It's Easy Being Green

Here are the last four easy green tips as we celebrate Earth Day:

17. If you’re replacing windows, use energy saving models.

18. Plant trees next to your home and paint your house a light color if you live in a warm climate. If you live in a cold climate, make sure the trees are deciduous, meaning they lose their leaves in the winter so the sun can shine on your home to warm up. Also make sure to paint your house a dark color, attracting more heat absorption.

19. Be an energy activist. Setup recycling programs at your school or office.

20. Stay informed about environmental issues. Write your local congressman or woman and keep track of their voting record. When you know they’ll be voting about an important issue regarding the environment, make sure you let them know how you feel.

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13. Purchase a car that gets good gas mileage.

14. Buy minimally packaged goods and choose reusable products over disposable ones.

15. Be sure your car’s air conditioner coolant is recycled after servicing.

16. Insulate your walls or attic to help save about 25% of your home heating and cooling bill

Check in tomorrow as we celebrate Earth Day and reveal the last four tips, easy ways to go green!

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Here’s four more tips as we count down to Earth Day:

9. Install low-flow shower heads to reduce the amount of water you use while taking a shower

10. Caulk and weatherstrip around doors and windows to cut down on air leaks and save on your energy bill to heat or cool your home.

11. Ask your utility company to do a home energy audit. A lot of utilities provide this service for free and can offer up some tips customized to your own home and energy use.

12. Walk, bike, carpool or use mass transit whenever possible to get to where you need to go.

Stay tuned for more tips tomorrow!

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Here’s four more tips showing you it really can be easy going green:

5. Adjust your home’s thermostat to be lower in winter and higher in summer. Learn how to heat and cool your home simply by venting windows at certain times of the day and when it’s cold, bundle up and put on your sweat pants!

6. Clean and replace dirty air filters in your home’s heating and cooling system. A dirty air filter can use 5-percent more energy while your a/c unit is running.

7. Replace the standard incandescent light bulbs in your home with the new compact fluorescent bulbs.

8. Help your water heater to be even more efficient by wrapping it with an insulating blanket specifically designed to go around your water heater.

Check back tomorrow for four more easy green living tips!

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Five days and counting to Earth Day so enjoy the easy ways to go green tips I post as we head to the big celebration:

1. When it comes to doing the dishes with your dishwasher, use the energy-saving setting. If your dishwasher is older and doesn’t have one of those settings, just let the dishes air-dry. Don’t use the heated option.

2. Reduce the energy needed to wash your clothes by washing in cold or warm water, not hot. We do all of our laundry with cold water, sometimes warm if some stain treatment or sterilization is needed and we’ve never noticed a problem with our clothes!

3. To save on energy used to heat up hot water, turn your water heater down to about 120-degrees. I have to confess, that’s a hard one for us to stomach because we love our hot showers and baths!

4. As you replace appliances in your home, pick out on the best energy efficient appliances. A lot of new appliances carry the Energy Star label which tells you that particular appliance is designed to save you money. If you’d like to learn more about what appliances to look out for, head over to the Energy Star website.

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Just less than six days away, people all around the world will celebrate our blue planet and share their mindfulness to protect our only home. Senator Gaylor Nelson, realizing that conservation was a much needed movement even in the 1960’s, persuaded President Kennedy to tour the nation. He spoke about conserving our precious resources and it began to get the country thinking. However, the Vietnam War was overshadowing the environmental movement at the time. Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations called “teach-ins” had spread like a wildfire to college campuses across the nation. Senator Nelson realized a similar mass demonstration could be just the key to get people thinking about their environment.

In September 1969, Senator Nelson announced that in the following spring, he would sponsor a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment and invited everyone to participate. Word of the demonstration spread and on April 22, 1970 Earth Day was born. Today many communities around the world put on Earth Day events and most calendars come marked with the “holiday” already on it. There might even be an Earth Day event going on in your neighborhood. Just follow the link to an Earth Day website where you can punch in your zip code and find out what’s planned for your area.

Over the next few days I’ll post some easy tips to help you go green and celebrate our Mother Earth.

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It’s that time of year again where high school students begin to fret over who they’re going to prom with and what they’re going to wear. I remember how stressful that one event was or at least how stressful we as high schoolers perceived it. My how things change! Prom can be a wasteful event, especially when it comes to the $100+ girls will spend on special shoes and a formal dress that might not ever be worn again. The guys have it easy when it comes to renting their tux. It’s eco-friendly since that penguin suit is worn again and again for multiple occasions. But, when it comes to the one-time worn prom outfit that looks hot on the girl, it’s not so hot for our environment.

What can you do you ask? It’s easy! After your big night, donate your outfit. I know it might seem harsh but just think of the amount of girls who might not be able to afford all that glam to go to her prom next year. Across the country there are dozens of organizations that take donations of dresses, shoes and unused makeup and provide them totally free for other girls. The Fairy Godmothers of the Flagstaff Elk’s Ladies is one such group that collects hundreds of dresses each year and racks them up for a big weekend event. Girls who pick a dress out will even return it after their prom is over, giving that special dress another chance to shine again. The Glass Slipper Project also offers a list of organizations that do similar things in other states. You can also Google your state and “prom dress donations” to find other community groups on the same mission.

It’s a fun, easy way to be green and help another girl enjoy the experience of going to prom.

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