Posts Tagged ‘tips’

Green Tip! - Be an Environmentally Conscious Consumer

green tip, environmentally, environmental, conscious, shopper, farmer's market

Annually, Americans throw away a whopping 100 billion plastic bags. According to a 2004 study by Worldwatch Institute, that’s the energy equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil. Most plastics bags end up in streams or other bodies of water where they clog up the waterways and cause long-term and life-threatening damage to the marine life. Virtually non-biodegradable, plastic bags will stay wherever they end up being dumped for nearly 1,000 before they start to “break down”. To put it simply, the usage of plastic bags is in no way beneficial to the environment or the future generations.

But being an environmentally conscious shopper means more than just avoiding the usage of plastics bags. Here, we share a couple of tips.

  • Bring your own reusable bag. This has been a popular trend in the recent years. Shoppers have been bringing their own reusable bags to tote their groceries and purchases home instead of using the plastic bags given out at the store. Many stores themselves are now selling reusable bags and give out a small discount for customers who opt to use reusable bags instead of plastics bags. In the long run, using reusable shopping bags could be quite profitable, who knew?
  • Avoid products that use a lot of packaging. For some products this can’t be avoided such as electronics and such but this tip is simple to apply to food. Try to buy fresh food. The fresher it is, the more likely it is to have less packaging. Because if you think about it, pre-packaged foods such as microwave dinners and snack bars most likely contain more artificial preservatives than fresh foods. Not a concrete rule but just something to keep in mind.
  • Buy in bulk. This tip ties in with the one above. Buying in bulk cuts down on all the extra bells and whistles of conventional packaging. And if that’s not enough reason to buy in bulk, it’s an economical choice too!
  • Support you local farmer’s market. This is a win-win situation for your local agricultural community and for environment. By buying local you’ll be supporting local farmers. Plus, the fruits and veggies found at farmer’s markets need not to travel cross-country before it arrives at your plate, helping prevent unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Tips for Laundry Day!

Laundry just seems to be one of those endless tasks. Whenever, wherever, there is always more laundry to be done. And it appears that laundry is no easier on us than it is on our resources. Conventional washing machines require about 40 gallons of water per load. Multiply that by the average amount of laundry an American family does per year (a whopping 400!), that’s nearly 1600 gallons of water needed for a year’s worth of clean clothes for a typical American family.

As for the amount of energy that goes into laundry days, nearly 90% of the electricity used for laundry is spent on simply heating the water for washing. And as for the drying, the average clothes dryer costs an approximate $1,530 to operate for the entirety of its useful life.

So there’s no easy way to spin it, but we have a couple of tips to lightening the load on you, your wallet and the environment.

1. Replace your top-loading for a front-loading washing machine. This may sound like a hefty investment but in the long run it’ll be worth it. According to the California Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy recently did a study in a small town in Kansas, where 204 older washing machines were replaced with horizontal axis machines. Homeowners there realized an average of 38 percent savings on water usage and 56 percent energy savings for the washer and hot water heating system. The reason being front-loading machines don’t need to fill the tub completely with water, thus, saving money and time.

2. Use naturally derived detergents. What you use to wash your clothes goes back into the environment, so please be kind. Plus, if that’s not compelling enough, conventional detergents include chemicals we should be wary of washing our clothes in. Clothes that are then worn against our skin, which may absorb those same harmful chemicals into our systems.

3. Wash your laundry in cold water. Simply doing so preserves the color of the clothing and keeps it looking new. But beyond that, you’ll be saving on the electricity that goes into heating the water for washing, approximately 0.24 kWh, which translates to about .41 pounds of CO2 per load, 162 pounds of CO2 per year, 8 gallons of gas, or 164 miles of driving.

4. Use wool dryer balls. Not only are they reusable, helping eliminate the need for dryer sheets, dryer balls are relatively inexpensive and last for an average of 2 years before needing to be replaced. As another plus, dryer balls help reduce drying time by 40%.

5. As we shared on our Facebook, line-dry your clothing. Doing so saves you 100% in costs. There’s no need for dryer balls or sheets or electricity, just sunshine and a clothing line. The only downside to line-drying is that it can only be done during warm months but aside from that, there’s absolutely nothing to lose. Line drying reduces static cling, wear and tear on clothing, saves money spent on electricity and products and is all the way environmentally friendly.

 

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