It's Easy Being Green

In 2007, the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year was “locavore”.  A locavore is a person who eats exclusively locally grown food.  It may sound like an easy task to undertake eating only what is produced in your local area but you may find the idea a bit more difficult to stomach that you might originally think.

The global marketplace has opened up markets near and far spanning our great globe.  As a result, much of our produce at the supermarket could be making a trip 3,000 miles or more in the making just to get to our dinner tables.  That trip turns into a major waste of natural resources and there are many long-term environmental impacts of transporting produce all that way.  Not to mention that it has been in transport for about two weeks by the time it arrives at the store.  So, it was either picked way before it was actually ripe or it’s been genetically modified to survive the long journey and maintain its “freshness”.

These days it’s fairly easy to spot produce grown in a far away market.  Just look for the static sticker to see where it was grown.  You might feel like you’re taking an around the world cruise just in the produce department by reading grown-in labels from Chile, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and the list goes on and on.  Many grocery store chains like our local Albertson’s have realized the locavore movement and now specifically point out locally grown produce in their sale fliers.  Health food and natural food stores have been the leader in this arena for sometime, taking careful note of where all their food is coming from and it’s far reaching impacts.

If you truely believe in the locavore movement, you might have to make some major modifications to the meals you eat depending on the season you’re in.  Follow this link and take a look at what produce is available in each season near you.  For instance, here in Arizona we don’t have any produce listed as locally grown right now.  Our last listed harvest was in December and was for pecans.  You certainly can’t just live off pecans until produce becomes available in June again, so you might have to make some adjustments to your comfortable radius that produce comes from.  While many are die hards about this movement and stick to a 100 Mile Diet, I tend to think a little wider when it comes to my produce.

If you’d like to learn more about the produce grown in your region, head over to the Local Harvest website to check out small farms and farmers markets in your area.  Happy eating!

Do you think you could be a locavore?  How committed could you be to eating locally grown foods?

Popularity: 4% [?]

You might not know that a gallon of indoor paint could contain a load of chemicals that not only are bad for you and your family but are also bad for the air, soil and water when the chemicals are released into the environment.  These chemicals, called Volatile Organic Compounds or VOC’s for short, are in all kinds of adhesives, caulks and paint.  Many of these products are now available in low or VOC free formulations to keep the air inside your home as pure and chemical free as possible.

Paint companies have jumped on the VOC free bandwagon.  But, there’s a catch that you should know while shopping for paint.  While many of the paint base colors are low or VOC free, the tinting process where color is added and mixed to your paint just adds up to 150 grams up the chemicals back in, virtually undoing the whole idea of purchasing low or VOC free paint.  One company called ICI has changed the way they do business making both base colors and the tints VOC free.  The tint is actually a powder instead of the normal liquid and is pre-mixed and measured at the factory.  Then, the whole tint packet is dropped into the can of paint where it completely dissolves and leaves you with the desired color, VOC free.

The process ends with a much more environmentally friendly paint and one with more precise colors, since the factory has complete control over the final results of the tint packets.  The Freshaire Choice paint runs between $35 and $40 a gallon and will be sold exclusively at Home Depot beginning in April.

Popularity: 1% [?]

There are thousands of sites spread across our globe where groundwater supplies have been contaminated due to dirty factories, military installations and the dumping of toxic waste.  These so-called superfund sites are left to sit until the expensive cleanup operation can get underway and have undoubtedly a harmful impact on our environment and supplies of drinking water.  But one scientist at Rice University has come up with an amazing solution, one that could leave at least part of our planet gleaming!

Chemical engineer Michael Wong developed a gold detergent that is amazing effective at cleaning up water contaminated with toxic waste.  No, this isn’t a hundred dollar bottle of soap that the likes of Paris Hilton would bathe in twice daily!  Typically cleanup of these sites containing the cancer causing chemicals TCE and PCE costs millions of dollars and it never really gets rid of the problem.  TCE is an industrial solvent used to clean greasy machinery and while it smells sweet, the after-affects are anything but.  The current cleanup method is simply a process that moves the chemicals to another spot.  The federal government has suggested that just to clean up the 1,400 military sites would cost $5 Billion.

Wong realized he could combine gold particles (molecule sized) with palladium (another metal) and sprinkle the resulting mixture over contaminated water.  What happened was pure genius!  The gold detergent broke down the TCE and PCE and turned them into a more eco-friendly gas, ethane, and chloride salt.  The gold detergent works about 100 times faster than the current groundwater cleanup method which involves pumping water through charcoal filters to remove the TCE and PCE.  Wong and his partners at Rice will now deploy the system at an actual cleanup site to see just how effective and cost-efficient their gold detergent can be.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Reduce, reuse and recycle…we all know the now popular mantra.  It was driven into my head as a kid in elementary school every Earth Day and consequently has urged me to turn into the “greenie” I am today.  When it comes to recycling we usually don’t think of building our homes out of recycled materials.  But one Mississippi grandma took the idea to a whole new level.  After a storm practically demolished her wood-framed house, she had another idea that could just take off.  Check out her high-flying home and maybe it will provide you with a little inspiration for your next recycling project!

Popularity: 11% [?]

With all the talk of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the glut of foreclosures, why not talk about something positive when it comes to getting a mortgage and living a greener lifestyle.  I’m not yet a homeowner.  The real estate market is just too out of reach for first-time homebuyers like us.  That’s why we plan to move by the end of the year.  Ideally, I’d like to be in our first home by the Summer of ‘09.   In the meantime, I like to keep up on the trends of the current housing market and mortgage market including “green mortgages”.

The idea of green mortgages reportedly started in 1979 with President Jimmy Carter.  His idea was to make lenders offer incentives to consumers to buy or make their current homes more energy efficient.  It’s amazing to think that at the time, our President had the forethought even then to help out our environment!  The savings of energy efficient homes can often be considered income, allowing some families to purchase a bigger house.  These days lenders that offer green mortgages often set them up in different ways.

The first is a lender’s discount to purchase an energy efficient home.  Some will take a chunk of money out of your closing costs while others will give borrowers more credit and a small amount of money off the closing costs.  If you’re buying an older home, some lenders will qualify the buyer for more than the purchase price of the house.  This extra money is for you to put toward upgrading insulation, installing energy efficient windows and a/c units.  The long-term savings of those upgrades is factored into your income, thus allowing you to qualify for more house.

But, there are some catches because it’s not just free money.  If you don’t make the upgrades and squander away the extra money the lender qualified you for, they could put an escrow on that amount of money when you go to sell your house.  So, it’s essential that if you’re going to make the commitment to the lender to make your home more eco-friendly that you follow through on your end of the deal.  Many states are also offering incentives now as well for the purchase of a green home.  To find out more, you can head to the National Association of State Energy Officials website to find contact information for your state energy representatives.  Then you can ask them what incentives they’re offering for energy efficient homes and renovations.

A green mortgage is just another simple step in the process of living a greener life, proving it truly can be easy going green!

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you’re like many people, you love to have a yard filled with birds. In order to entice them to stick around your slice of paradise, you might hang bird feeders around your home. But, did you know your feeders could do more harm than good?

Bird feeders can be a source of disease, spreading sickness from bird to bird that flies in for a quick meal at your feeders. In some cases, your birds might become lunch themselves when a neighborhood cat figures out there’s a virtual smörgåsbord in your yard or they can knock themselves silly flying into the windows on your home if you put feeders too close to them. So, a few simple steps is all it takes to ensure you can continue enjoying your fine feathered friends.

First, you should always provide more than one feeder around your yard. If birds crowd one feeding station, it can actually cause them to become stressed out which will lead to sickness and possibly even death. When it comes to re-filling those feeders, clean them out first. Bird droppings and other bacteria hanging around on the stations can lead to the spread of sickness too. Just a simple rinse of hot water and an air dry will do when it comes to cleaning them up. However, if you happen to find a bird dead near one of your feeders and there’s no obvious signs a predator got to it, you’ll want to disinfect the feeders with a bleach solution and leave to air dry before re-filling.

Moving your feeders around your yard regularly will not only prevent the buildup of wasted seed in one spot but also stop the buildup of bird droppings in one area. This is another important tip for the health of your local birds. It’s not recommended to lay seed out on the ground because that opens the birds up for an attack or ambush from a predator. Instead, hang them 5 to 12 feet off the ground in shrubs or trees that provide some cover and protection for the birds. A nearby brush pile or some cleverly placed bushes will also provide a place for birds to take cover when the weather gets bad and when a predator comes looking for a free lunch at one of your feeding stations. These should be within a 5 to 12 foot radius of the feeder.

Don’t think about just providing food. Birds need to get a drink of water every now and then too! Plus, many different species love to take a bath on the edge of the bird bath. Shallow bird watering dishes should be placed near the emergency cover as well in case they get spooked. In the winter you’ll obviously need to buy a bird bath heater if you live in a cold climate with freezing weather. During the summer, the water should be changed out about every two to three days.

When it comes time for planting and gardening season in your area, put in some native plants around your yard.  The natives will provide year round food in the form of berries, nectar and seeds.  Evergreen shrubs and trees will provide year round protection and habitat for your birds.  If you’re not sure what kind of native plants to pickup for your area, you can visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for information on what’s native to your locale.  Also, if you happen to have a dead tree on your property you might want to leave it alone.  Birds will nest in the open cavities of what would otherwise be chopped up into bits and thrown out.

These simple steps will go a long way to ensure that you have many years of bird watching fun from the comfort of your own home.

Popularity: 2% [?]

We are just 18 days away from the first official day of Spring, the Spring Equinox happening on March 20th this year.  In many parts of the country it seems the veil of Winter has been lifted already and we’re beginning to thaw out.  Is it just a teaser or has Spring really sprung?

If you happen to live in a warm part of the country, you might already be planning your first Spring garden party.  If so, how would you like to make a nifty drink dispenser that not only tastes good but can be composted when you’re done?!  Check out Elizabeth’s Drunken Watermelon on Tap for the super idea and instructions on how to put it together.  I guarantee this one will be a crowd pleaser at your next outdoor get-together.   If you don’t want to make the beverage alcoholic you can of course substitute it with another beverage.  Watermelon punch, lemonade or iced tea anyone?