivy. But we must be sure to use organic pesticides and fertilizers so we don’t undo the good we did to begin with.
On holidays, when we spruce up the house, we can make those plants do double-duty by creating decorative centerpieces and table decorations featuring these plants and other natural materials from the yard, like gourds, pine cones, leaves, even vegetables or fruit which we can eat later. What we end up with is clean air and beautiful surroundings, gladly provided by Mother Nature.
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Let There Be (Less) Light
Light pollution is a huge, overlooked problem. It interferes with our vision when we drive at night and can affect our bio-rhythms and sleeping patterns. It impacts wildlife breeding and migration. It wastes energy and leads to more greenhouse emissions. Surprisingly, in the U.S. the major source of this pollution is unused light, which costs over a billion dollars a year to produce. Others calculate the amount wasted at between $5 billion and $10 billion, but they may be counting in the massive amounts of oil and coal used in producing light. Unused light is what is left on when not needed, is purely decorative, or spills over into areas where it isn’t needed or even wanted (think about those bright billboards that distract drivers or your neighbor’s security lights spilling into your bedroom at night).
You can help while saving money. Use more efficient non-incandescent lights, making sure they’re certified by the International Dark-Sky Association as “sky friendly.” They are low-glare and economical. Install fixtures that provide only the amount of light you desire, aimed not up into the sky but directly at what you want to illuminate. Install timers, motion sensors, or other control elements. Consider where you actually need safety lights, keeping in mind that that there are no studies to show they actually deter crime. Think about putting in low-powered lighting. The low wattage helps the light pollution problem and saves on your electrical costs. Turn off outdoor lights when not in use, especially during those hours between dusk and dawn when lighting isn’t needed for activity. If you don’t need it, don’t use it; if you do need it, use it wisely.
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Kitchen Considerations
The garbage disposal is one of the most misunderstood household appliances. People think they’re doing a good thing by reducing the amount of garbage that would be going into the landfill. Actually, this device should be used far less. Between faucets washing scraps down the drain and the sewage treatment plant, 500,000 gallons of water are wasted daily. As an alternative, cook foods which leave little waste. For example, unpeeled vegetables generate less waste and provide more nutrition. Also, rather than pushing leftovers down the disposal, be creative with them, combining them into other dishes, using them as sides, or letting family members choose from portions of them in a weekly smorgasbord Turn what remains into compost to nourish your plants, eliminating a trip to the nursery for plant food.
On the other hand, DO use the dishwasher. It uses less water than hand-washing, potentially saving 20 gallons a day. But DON”T pre-rinse those dishes. Tests show it isn’t needed with modern machines, and pre-rinsing wastes up to 2.5 gallons per minute. Of course, you’d always use the lightest setting to do the job and save as much as $40 a year by running full loads. Finally, open the door to let dishes air dry, thus salvaging 15%-50% of the energy the machine uses (depending on its age and basic efficiency) and getting as much as $30 off the electricity portion of your power bill. Smart use of the dishwasher, then, especially when combined with sparing use of the garbage disposal, can make a big difference in the kitchen.
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Cold Facts about Food Storage
Make your freezer and fridge work for, not against, you. Taking some simple steps can reduce their energy use by 30% or more. You already know to set the refrigerator no lower than 37 degrees and the freezer to 0 for maximum efficiency and try to minimize the number of times the doors are open. But where are they located? Neither appliance should be placed in a sunny spot. If they’re standing in an area above 70 degrees, they use 2.5% more power for each and every degree above that temperature. Next, although over-packing them will prevent necessary air circulation, they should be kept filled. In other words, cashing in on sales and setting aside dinner leftovers for reuse helps increase your freezer’s and refrigerator’s efficiency. Another help is, whenever possible, to use glass containers, which keep food colder. You probably have many sitting around in the form of empty applesauce and jelly jars. Just remember to loosen the lid enough for air to escape during the freezing process, to keep the jars from cracking. When there’s a power failure, keep the doors closed to maintain coldness for a longer time. Finally, don’t neglect the coils (in back or behind that little panel low down in the front). The dust they collect reduces the appliance’s efficiency as much as 6%, so vacuum them several times a year.
There are further considerations when it’s time to replace them. You already know to go with Energy Star, which can shave $55 off your annual power bill. But the style is important, too. Avoid side-by-side refrigerator-freezers, which can use 20% more energy than the ones with the freezer on top or bottom.
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To CFB or Not to CFB?
Replacing one light bulb with fluorescent, which lasts almost 10 times longer, can save 100 pounds of carbon dioxide, ¼ ton of coal, plus all the sulfur dioxide, other pollutants, and acid rain that coal would have caused. But what does it do for you? Why spend the extra money for these Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs)?
First, they provide the same amount of light, sometimes even more visible light, by using less than half the energy, meaning lower electrical bills. The $10 yearly savings may seem small, but that’s $10 per frequently-used light. This makes CFLs more efficient for areas where you may want to leave lights on for long periods of time for safety or for your business. Some fluorescents now even come with a dimmable option for setting a nice atmosphere for a romantic evening while conserving more electricity. An added benefit over incandescent bulbs is the fact that CFLs produce less heat to bleed into your room on a hot evening. Actually, it’s exactly because of this ability to use energy more efficiently that these lights will last 5-10 times longer than the old fashioned incandescent bulb. At about $5 each, a CFL pays for itself in six months, then continues taking little slices off of your electric bill.
After you’ve been hooked on the efficient CFLs, you may decide to change out some of them for LEDs. Those lights really last—sixty times longer than incandescent and six times the CFLs. Another factor in their favor is that they don’t contain the mercury that CFLs do. Whichever you use, though, brings you one step closer to truly “seeing the light.”
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Hard-Working Beauties
Plants are more than sparks of beauty. Put them into some soil and give them a modicum of care, and they spend their lives working for us. They can offer fencing and privacy around our homes and act as a barrier to discourage ants and other pests. They can give us free fresh fruit for our tables and cooling shade to slice 10% - 15% from our air conditioning bill. A shade tree rather than a palm is best, absorbing a ton of carbon dioxide and giving us more breathable air, plus homes for critters and birds. Inside, plants can cleanse our air, provide natural fragrance to freshen our homes, and create a warm, colorful atmosphere. Some can be used for medicinal purposes, while others season our food. Ultimately, when they die, they become mulch, food for other plants in our garden.
They can be our garbage cans, too. Outside, we mix our plant trimmings with food scraps, making compost to work into the soil around trees. Inside, we toss used coffee grinds and tea from soggy bags onto houseplants, which then thrive on the nitrogen provided. In both instances, our real garbage cans remain cleaner and dryer—less full, too, so we can use a smaller one—and we spend less on chemicals and fertilizers to provide food for our plants.
Beauty and unending service: what a gift!
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Return to Sender
The nearly four million tons of junk mail we Americans receive each year is annoying, spilling out of our mailboxes and hiding important mail in its folds. Many of us have had to pay late fees because we found a bill after the due-date, caught between the ad for timeshares and the Crafty Consumer catalog promising fantastic savings if we order NOW! Meanwhile, all of us are paying increasing taxes and fees for garbage collection and will have to pay for more landfills if we don’t cut back on our trash. Junk mail affects us in other ways, as well. Every year, the production of junk mail takes 100 million trees, so each mature tree cut down for unwanted mailers would have consumed thirteen more pounds of carbon dioxide per year. The energy saved by recycling is worth noting, too. A single ton of paper can heat a home for six months, and one day’s worth of junk mail can heat 250,000 homes.
We can fight back by signing up to refuse it. That can be done online at various sites. Some, like DirectMail.com and CatalogChoice, do it for free, although some others charge a fee. Or you can contact any company, from your bank to those sending you advertising mailers, with instructions to remove you from all of their contact lists (so you get put onto their do-not-call list at the same time). The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Web site tells you how to stop all or some of that junk mail and avoid getting on junkers’ lists in the future. The key factor in all this is YOU. Junk mail will continue littering your life unless you take steps to insist that it stop.
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Stop Hidden Midnight Snacking
Our homes contain a multitude of idle energy-gobbling sidekicks we don’t give much thought to. There are televisions, phone chargers, printers, digital camera docks, PDAs, MP3—most sitting around munching energy in their spare time. In fact, 40% of the electricity used in the average home goes to electronics when they’re powered off but still plugged in. The TV is a good example. All those turned-off TVs in the U.S. use $750 million worth of electricity each year.
The solution is simple. Just unplug everything when not in use. (Well, maybe not the DVR. Although it continually draws 25-45 watts, after being unplugged it can take 24 hours to retrieve the data.) Even sleep-mode draws electricity. For maximum benefit, including as much as 5% off your electric bill, unplug them from the wall. An easier, safe way to “unplug” one or more items is by using a power strip with surge protector. How much can you save yearly? Try $10 for the cell phone charger and $4 for the computer speakers, plus. . . .
With some of these power-hungry devices, unplugging saves as much as 40% of the electricity that would have been used. Disconnecting all appliances will save the oil and coal needed to produce electricity and avoid 190 pounds of greenhouse gasses. If we avoided all that phantom load, we could close down 17 power plants. Most of us wouldn’t mind paying a little less on our utility bill, either.
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Leftovers Again? Yum!
Leftovers are our friend. Especially when we plan for them. One way to do this is to cook double recipes and freeze half for a quick, easy second dinner later. Certain dishes, like sauces and stew, are always tastier the second time around, anyway. What happens when your teenager eats double and you don’t have a full second dinner left? Eat leftovers for lunch tomorrow or freeze them for later. This gives you something different from sandwiches for lunch and a warm meal when the weather is cold.
The other way is to take a reusable container with you to restaurants (you don’t want to use their Styrofoam boxes now, do you?). Today’s portions tend to be larger than most of us can or should eat at one sitting. Take home half a meal or simply the rest of the spaghetti and serve it as a side dish with whatever else you cook one night. Or eat it for lunch.
Wise use of leftovers saves energy (PG&E and yours) while cutting your food bill. You’ll stop paying for restaurant or home-cooked food which you only throw away. Consider this: 25% of all the food produced in this country is wasted, ending up filling 12% of the landfills. How much of that 30 million tons a year does your family contribute?
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A Real Turn-Off
The debate continues: “off or on?” In point of fact, by turning off your computer at night you’ll use about 75% fewer kilowatts. This makes a big difference in an office, where computers use more electricity than all other equipment combined, but it also helps at home. In other words, your 1, 2, or 3 household computers may be sleeping, but they’re gobbling up power in the process.
While you’re at it, set your computer to go to stand-by after a short period of non-use. Those dancing elephants or that slideshow of the grandkids can be a fun screen-saver, but they eat up about as much power as regular processing. That’s why Telstra, Australia’s largest phone/Internet provider, decided to eliminate their logo as a screen-saver and go to black screens, thus cutting 646 tons of carbon dioxide—equivalent to getting 140 cars off the road for a year.
At the end of the day disconnect that computer from the wall. As mentioned above, phantom load will gnaw away energy savings gained during the day.
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Foiled Again!
One of the biggest wastes in our kitchens is in storage. In our less aware days, we covered bowls or wrapped and stored food using a piece of plastic wrap or baggie, which we tossed into the garbage after using. That was before we were bombarded by messages telling us how bad we are for using so much plastic in our lives. Therefore, we turned to aluminum foil. This was a good move. Because a piece of foil can be washed, dried, folded, and kept for use another day, it lasts a long time, making it quite economical. After repeated uses it’s eventually time to put it into the recycling bin. But it needs to be washed and dried first, and it’s such a small piece….so it ends up in the garbage, instead. Although it’s almost completely recyclable, every year Americans add thousands of tons of foil to the landfill, where it will take 400 years to break down. To regain some of the space, some landfills incinerate aluminum, which gets rid of it but spews toxic gas and metals into the air. The lesson, of course, is to use the “good guy” aluminum foil, use it multiple times, then recycle it properly.
We also fail to use storage containers we’ve already bought, preferring to visit Dollarama to pick up cheap plastic bowls and boxes to squirrel away sauces, dry pasta, and cookies. Yet, we’ve thrown away the round cardboard oatmeal box, the instant coffee and Ragu jars. . . what else? Because they have lids, they’d easily meet many of our storage needs. Why not make them work for us for a long while before consigning them to the recycle bin? Beats standing in that long dollar-store checkout line any day.
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Soaked by a Lie
Warning: lawns and plants lie. They tell you they’re thirsty, even after you’ve watered for half an hour, getting you to waste water that will only evaporate rather than doing your garden any good. Don’t believe them. Rather, know how to be an effective yet conservative gardener. For instance, watering prior to 7 AM, before the heat of the day sets in, is the most efficient. It saves 15-40 gallons of water from evaporating. Try watering only three days a week, which is all most gardens really need, thus preventing a 35-50 gallon loss. If you want to make especially good use of resources, collect rainwater and gray water from bathtubs, sink, and washer to quench your garden’s thirst.
It’s equally important to use the right system. Soaker hoses and drip irrigation ensure that almost all of the moisture ends up reaching the roots. Similarly, a sprinkler that spreads large drops of water will supply more water to the plants; one with smaller drops or a fine mist wastes water through evaporation, especially if it’s breezy.
This may be too much for you. An alternative could mean a one-time cost and very little maintenance. That is, pull out the plants you now have and re-landscape, this time with rocks, wood chips, or native plants, which don’t need much water. You can even surround your home with a living fence by bordering your property with trees or shrubs that grow well in your area. Such a “fence” achieves the privacy and security you want while adding ever-changing color and beauty. It helps clean the air and provides homes and food for your furry and winged neighbors. Meanwhile, it saves you money you’d have spent over the years on water usage and maintaining a wood or metal fence.
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“Green” is Good—Or Is It?
Beware of “green” cleansers. Not only are they quite expensive, but, in addition to eco-friendly plant-based ingredients, some contain unhealthy chemicals which the label neglects to mention, like surfactants. Sometimes simpler is just better. A good example relates to dusting. We don’t want to dry-dust, which throws the pet dander and dust mites into the air to be inhaled. Yet the aerosol sprays not only are costly but also remain suspended in the air a long time, again for us to inhale. The American Lung Association says that even non-toxic particles—although many aerosols contain harmful chemicals—damage our lungs. The easy answer is a clean, barely damp cloth, which will pick up and hold the dust but not damage surfaces.
Homemade cleaners are another possibility. They’re safer and use inexpensive ingredients: white vinegar to deodorize and disinfect; Castile soap for cleaning; baking soda for deodorizing and scrubbing; Borax for scrubbing; lemon juice for disinfecting; olive oil for polishing. The Net is filled with recipes using these items. Mix them up and put them into old spray bottles that used to do the intended job. Their familiar labels make them easier to identify. Since they’re sitting around anyway, who wants to buy new plastic bottles!
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Dump the Dump
Now that you’ve cleaned out the garage, you need to figure out how to get rid of all that stuff. You could put out $500-$1200 for a dumpster in your driveway for a week (the neighbors love it). You could hire someone to come haul it away. Maybe advertise that zebra-striped couch through a free ad on Freecycle.com. What you should not do, of course, is to contribute it to the 600 tons of such waste being added each day to the dump.
That dirty motor oil you refrained from pouring down the sewer? Call the city’s recycling company and ask that containers be dropped off for you to use at curbside collection. While you’re transferring the gunk, think about the fact that each gallon of recycled oil can produce enough energy to watch 60 football games or dry your hair 216 times. Old blankets, towels, rags, and clothing? Check with the charity that drops off “We’ll be in your neighborhood” cards to see if they’ll take them. Often, a charity will reuse what is in good shape and sell the rest to someone who recycles textiles. The charity gets both usable clothes and money, and you get the closet space and tax write-off. As for all that other junk, find out where to recycle specific items (batteries, paint, cardboard, etc.) by going to earth911.org. Other Web sites offer exchanges between those who have and those who want (there are even ones for packing boxes and cardboard). See how easy it is to be an eco-friendly cleaner-upper?
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“Monday, Wash Day. . .”
Each laundry day, save 80%-90% of your washer’s energy. It’s easy. With the typical washing machine, that much energy is used solely for heating the water. Instead, wash almost everything in cold. Modern detergents work with any water temperature, making it unnecessary to use hot water unless you need to get out oil or other tough stains. In that case, use warm instead of hot water, which takes half the energy. You can also use a spot-remover or pre-soak the clothes. Using cold water can save $60 a year on your heating bill and the earth 6.5 pounds in emissions for each load of laundry.
Water consumption is another consideration. 14% of the total use of water in the average household is due to washing clothes. Part of that is because people don’t always wait until they have enough laundry to fill the machine, yet they don’t lower the water level on the short load. Running only full loads can mean using 3400 gallons of water less each year.
Now, if you’re really energetic and want to get some exercise while using absolutely no electricity and little water, hand-crank machines are still available on the market.
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Olive Oil—Not-so-Modern Miracle
Discover olive oil. Preferably organic olive oil. Everyone knows it’s healthier, with its good fatty acids and no pesticides. A Greek study has shown that organic olive groves emit less CO2 while being as profitable for the farmers as typical olive groves. Olive oil is more economical than you’d think. Although it tends to be more expensive than regular cooking oils, it goes farther and is more versatile, particularly if you get the light kind suitable for baking (works great in place of greasing coffee cake baking dishes and muffin tins).
This miracle oil has a variety of other uses, so don’t throw it out when it has aged past the time you want to cook with it. It acts as a nice moisturizer for cuticles and nails, a massage oil (use the extra light), or a makeup remover. It can shine shoes and, mixed 3 parts to 1 part lemon juice, polish wood furniture. It can fix squeaky hinges and jammed zippers. Some even take a teaspoon of it to sooth a sore throat, while others claim it prevents snoring if taken at bedtime and gas if you take a teaspoon of it in the morning on an empty stomach.
The question is, why buy all the other products with their expense and toxics when Nature provided such a wonder in the olive?
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The Delinquent Dryer
The clothes dryer is another potential criminal. Take measures to arrest its energy-thieving tendencies. For starters, be vigilant about cleaning the lint filter often, along with the vent from drum to outdoor outlet at least twice a year. This results in 30% less energy loss (up to $40 per year) and guards against dryer fires, which are usually caused by blocked vents. Another measure is to shorten laundry drying time. Add two dry towels to the load. They’ll draw moisture out of the other items, and the redistributed moisture takes a shorter time to dry.
Do you use dryer sheets to fluff your laundry? After every 50 loads you spend $5-$10 for another box of them, and you’ve tossed 50 chemical-laden sheets into the landfill. Replace them with dryer balls. Use plastic ones if you must, but be sure they aren’t made out of carcinogenic PVC. A better option is to buy (about $7 each) wool dryer balls which do the job and cut drying time by 25% - 45%, depending on size of load. Or you can make your own inexpensive wool ones, any size you want, using 100% non-machine washable wool felting yarn. Put 3 or 4 small ones into a sock or nylon hose, tied off from each other with cotton or acrylic yarn or string. Wool dryer balls help fluff your laundry without harming the environment and save you money you can splurge on that new sweater you’ve had your eye on.
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Nothing to Sneeze At
It seems like each year we face a new strain of flu. And, of course, colds are always with us. Over the years hand sanitizers have become a “must-have” product to protect us from those worrisome germs. The problem is, hand sanitizers are helping to create antibiotic-resistant “super bugs” and polluting our water with chemicals. Although most brands are not overly expensive, the cost adds up over the winter, especially when used by all members of a household.
Here’s an option: disinfect hands with natural antibacterial ingredients, such as organic alcohol and essential oils like thyme oil and lemon oil. You can make up a batch which you dispense from decorative bottles you keep in various parts of the house. Another idea is to lather your hands with plain soap and scrub for 20-30 seconds. Twenty-five years of studies have shown that bacteria is killed just as well with regular soaps, most of which already contain triclosan, the most common antibacterial agent. Moreover, you don’t need to use hot water. In order to kill bacteria, the water would have to be boiling, so warm water does the job and offers the comfort level most of us want.
Both methods tend to dry out skin. Moisturize your hands with products containing jojoba, coconut, or olive oil. Note that organic oils are absorbed more quickly into the skin than others. Rub them in and continue about your day with soft, de-germed hands.
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White Knight to the Rescue
There’s a product already in your pantry that can help your family avoid substances that are toxic to them and to the planet: white vinegar. Use it instead of commercial products for
cleaning home and car, deodorizing, killing germs, eliminating laundry stains and odors, controlling weeds, ants, slugs, fleas on pets, soothing sunburn and insect bites, cooking, and hundreds of other purposes. Just be sure it’s white vinegar, as the red will stain.
For example, regular grocery-store white vinegar (5% solution) will rid a surface of 80% of viruses and up to 99% bacteria, plus over 80% of mold. Compare that $3 - $4 gallon jug of vinegar, which you’ll dilute for most uses, with how much you spend on all those specialized cleaners you buy. You’ll discover a savings of as much as 75 cents on the dollar. Vinegar, which is fine to ingest, is also safer for your family, considering that 10% of the calls to poison control centers regarding exposure to toxics are the result of common household cleaning products. Your nose will appreciate it, too, as, unlike most chemical-formula cleaners, vinegar’s smell quickly dissipates. Now, go check to see if you’ve run out and, if so, get it onto your grocery list.
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What Goes Around. . . .
Improve your home’s appearance with decorative and useful reversible ceiling fans. They’ll enable you to use less air conditioning, like when all you need is some air moving around you as you try to sleep on a hot summer’s night. The fan allows you to set your air conditioner about five degrees higher, still maintaining your comfort. That’s because the moving air makes you feel cooler as it evaporates the moisture from your skin. In cold weather, reverse the direction of the blades from clockwise, which moves the air down from the ceiling, to counter-clockwise, which takes otherwise wasted warm air that has risen to the ceiling and pushes it down the sides of the room to distribute heat more evenly. You are more comfortable despite adjusting the heat to a lower temperature. The savings you reap vary with the cost of power in your area. They add up to 3% - 5% for each degree you adjust your thermostat. Keep in mind, though, that you have to actually use the fans rather than simply admiring their classic beauty.
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The Ever-Lovin’ Oven
Save oven-energy. For one thing, you don’t really need to pre-heat for most items, except for cakes and pastries, and possibly a fancy soufflé. Also, keep that door closed. Rather than losing up to ¼ of the heat by opening the oven during baking—and the loss occurs every time you open that door—use the window to take a look. Then, turn off the heat fifteen minutes in advance, even more for foods baking 40 minutes or so, to let the trapped heat finish the job. Ovens retain their heat for some time, the temperature decreasing very slowly. Once in a while you may have to turn the oven back on for a bit, but that seldom happens. At the end of the cooking cycle, if it’s a cold day, rather than wasting the heat by keeping it trapped inside the oven, remember to leave the door open, releasing it to heat your kitchen.
Keeping the oven clean helps, too, especially in gas ovens, where the residue and ash cause the oven surface to take longer to come up to temperature. With a clean oven, there’s even less need to pre-heat. Although cleaning benefits decrease in electric ovens, whose heating elements are inside the cooking space itself, you don’t want to waste the large amount of electricity the self-cleaning feature takes when some soap and water will proved the cleanliness you want but don’t really need. Let the oven work for you, not against you.
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Freebies
How about something for free? Be more “green” by using what has already been paid for. Here are some cost-free examples of how we can change old behavior into new actions to help ourselves and our environment.
Water from pet bowls: (old) poured down the drain; (new) used to water plants indoors and out.
Water from fishbowls and aquariums: (old) dumped down the drain; (new) give houseplants water and nutrients freely provided by the fish.
Dying cell phone: (old) plugged into a wall socket to recharge with household electricity; (new) plugged into car to recharge while we drive.
Oven turned off after baking: (old) door kept closed; (new) door left open so leftover heat warms the kitchen.
Germy, dirty kitchen sponge: (old) tossed out in favor of a new one; (new) run through the dishwasher with a load of dishes to get clean and disinfected.
Coffee grinds/tea leaves: (old) thrown into household garbage, increasing moisture and smell there; (new) used to add nitrogen and moisture-preserver to house plants.
Junk-mail advertiser packets: (old) thrown away, unopened; (new) packet opened, single-sided slips cut in half and fastened together for use as a notepad.
Drop in temperature: (old) thermostat turned up for more heat; (new) warmer clothing put on.
Bubble wrap: (old) some used for packing, the rest thrown away; (new) used to insulate a drafty window (cut to fit window, spray a mist of water on the window, press bubble wrap against it, where it stays in place the entire winter).
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3 - FAMILY ACTIVITIES
You’re now convinced that there’s a lot you can do around your home. Why do it alone? Families were intended to work together for their common good. Expanding that idea to the human family means taking care of our larger home, the Earth. Get the others in your household involved, whether traditional family members or your family of roommates. You’ll reap copious benefits--financial, personal, and global.
In this section, all activities can be carried out by one person but are more effective and more interesting with others involved. To be blunt, we probably won’t do most of these things on our own. We need encouragement. Sharing the results is awfully nice, too.
Once again, the topics vary. We’ll start out with the most obvious one, recycling, then move to other subjects. We’ll take a look at eating habits, clothing, and physical activity, ending with a crazy idea. All are cost-effective while helping the environment. In the process, earn a special bonus, one that grows out of your family’s shared experiences.
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We-Cycling
Take recycling seriously as a family, setting up easy-to-reach containers for items you’ll return for cash to a center and for those to be picked up at your curb weekly. Make certain that all family members use them. A California family of four, on average, will consume more than 2,000 CRV beverage containers in one year. That’s a lot of refundable CRV they’ve paid. Your family may use even more. Don’t forget those sports drinks, enhanced and flavored waters, plus V-8 and other canned juices. Look at your grocery receipt to see if you paid CRV. If so, make sure the empties end up in the “return for cash” bin. If not, place them into the curbside bin, along with other recyclables, like plastic bags.
Regular, effective recycling allows you to use the smaller garbage can, saving you money on your monthly fees. When you weaken and think, “It’s only a nickel,” remember how much you love trips to the ocean and consider this: after decades of plastic waste disposal, there is now more plastic than algae in the ocean. On a more personal level, the energy from that soda can you just threw away could have run your TV for three hours.
Why worry about it? It takes quit a long time for things to break down naturally: orange peels 6 months; paper 2-5 months; plastic bag 10-20 years; Styrofoam cup 50 years; aluminum can 80-200 years; glass bottle 1 million years; disposable diaper 450 years; plastic bottles 450 years/never. Unless we do something about it, our great-great-grandchildren will still be dealing with our garbage.
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A Meaty Subject
Eat less meat. As it is, Americans eat far more meat than is good for us. In 2007, each of us ate more than 221 pounds of red meat and poultry. You know from food-shopping for your family that meat is expensive, and the World Health Organization has found a link between meat consumption and cancer. Diabetes and obesity are other potential health factors. Cutting down on it, then, makes sense. It also makes sense to the earth. That pound of beef took 5 pounds of grain, 2500 gallons of water, and lots of fuel to bring it to your table. Additionally, meat production accounts for 18% of the human-induced greenhouse gases, meaning that skipping meat one day a week is similar to removing 8 million cars from our roads—50% better than switching to hybrid cars. Then there’s the great quantity of land used for producing meat—30% of the land-surface of the earth—and the fact that meat takes ten-to-twenty times more energy than grain to produce.
We’re a meat-eating society, used to our summer BBQs and ballpark hotdogs. Going strict vegetarian may not be for you. However, eating less meat and adding more fruit, vegetables, and grains to your diet can only lead to a smaller grocery bill greater personal and global health.
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Slow the Flow
Every day we waste a large amount of one of our most precious resources, water. Yet, working together as a family, we can easily reduce the amount to do dishes, wash veggies and hands, brush teeth, and carry out other daily activities. We need only a third of the water most of us use to do these jobs, wasting the rest. Naturally, it would be best not to run the water unless we’re directly using it. It’s a habit to leave it running while we shave, scrub our soapy hands for 20-30 seconds, peel potatoes, wash dishes, etc. We don’t really need to waste all that water, such as the two gallons we use while brushing our teeth. If we can’t turn off the flow we can at least reduce it. For most tasks, all that’s needed is a stream of water the thickness of a pencil.
Other ways to conserve are to run the dishwasher and clothes washer only with full loads (save up to 1,000 gallons a month) and turn off water while we wash our hair (save up to 150 gallons a month). We can avoid using the garbage disposal often (see article on garbage disposals); when replacing the refrigerator or air conditioner, upgrade to one that is cooled by air rather than water; in hot weather, keep a container of water in the refrigerator rather than running the tap often to get cool water to drink; rinse vegetables and fruit in a bowl of water, not under the tap, then water the houseplants with it; keep a frozen container of water from cooking vegetables, adding to it until there’s enough to give the otherwise-lost nutrition to homemade soup. Every time we use water if we ask ourselves, “Am I using it wisely?” we’ll develop a new habit that will really pay off.
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Bark Up the Right Tree
You may be one of the 63% of American households who include a family pet. Get that loving bundle of fur involved. When taking Muggy on a walk, it’s best to pick up his “gifts” with biodegradable poop bags, but you can also save those fast-food sacks to use for this purpose. You were just going to toss them out anyway. To be even kinder to the environment, bring the bag home and flush the contents. Miss Priss can get into the act, too. Fill her box with kitty-litter made from corn cobs, wheat, sawdust, wood shavings and chips, peanut shells, recycled newspaper, orange peels, or other natural materials. Some you can gather yourself. All tend to do a better job at controlling odor than commercial litter, last longer, and are totally biodegradable.
When shopping for toys for either of them, bypass the rubber and plastic ones, which are often not earth-friendly, and go to the ones made of recycled materials. Some can themselves be returned to the company for recycling into other toys, earning you a discount toward a new one. Actually, most pets are happy with a toy made from old socks or a scratching post containing a remnant of stained carpeting you have around the house. Recycle such items in the form of a pet toy before you recycle them again, permanently. Don’t think your pet won’t notice any of these actions; they notice any attention they get, and they’ll want more.
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Pleasurable Pursuits
This summer, plan family recreational activities that don’t require non-renewable energy. Hike one of the trails around the city. Take a rowboat out on a nearby lake. Bike around to neighborhood garage sales. Play board games stretched out on your lawn. Get together and plant a vegetable garden, tend it, watch it grow, plan meals that use the harvest, then enjoy the bounty your family’s efforts have produced. Grab your digital camera and go hunting for wildlife (start in your own yard) or bike to some nearby hills for pictures. Keep on the lookout for a scene that would make a great picture for a family Christmas card. The actual making and printing of those cards can be another family activity. Create and install a bird feeder or birdbath. Use your imagination on what’s lying around the house that would work. Establish a fun exercise hour (you may cheat and use some music with this one). Get together with friends at a park for a softball game. Talk to each other. You can think of similar activities that cost little or nothing except maybe shedding a few pounds. Consider yourself the renewable energy source.
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A Fresh Start
Get in the habit of eating fresh. Choose foods from local sources rather than ones spending a long time on the road coming from thousands of miles away. Start by accepting that zucchini your neighbor is anxious to get rid of. Cook some up for dinner and bake some into zucchini muffins, which even anti-vegetable kids like. We all have friends willing to share fruit and vegetables from their gardens. Accepting their gifts offers a chance for family members to expand their tastes. Soon they’ll enjoy the enhanced flavor of fresh food so much that they’ll want to start a little garden of their own. An alternative, of course, is the local farmers’ market, where what you buy has been raised locally, usually by the people selling it. Sometimes that produce is a little more expensive than at U-Save-Lots Grocers. Conversely, unlike grocery-store produce, it hasn’t been harvested before reaching its full ripeness, to enable it to last through its long truck ride.
Naturally, you can’t do this with all foods. Meat, for example, as city codes frown on people raising cattle in their back yards. But every little bit helps—you and the earth.
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Be Crafty
Before children grow up into the “Must-Have-Designer-Jeans” stage, have some family fun with school supplies. Help your child make his own notebooks for school. Use the cardboard from cereal boxes or other boxes that have pictures of people kids like or sports or other activities they’re involved in. Cut it into 9 x 11½ -inch pieces, punch holes in the side to match up with binder paper (recycled, of course!), slip in the paper, and fasten with metal rings, which allow for adding more binder paper later.
Go a bit further by making an old backpack fun to keep. If a zipper breaks or a seam splits, some manufacturers will actually repair them for free. But when a worn spot appears, don’t toss out the pack; add patches that appeal to the child’s interests, such as cartoon characters and sports-related patches. At $25 for a fairly sturdy pack, the savings mount up.
While you’re at it, make school lunches more fun, economical, and earth-friendly. Have your kids decorate baggies or reusable containers, using colored indelible markers, stickers, or whatever else will last through maybe a dozen washings. Use these to pack food for lunches, and put everything into a fun, reusable bag that you’ve created together out of scraps of material. Avoid throw-away juice containers, water bottles, pre-packaged foods, and such that make up the 67 pounds of packaging materials that the average school child tosses out each year. The lunch bag can go into the refurbished backpack along with the nifty personalized notebook you’ve made.
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Pace Yourself
Often we chose the location of our homes based on proximity to good schools. Still, 75% of us drive our kids to school or send them on a bus despite the fact that we live within a mile of that school. Some parents argue safety issues. However, sending the children in groups, possibly with rotating parent chaperones, keeps them safe from harm. Better still, why not make walking to school a family activity? There are the obvious savings to the car in terms of gas, oil, and cleaning products that remove smashed PBJs from seat upholstery. As far as the environment, avoiding ten miles of driving every week means putting 500 pounds less each year of CO2 into the air.
There are additional gains, too. One is a healthier family. A person weighing 150 pounds walking at the slow pace of two miles per hour will burn around 170 calories per hour, and walking on a regular basis has a multitude of proven health advantages. Another benefit is bonding with your children. Walking gives you a chance to talk to each other, sharing expectations for the day to come and, in the afternoon, frustrations and joys of what actually happened. If that isn’t enough, think about what you’ll do with the 15-25 cents you’ll save on gas each mile you walk.
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. . .And All the Trimmings
As you clean up your yard from the winter, cramming yard clippings and debris into the overflowing weekly curbside pickup container, think about a healthy family activity: composting. Using compost produces vigorous plants without chemicals and prevents erosion by wind and water. It’s not complicated and doesn’t need squirmy worms. Set aside a spot to start a pile of leaves and dead flowers. Add in household vegetable matter, remembering that sad mess that was once a Halloween pumpkin and the not-so-fresh spinach you meant to make a fantastic salad out of. Banana peels are good, too.
You can start small, with a compost trench. Rake those leaves into trenches between flower beds and forget them. They’ll turn into mulch that you can spread around plants or mix into their soil. Compost pockets are just as easy. They’re 18” deep holes into which you place scraps, like fruit, vegetables, and coffee grinds, then fill with dirt. In a month, plant something there and watch it thrive. By composting, most communities could reuse 50% of the waste they produce. That’s on top of the water that compost keeps from evaporating.
Sure, you can more easily buy compost and mulch in a big sack at the nursery, but why spend the money? Besides, your own has several advantages. It’s free. It doesn’t contain the arsenic, copper, chromium, and formaldehyde that some commercial brands do. And it gets the family active and outdoors. Start today for beautiful flowers and plants come Spring.
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Imagine That!
Okay, this one’s a bit offbeat, but mull it over. Before throwing something away, make a game of imagining what else it could become. Children have fertile minds. Adults do, too, if they let their mental child out to play. If you doubt that, remember all those oddball planters you’ve seen made out of everything from toilets to painted buckets, with boots in between.
Could those clean pizza boxes hold homemade cookies to mail off to your brother’s family? Many boxes can be used for mailing, as long as they can be sealed with packing tape and clearly addressed. (Picture the surprise when your bother receives a box labeled “computer monitor” and finds a new bathrobe.) The pieces from a favorite, but broken, mug might be glued onto a section of thin Styrofoam cut into an interesting shape, thus starting a set of unusual trivets. Did the leg on the office stool break in just the right place so all the legs can be cut shorter, making a child’s stool or footstool? How about that small plastic box that candies came in, the one with a nice lid and a set of dividers inside? Looks like a nice way to organize pairs of earrings. Those annoying free Christmas cards sent by charities in the hope that you’ll feel guilty and send them a donation? Cut up, they’d make nice “To/From” tags on gifts this year. Colorful wrapping paper from opened gifts? Think “book covers.”
You get the idea. Challenge your family. Have some fun. Reuse some stuff. Save the Earth, one cracked cup at a time.
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4 - OUT AND ABOUT
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(Pages 1-31 show above.)