Our Greener Life

On the road to an eco-friendly life

Give your old gadgets new life

Jun 26

Posted by Ron in Recycling | No Comments

Gazelle

If you’re like me, you may have a ton of old electronics taking up space in the closet, garage, etc… So often these gadgets will end up in a landfill when it comes time to make more room. There are options to give new life to unused electronics. You can always have a garage sale, sell them on eBay or Craigslist, but for an especially easy way to find a new home for them – try Gazelle

The service is easy to use – search for the item you wish to sell, answer a few questions about the condition of the item, and you will get a quote. If you want to sell the item, Gazelle provides the shipping label free, all you have to do it pack your item up and drop it off at the post office.

Another neat feature of the service is Gazelle for Good – you can create a gadget drive webpage and raise money for charity by collecting donations of gadgets.

For more information, visit the Gazelle website.

Green Your Office

May 2

Posted by Ron in Conservation, Sustainability | 5 Comments

Why stop at home? Try these tips for creating a greener office. You can share them with co-workers, or provide a more eco-friendly working environment for your employees.

Happy plants make happy workers
It is proven that plants make people happier. They also can help clean up the air in your workplace. Give some plants a new home in your office.

Get rid of bottled water
Bring in a reusable water bottle and refill from the office water cooler. Perhaps the company can purchase reusable bottles for everyone with the company logo.

Recycle that ink
There are many options for recycling ink and toner cartridges. If you can refill your own – even better.

Reuse your lunch
Well, you lunch containers that is. Choose reusable containers or sandwich wraps and avoid the disposable plastic bags.

Go paperless
If possible, send out documents via email, rather than printing. When you really think about it, there are many times when an electronic copy makes better sense than a print copy.

These are just a few ways to move towards a greener office. If you have other tips to share, please post in the comments.

Greener Holidays

Dec 17

Posted by Ron in Conservation, Recycling | 1 Comment

It is that time of the year again – packed shopping malls, irresistible goodies sitting around waiting to be eaten and, unfortunately, lots of garbage output. All the gift giving and parties adds up to tons of new garbage in our landfills, so it’s a great time to be conscious of what you are contributing.

When it comes to gift wrapping – why not use bags that can be reused? We always keep gift bags we receive and reuse them later on. One idea to encourage your gift recipient to reuse the bag, is to make your own out of fabric. It’s a fun way to personalize your wrapping and help the environment too. Look for fabric scraps from local businesses or friends.

On the topic of gifts, it’s a great idea to give gifts which are durable and can replace disposable and highly polluting items. Things like electric shavers, reusable bags, refillable pens, cloth napkins are all great ideas. Another neat gift would be a backyard composter or perhaps a bicycle or rollerblades to promote alternate transportation.

When shipping items, be sure to use biodegradable starch packing peanuts, or better yet, reuse old packing materials if you have them. We like to keep a big box full of this items in our storage room. If you need to get rid of packing peanuts, try contacting local shipping companies, as many will take them for reuse.

When hosting or attending parties, try to use reusable items and recycle all you can afterwords. During the party, set up bins for recyclables and make then easily accessible. You can usually rent supplies (instead of using disposable items), such as plates, cups, etc…for party stores if you need a lot of them. For food items, try to shop for locally grown/produced items. This can be fun for out of town guests too, especially if your region has a unique item. Here in New Mexico, chile peppers are the big thing, so dishes with green and red chile are perfect for parties (assuming our guests enjoy a little heat in their food). Speaking of heat, why not setup a dance floor for your party? All those happy people dancing means you can turn down the heat in your house. Sounds like a plan to me.

We hope everyone has a fun, safe and green holiday season!

Avoiding excess baggage

Jun 15

Posted by Ron in Conservation | No Comments

Did you know that Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every 5 seconds? How about that 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags are used every hour? Or, that 2 million plastic beverage bottles are used in the US every 5 minutes. Since I keep encountering more statistics like these, I’ve become more and more fascinated with our trash. More specifically – what goes into it.

In the past, I’ve never really thought much about our trash. Sure, I knew that it eventually ends up in a landfill, but never focused on that. My point of awareness ended at the curb, where the garbage truck faithfully empties our can each week. When you really start to pay attention, you notice how much waste we produce as humans. It’s kind of amazing, really. But, when you stop to think about where it ends up – then it becomes disheartening.

It’s really overwhelming to try to fix everything at once. So, we’ve picked one place to start – use less bags. We’ve been avoiding bags altogether when not needed, and bringing our reusable cloth bags to the grocery store when we’ve got more to carry. Do we really need a bag for that magazine? Nope. How about the greeting card and candy bar? Nope. It’s actually quite entertaining to stop using bags for your purchases. Often times, you’ll get confused looks from cashiers. But we just smile, say thanks and grab our goodies.

Switch to Compact Fluorescent light bulbs

Jun 14

Posted by Ron in Energy | 1 Comment

One great way to reduce your household energy consumption is to switch to Compact Fluorescent light bulbs (CFL for short). They are basically the same as the “tube” style florescent light bulbs, just reduced down to fit in most places where incandescent bulbs are used.

Benefits:

  • CFLs use 70% less energy than incandescent bulbs.
  • CFLs last 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
  • They also produce much less heat, which definitely helps if you are sitting or working near one.

Drawbacks:

  • Most do not work with dimmer switches.
  • They aren’t good for ceiling fans, or applications where they might experience vibration.
  • Light isn’t always as appealing as incandescent bulbs.
  • Contain small amount of mercury, so it’s important to recycle them when done.

All in all, I would highly recommend trying out at least one Compact Fluorescent in your home or business. The prices keep dropping and they are pretty easy to find at your local store. If everyone would switch just one incandescent to a CF light bulb, we could dramatically reduce our energy consumption and save money in the process.