Our Greener Life

With Spring rapidly approaching, you may be starting to get things cleaned up for the season. Check out these helpful tips for dealing with garden waste.

When garden waste is composted, it decomposes aerobically – that is, using oxygen. Unlike landfills, which decompose waste anaerobically (without oxygen), garden composting produces few greenhouse gases. And when you recycle your garden waste, you are providing yourself with useful, organic compost, thus eliminating the need for synthetic fertilizers.

Here are some ideas for how you can recycle your garden waste:

* Grass clippings can be left on your lawn after mowing. They will act as mulch, helping to hold in moisture. As the grass clippings rot, they will enrich the soil of your lawn. Rotting grass clippings contain nitrogen, which is an important fertilizer for your yard and garden.

You can also rake up your grass clippings and pile them up where they will rot. You can add bits of this rotting matter to your compost, or even sow seeds into the grass clipping pile. Squash and pumpkins are possibilities for plants that will grow this way, as long as the clipping pile receives enough sunlight.

* Prunings and trimmings from brush, trees, garden plants, etc. can be added to your compost pile. If they are large or woody pieces, you will need to chop them up a bit before adding them to the pile. If you have a flower garden, compost the pinched-off blooms and cut stems. If you have a vegetable garden, compost peelings, rinds, and leaf and stem prunings.

* Fallen leaves can be piled onto your compost, or composted alone to make something called leaf mold. This is a kind of compost that is high in nutrients. You can use it for mulch or fertilizer, depending on how you decompose it. Just chopping or shredding leaves produces mulch that you can use immediately, and it will enrich the soil as it breaks down.

To make leaf mold, you must let the leaves rot much longer, from 6 months to 1 year. If you do not chop the leaves first, making leaf mold may take 2 years. Simply compost the leaves in a pile, bin, or other container that allows for ample air circulation and turning.

* Biodegradable bags can be used for yard and garden waste if you have trimmings from weeds or other materials you do not want to recycle. Some communities will gather garden waste and return it as mulch or fertilizer.

* Creative uses for branches and twigs include home-made herb-drying racks, natural fences, or crafts. Use natural twine to lash the branches together and reinforce with nails if necessary.

So you have decided you want to live a more eco-friendly life, but don’t know where to start? Check out these small steps that can add up to make a big difference. Don’t worry about trying to do everything you can – it can be overwhelming. My advice is to pick one and go from there!

Use less water.

Saving water is all about small steps, here ar

e a few that will help save big.

- Shut off the water while you brush your teeth
- Take showers that are a minute or two shorter
- Only run full loads of laundry and dishes
- Buy from sustainable producers. These are farmers, ranchers, and other producers that use techniques that pollute less and use less water. You can do some research online or ask at your local organic market to find these products.

Use less energy.

If you don’t have the money to buy a hybrid car or convert your house to solar power, you can make a big difference with small changes.

- Buy energy efficient appliances. They may be more expensive, but make up for the increased cost in lower energy bills.
- Unplug chargers when you’re not using them. Cell phone and other chargers use up powers even if there’s nothing attached to them.
- Put devices with remotes, like T.V.s, VCRs, and stereos, on a power strip and turn it off when you’re not using them. These devices use a lot of power to run the remote receiver even when the device is off.
- Walk or ride your bike for short trips.
- Buy local products. It takes energy to transport food and other products across the country. Buying local not only supports your local economy, it helps them use less energy.

When it comes to saving energy and water, it’s a great idea to get the kids involved. You can even make it a game. Have them track how much water and electricity everyone is using. You can compete to see who uses the least water. You can often count on your kids to help keep you on track when given the task.

Reuse.

Most of us know the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle, but when we work on conserving, we often leave reuse out of the picture. While you can often find tips on how to reuse common products from other people, what you need most is creativity. With a little thought there are many items around your home that can be reused ñ toilet paper holders can be used to sow seeds for the vegetable patch. And old yogurt containers can be cut into strip to make plant labels. Old food jars can be refilled with homemade foods or can make great impromptu vases.

Use environmentally friendly products.

When you go to the grocery store, you probably see more and more “natural” or “eco friendly” products every time. There are generally two big problems with these products: 1) Just because they’re more natural than regular products, doesn’t mean they’re entirely natural. 2) They’re often expensive.

If you want inexpensive, natural, safe products, why not just make them yourself. Vinegar is a great way to clean and disinfect glass and other surfaces. Need to remove stubborn stains? Just add some baking soda to your vinegar cleaner. Some quick searching online will lead you to hundreds of other natural safe home-made cleaning products.

We all knowing that going green means better for the environment, but it’s also better for you. Conserving resources also helps save you money, which is something most of us are happy to live with.

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.

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!

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.