It's Easy Being Green

*NOTE – I did not receive any products or services for this blog post*

No question about it, my excitement was far more noticeable as Homestead Hottie opened up a gift box mailed to her. Packed inside, nearly a half-dozen bottles of Martha Stewart’s clean products, everything from glass cleaner, toilet bowl scrub, laundry detergent and dish detergent.

Martha claims her product line if “effective, responsible and safe” with most being 99% plant and mineral based cleaning products. All ingredients in the cleaning products are said to be biodegradable with no artificial ingredients. Even the bottles are fully recyclable. These are all great features and just the type of products we’re always on the lookout to use here at the Half-Acre Homestead.

Using this batch of green cleaning products left me thinking Martha should stick to other things, mainly baking that 12 hour cake or hot gluing the most fantabulous wedding decorations you’ve ever seen this side of the Mississippi. If fact, I found her green cleaning products less than effective at their labeled task.

I like the pump spout on this bottle of laundry detergent but that was about the only thing I liked.

Martha Stewart’s clean Laundry Detergent smelled pleasant enough and had a thick, detergent like cream to it. We used the whole bottle of detergent and as long as your clothes weren’t soiled, they came out smelling and looking clean. Light to moderately soiled clothes often came out with stains and dirt still in place. Heavily soiled clothes didn’t stand a chance of coming clean with Martha’s detergent. Any level of soiling required the clothes be washed with our homemade natural laundry detergent.

Steer clear of Martha's Dish Detergent if you're looking for clean dishes.

Much of the same is to be said for the Martha Stewart clean Dishwasher Detergent. This detergent is fragrance free but I noticed right off the bat that it is extremely runny. While most liquid dish detergents are gels, Martha’s is watery and not very viscous at all. We used most of this bottle and found each and every wash with the detergent to leave our dishes covered in a scummy film. Dried or baked on food debris was never removed by the Martha Stewart clean Dishwasher Detergent and most truly dirty dishes had to be washed by hand following a run through the dishwasher. The results were so bad I quit using the detergent and it has since taken me several washes and hard hand-scrubbing to remove the film that Martha Stewart’s detergent left coating my dishes.

Martha's All-Purpose Cleaner has been effective in quickly cleaning lightly soiled areas of the house.

I have used the other cleaning products off and on, mainly just for convenience factors so I don’t have to sprint to another area of the Half-Acre Homestead when I need to clean. For the most part I’ve found the Toilet Bowl cleaner and the All-Purpose cleaner to be pleasant smelling and effective at cleaning. The Carpet Stain Remover had a “spotty” track record on our carpets, cleaning half of the stains with a bleaching effect noticeable while the other half of the stains were left untouched.

As for now, we will continue buying green cleaning supplies from the likes of Seventh Generation and Dr. Bronner’s. The rest of the cleaners we will make on our own. It was wonderful to receive a box full of green cleaners as a gift but I would recommend not buying them for lack of effectiveness.

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Living just 3 hours away from Indianapolis has allowed me the opportunity to make some visits for pleasure with my family and for work.  Large cities like Indy can be an environmental nightmare but they can also be great catalysts for bringing green life to the forefront of thousands of people who live within its confines.

During my last two trips to Indy I’ve seen two very cool public displays of green living, nudging city dwellers to live life at least a tad more sustainably.  At the state capitol, people are encouraged to ride bicycles to conduct business there.  Gone are the days of using a chain to tie your bike to a tree trunk or some other hopefully immovable object.  Instead, the state has installed bike lockers, so riders can store their wheels in an enclosed and locked space.  It’s like having your own secured parking garage for just your bicycle.  I think this is a fantastic idea and leaves you with little worry about the condition of your bike when you return to bail it out.

Bike Locker

Also seen on sidewalks in downtown Indy are dozens of recycling bins.  The water bottle that someone chugged while dashing from one meeting to the next can now be tossed into a recycling bin instead of heading off to the landfill.  City-maintained recycling bins are a simple concept and why more municipalities don’t offer them up is beside me.

Tim Mahoney of the Hoosier Environmental Council was recently asked to rank the city’s efforts to become more sustainable.  It’s pretty interesting and shows while Indianapolis is making great strides to try and take more responsibility for its environmental impact, they still have a long way to go.

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A creative communications company has developed a new, eco-friendly font that will help you use 20% less printer ink.  SPRANQ, a Dutch design firm, developed Ecofont to inform consumers about the impacts of their use of printer paper and ink.

Designers were convinced that a font could use less while ink while still maintaining a professional look and of course readability.  SPRANQ began testing and ended up choosing a design based on the Vera Sans font.  When Ecofont is printed at around size 9 or 10, you can’t even tell there are holes in the printed letters.  The new font also eliminated the use of dots on certain letters.

An example of what Ecofont looks like close up.

The best part about is that you can download Ecofont for free by clicking the link.  The company is soliciting donations if you feel inclined to support their cause for greener printing.

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If you’re looking to green up your New Year’s celebration with some eco-friendly bubbly, the selection is still pretty slim.  Not many in viticulture (growing grapes for wine) have jumped on the eco-bandwagon.  But there are a few lines out there that might be worth a shot.  Look for these options at your local wine shop:

1)  Dom. de Montbourgeau Cremant du Jura – $21.99 Hand-harvested grapes come from an eight-hectare farm run by the founder’s granddaughter.

2)  Avinyo Cava Rosado - $25.99 Four small organic farms supply the winery; the winemaker consults a 300-year-old book for farming tips.

3) Foreau Vouvray Brut – $26.99 12-hectare farm managed organically; yields intentionally held down to privilege quality over quantity.

4) François Pinon Vouvray Petillant Brut - $20.99 Supplied by 14 hectares of organically managed land, with a variety of microclimates and soil types.

Are you looking for a quick, homemade hostess gift to whip up for a New Year’s party you might be headed to?  Read my post on Homemade Liquers and Cordials.  They would make a tasty option.

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This year a lot of families are undoubtedly struggling with finances and trying to juggle the holidays.  While there are a lot of ideas to avoid the traditional gift giving retailers count on, there are ways to reduce your financial and environmental impacts.  If you are truly set on giving gifts this year consider these bright ideas.

Limit the number of gifts you purchase by drawing family members names for a gift exchange.  Sure one gift isn’t as exciting as receiving multiples but do you really need to spend that much money or receive that many objects?

Recycling or reusing items for a Christmas gift might make you bawk but think again.  Antique stores are often treasure troves of unique gift ideas for just about everyone on your list.  Think about the items finding another life instead of just being tossed into the dumpster.

A lot of retail items come heavily packaged which is a huge environmental waste.  As you consider purchases also consider their packaging and whether or not components can be recycled.  You can also buy items like gift cards or show tickets to reduce the overall impact at the landfill.

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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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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!

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