Henry (my potty-training two-year-old) and I have just discovered Imse Vimse training pants. They are super cozy and made from organic cotton and PUL. They are also really cute. I do not know about their absorbency since they just came in the mail. Looks like the Imse Vimse store offers a lot of organic products for baby and mom. I will definitely be visiting and possibly buying more trainers. Treehugger has a great tutorial on the importance and benefits of purchasing products made from organic textiles.
Finally, someone has come up with instructions on how to conserve gas by merely changing the way you drive your car. I have already started trying to implement these changes. Hopefully I will be able to lighten my lead foot. The method is called hypermiling. According to the website:
What is hypermiling? According to a a fantastic August 2006 story in the Washington Post, it is a method of increasing your car’s gas mileage by making skillful changes in the way you drive, allowing you to save gas and thereby have an easier time withstanding the rising oil and gas prices.
So, I’m going to try it for 90 days and attempt to make it a habit. How about you? Can you drive in the slow lane? Can you lay off the breaks and leave a cushion between you and the next car so that you can coast more rather than brake? These are tall orders for an aggressive driver like myself, but I’m willing to try if it means saving gas.
Here at The Curly Light Bulb, we believe that Earth Day is a great day to start making changes in your life that ultimately benefit the planet. Today I’ve been twittering some tips for going green. I figured I’d share them here as well.
Save water in your bathroom. If its yellow, let it mellow. If its brown flush it down! Save 3 gallons!
Paper nor plastic, what you read before leaving your market bag at home.
Salon.com has an article today about how to use the internet to curb the impact of direct mail. According to the article, the direct mail industry has a yearly environmental impact equivalent to 3.5 million vehicles! But you can help by choosing not to receive excessive direct mail. Groups such as GreenDimes.com will contact direct mail companies on your behalf in order to have you removed from mailing lists. This includes catalog companies and the “current resident” mailings. GreenDimes.com even gives you the option to continue receiving catalogs of your choice. And they will plant 10 trees for every new membership (a $15 one-time fee). I think that is a bargain at twice the price.
You’ve made your final payment on that 2002 model SUV. You’ve been waiting for this day; you now have a little wiggle room in your budget. What is not in your budget is one of those new hybrids that you are coveting. Your pangs of guilt each time you turn the key of your gas guzzler have caused you to give up. You are between a rock and a hard place financially, you don’t want to drive a fuel hemorrhaging SUV, but you feel like you do not have a choice. Do not despair, there are several steps you can take to make your fuel consumption closer to that of, at the very least, someone who drives a small sedan. Here are some tips (I’ve taken some from AAA and added some of my own):
Take public transit two days a week. This can cut your gas consumption pretty quickly. Need to pick your kids up from school? Make public transit an adventure and instill in them the value of making some sacrifices to use less energy. If public transit is not available try a carpool.
If you are a two car family and your other vehicle is more fuel efficient, try using it for the majority of your trips. If you have two different commutes, use the more fuel efficient car for the longer commute.
Try and plan your errands during a less congested time of the day when you won’t be sitting in traffic idling your gas away. On that note, try commuting to work an hour earlier or leaving an hour later to skip the traffic; inquire about flex time with your company, this can help you avoid traffic as well.
Go the speed limit. It is hard to follow this one but accelerating more and going faster burns more fuel.
Use the vehicle you were born with, you legs. Do a few errands a week by walking to the store or even walk to a friends house for a get together instead of driving.
If you have multiple errands to do in a day try and plan to go to a store or shopping center where you can get the majority of your errands done. The more you can do in one place the less you will be driving around.
Sock away some cash and make a promise to yourself that your next car will be green.
These tips can lower your emissions and help you save cash which, by the way, can be put toward your new energy efficient vehicle you’ll be buying when your pocketbook catches up with your conscience.
Disposable diapers take up over 450 cubic feet of landfill per child. That is the size of a studio apartment! Consider cloth diapers. Pocket diapers are easy to use and maintain and with a little bit of help you can start out on the right foot.
Have friends or family members who refuse to recycle because it isn’t convenient or they claim there is not a center near their area? Send them to earth911.org. There they can search for the nearest recycling center based on zip code. Better yet, go there yourself and draw them a map.
Kicking yourself at the checkout stand because you left your bulky canvas totes at home and you have to bring back yet another dozen plastic grocery bags? Next time bring your own bags that fold up very tiny so you can keep them with you at all times. You can probably fit five in your purse. Oh, and they are really cute too.
Barbara Kingsolver’s latest non-fiction, Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life, tracks her family’s culinary adventures over a one-year period. The family of four attempt to sustain themselves through local sources including their own hillside farm. Kingsolver’s usual frankness makes it personal.
GrowingWisdom.com posted this YouTube how-to video with simple directions for composting.
If you cannot find a composter like the one in the video or want to be a little bit more low-key about it, you can simply use a regular heavy-duty plastic garbage can from your local hardware store. Get a 44 gallon whopper and cut the bottom off with your jigsaw. Then drill a few holes around the walls to get some air going. Press the can into the ground a few inches and top it with the lid. You may want to locate it a little ways away from your back door and in the shade; there may be flies and smells associated with all that yummy decomposition. To compost, follow the directions suggested by the GrowingWisdom.com guy. You can also add some already made compost to the mix instead of the activator to get it going and some worms if you can get them. If the smell starts to get ripe, add a layer of dry leaves or torn newspaper every once in a while. Remember to turn every few days with a stick or hoe. Only put in yard waste and fruit and vegetable waste. No meats or other animal proteins. Though eggshells are okay. Coffee grounds are good too. When your compost is “done” after a few months or when the stuff on the bottom starts looking like finer dirt, lift up the can and enjoy your fresh garden soil. But before you get too excited be sure and relocate your can, putting any solids which were not decomposed back in to get things going again. Sprinkle your new compost soil on your beds and in your vegetable patches, they will love you for it.
Buying things you love which are made from recycled materials makes you cherish them twice as much. Here is a list of picks to get you started:
It is easy to get lost on Etsy going through all of the great hand-made things but especially the goodies made from reconstructed or reused items.
These glasses made from recycled bottles by Green Glass are beautiful. They make you want to invite your friends over for a cocktail.
Remember those chains and bracelets we used to weave from gum wrappers in grade-school? Bazura is making and selling bags that mirror that look out of recycled juice and drink boxes. Not only do they keep up to 50,000 pieces of trash out of the landfill per day, the company is supplied by a co-op relationship which pays school children in the Phillipines in exchange for collecting the boxes. And local women sanitize and sew the bags. The women actually have a stake in the operation so they are eco-preneurs as well. Ecological, fair-trade and fashionable, what more could you ask for in a purse? Even Amazon is getting in on the action. Anybody got a straw?
There are a ton of bags out there. These are made from repurposed vinyl billboards. That is huge. No, really, those blown up images look sleek and modern sewn into a bag.
Previously owned goods can make a difference as well. Why buy something new when someone might be giving it away? Reusing doesn’t have to cost you. Whoever thought of Freecycle was a genius. The concept is that you get on a Freecycle email list with people in your neighborhood and when someone is getting rid of their couch, instead of letting it go to the dump on heavy trash day, they send out an alert and you can go pick it up. People offer up everything from canned vegetables to perfectly new sunglasses. Need some baby food jars for that art project? Email the list and you’ll be picking them up in a few hours. They may not be new but they’ll be new to you! For the price of on the house.
The environmental effects of textile production can be overwhelming, especially those made from cotton grown in countries such as India where hazardous chemicals which are banned in the U.S. and Europe are utilized. According to Marianne B. Eskeland, a chemical engineering specialist at Ecolabeling Norway, the power to change how textiles are bought and sold is with the consumer. If we buy more eco-friendly products, clothing and textile companies will begin moving in more environmentally friendly directions.
It is relatively easy to find casual clothing in eco-friendly materials, but it is quite hard to find business clothes. Sara Snow of the show Living Fresh on the Discovery Channel put together a great list of links to clothing and accessory companies who sell eco-friendly products. Pair some beyond skin shoes with this cute ruby top from Panda Snack and you are looking like a million dollars, not like you just crawled out of the woods with granola on your breath.
, tracks her family’s culinary adventures over a one-year period. The family of four attempt to sustain themselves through local sources including their own hillside farm. Kingsolver’s usual frankness makes it personal.