Category — Green Tips

In my last post about Halloween pumpkins, I forgot to offer some tips on how to light them.  If you want to steer clear of paraffin-based waxes that emit toxins into the air, here are some green living tips for you.

Candles:   Soy and beeswax candles are both environmentally-friendly options for lighting your jack-o-lanterns.  They both burn cleaner, and are made from sustainable, resources.

LED Lights:  If you don’t want to use candles for safety reasons, you might want to check into some battery-powered LED pumpkin lights.  They’re designed to last for thousands of hours, so you could reuse them year after year.  Some even flash and turn colors for extra special effects.

Dont Forget!:  Use up as many parts of your pumpkins as possible to prevent landfill waste.  Make pumpkin cookies, or a pie with with any leftovers, and roast the seeds for a nutritious snack high in omega-3 fatty acids.

The beeswax votive candles shown above are homemade from 100% natural beeswax by Hive Harvest.

As the largest piece of furniture in your home, your sofa is a big decorating choice.  Home decorating experts say to buy quality, neutral pieces that can be used for years, and can be easily adapted from one style to the next.  But, when you’re looking for an environmentally friendly sofa, there are additional considerations, including:

Frame material:  If the sofa frame is made of wood, check to see if it is sustainable wood, and ask about any finishing products used on the wood to avoid VOCs.

Upholstery:  If you’re looking for an environmentally friendly sofa, your choice of upholstery fabric makes a difference.  Organic fabrics such as hemp and cotton are good choices, and are becoming more widely available.

Cushioning:  The filling of your sofa is also an important choice.  Avoid petroleum-based urethane foams in favor of natural rubber or latex cushioning and batting.

The sofa above is from the Bean Organic line at Bean Products, Inc.  Its wood frame is certified sustainable by the Forestry Stewardship Council, and the upholstery is an organic hemp fabric.  The sofa’s cushions are made from natural foam rubber harvested from rain forest rubber trees, and it’s also available in a sleeper sofa design.

Are there vampires sucking the energy right out of your home?  There probably are, and the problem is not one that can be fixed with a handful of garlic.  Vampire power refers to the energy your home appliances, computers, and other gadgets consume when you aren’t even using them.  According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 75% of the power consumed in the U.S. is used when electronics and appliances are turned off.

Here are some likely spots to look for wasted, ‘vampire’ power:

• Televisions
• Rechargeable power tools
• Coffee pots
• Rechargeable vacuum cleaners
• Cordless phones
• Baby monitors
• Stereo systems

If you want to rid your home of vampires, conserve energy, and save a buck, simply unplug anything you aren’t actively using.  If this seems like an inconvenience, plug as many of your home electronics as possible into power strips.  Then you can cut the power to multiple items with just one switch.  Source:  What’s Wasting Energy in Your Home Right Now.

If all this talk about vampires has you thinking about Halloween costumes, the vampire costume above is available at Webhats.

Pumpkins are probably the best of all green Halloween decorations:  they’re 100% organic, they’re the perfect color for Halloween, and they are nutritious too.  Our favorite pumpkin decorations are Jack-O-Lanterns.  Every year we set aside an evening for making them.  Here are a few tips for carving your Halloween pumpkins:

1) Line your work area with old newspapers.  This makes cleanup easy, and allows you to reuse any old newspaper you have laying around.

2) For help with making the faces on your Halloween pumpkins, go through your kitchen cabinets to find just the right shapes.  Sometimes the bottom of a drinking glass, pepper grinder, or spice container is the perfect shape for an eye, or a mouth.  Just trace the bottom of the container right onto the pumpkin, and carve.

3) For more complicated designs, draw them on paper first, and cut out the designs.  Attach to your pumpkin with toothpicks or tape, and rub on a little cornstarch or baby powder.  When you remove the paper pattern, the powder remains, giving you a guide for cutting.

4) No-carve pumpkins:  Let small children use up scraps of old fabric, buttons, or shapes cut from colorful cardboard packaging by gluing on their own pumpkin designs.

5) What to do with your pumpkins after the carving is done?  For a nutritious snack, you can make roasted pumpkin seeds, or for a sweet treat, make pumpkin pie squares.  Also, used up Jack-O-Lanterns make great composting material.

A study mentioned on the U.K.’s Money News website this week provides evidence that some folks are turning to green living measures purely for financial reasons.  According to the British study by Norwich and Peterborough, 69% of people are more likely to install energy-efficient devices such as kitchen appliances and turn to alternative energy sources than they were one year ago.

What about you?  Are the constant pressures of high gas prices, and soaring energy bills causing you to adopt greener habits and look for energy-saving home products? Whether it’s for economic reasons or otherwise, going green is always a good idea.

Here are a few quick energy saving tips for saving money and living green:

• Set your washing machine to cold water wash.
• Buy an insulated blanket for your water heater.
• Avoid running your dishwasher until it’s full.
• Change your furnace filter monthly.
• Buy a reduced-flow shower head.
• Shut the water off when you brush your teeth.
• Stick to weekly or bi-weekly shopping trips to avoid wasting fuel on multiple trips to the store.

Did you know that 80-90% of the energy used to do laundry is for heating the water? It’s true- switching your washing machine to cold can save you some cash, and reduce your impact on the environment. Here are a few of the advantages of setting your washer to cold water wash.

• Environmental Benefits: According to Ideal Bite, switching to cold water wash means you’ll keep more than 1,200 pounds of CO2 out of the air.
• Save Clothes: Clothes washed in cold water fade less, and last longer than clothes that aren’t. Extending the life of your clothing means you’ll buy less, save money, and reduce landfill waste.
• Save Energy: Save around $60 a year in energy costs by switching to cold water wash.

Don’t you find it amazing that some of the most signifficant changes we can make towards a greener lifestyle are also the simplest? Here’s a long list of simple green living tips.

A new organic mattress can be a costly investment, and it’s one that many budgets might not be able to handle right now. Even if you’re not ready to shell out hundreds or even thousands on a new mattress set, you can make bedtime environmentally friendly with these, less expensive, green bedding products.

Buy New Bed Sheets: A new set of organic bed sheets will breathe some green into your existing mattress. Organic sheets are available in everything organic flannel, wool, and even bamboo. The bamboo sheets above are made from 100% organic bamboo fiber.

Buy a Mattress Pad: Consider covering your existing mattress with an organic mattress pad made from unbleached cotton or wool. A new mattress pad will freshen up an old mattress, and give you a nice organic surface to sleep on. Here’s a mattress pad that is made of organic cotton flannel to keep you toasty this winter.

When you buy a new mattress, there’s always the nagging question of what to do with your old one. According to Ideal Bite, Americans throw away about 20 million mattresses each year. When you consider how large a typical queen size mattress is, that’s a staggering amount of landfill space.

The good news is that mattress recycling programs are popping up across the country, and some communities are even mandating mattress recycling.  Once your mattress reaches a recycling center, it will likely be dismantled and separated into recyclable categories such as wood, metal, and fabric.

Earth 911 offers a recycling search tool that will help you find mattress recycling programs near you.  Simply type in “mattress”, or any other item, and your zip code.  If there’s no recycling program near you, or even if there is, you can always donate your mattress to a shelter, second hand store, or list it on Craigslist or Freecycle.

The organic mattress in the photo above has a quilted top that’s made from 100 percent organic cotton.  It’s also vinyl and PVC free.  I found the NaturePedic Deluxe organic mattress at Living in Comfort. Com.

People in many parts of the country are just starting to feel the first cool breezes of Fall, and have begun waking up to chilly mornings.  Before you turn on your home’s furnace for the first time this year, make sure you’re starting with a clean furnace filter.  Whether you have a gas furnace, or an electric furnace, a clean furnace filter will help you conserve energy, save money, and live greener. Consider the following:

Conserve Energy: A dirty filter makes your furnace work harder, and consume more energy.  If you want to save energy, replace your furnace filter once a month, or perhaps even more often if you have pets.

Furnace Life Span: Regularly changing your furnace filter will help prevent the need for early replacement of your furnace.  This will save you money, and reduce the amount of waste in landfills.

Clean Air: Clean furnace filters promote clean air in your home by capturing the dust, mold, pet hair, and other particulates circulating in the air. Circulating air through a dirty filter just adds more dust and contaminates to the air you breathe.

Permanent Filters: If you’re concerned about the waste generated by disposable furnace filters, you may want to consider a reusable furnace filter.   This permanent furnace filter, available at Never Buy Another Filter.Com, can be used for  years.  When it gets dirty, simply hose off, dry, and reuse.

Here’s some helpful information on how to change a furnace filter.

Soy candles are an excellent idea for green Halloween decorations, because soy wax burns much cleaner than the paraffin wax used in traditional candles. This Halloween pumpkin candle, from Beyond Making Scents, is made from 100% soy wax, and has a lead-free wick. It is available in many scents, including candy corn and pumpkin pie, to really spice up your Halloween party.

Here are a few green living tips on burning candles:

Soy Wax vs. Paraffin Wax: Did you know that paraffin is actually a fossil fuel by-product and it releases chemicals when it burns? According to GreenSpace Candles, paraffin wax releases petrol-carbon soot, which introduces toxins to your home. Soy wax is a natural product, and burns cooler and cleaner than paraffin.

Soy Wax is Renewable: Soy wax is a produced from soybeans, which are a renewable resource.

Soy Wax is Water Soluble: If you end up with a spill of soy wax on a coffee table or countertop, it will clean up easily with just warm water.