With summer right around the corner, lots of people like to enjoy the warm weather by going out on a boat. This can be great fun, but you need to protect the waters. One way is to use a funnel when refueling your water vehicles. This will help to avoid spills.
Happy Earth Day!
Check out this video from PopCrunch that takes a look at a few celebrities that are good to the environment, and a few that aren’t.
Video includes celebs like…Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Harrelson, Al Gore, Tyra Banks, & John Travolta.
Earth Day is this week, April 22 to be exact, which is a perfect time to learn about our planet & how to take care of it. Creating a compost pile in your garden is a great activity for Earth Day.
Composting is basically mixing raw food scraps from your kitchen with leaves & other yard waste, plus water. This will not only reduce your trash sent to the landfill but it will also create one killer fertilizer for all those home grown veggies.
If you don’t already compost at home, go green and start this Tuesday - Earth Day!
What is Earth Day?
Earth Day, April 22, marks the anniversary of the modern environmental movement in 1970. It is an annual celebration of the environment and intended to inspire awareness of & appreciation for the Earth’s environment.
Earth Day was initiated in 1970 by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, who started a “teach-in” to protest the government’s environmental ignorance. This eventually led to legislation including the Environmental Policy Act (1969), the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1977) and fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.
When it comes to watering your gardens, flowers or veggies, the eco-gardener choses to use a drip hose over a traditional sprinkler.
Drip hoses work by allowing water to slowly seep out of small holes that target the roots of the plants, where they actually need the water, as opposed to the leaves, flowers, sidewalk, and all passing cars on the street.
Make that green thumb a bit greener this year by using a drip hose to irrigate your gardens instead of those water wasting sprinklers.
Traditional dry cleaning of clothes is neither earth-friendly nor human-friendly because it uses a solvent called perchloroethylene, or perc. Perc is such a nasty chemical, it has even been linked to cancer, liver and nervous system damage, infertility, and hormonal disruption.
A safer alternative to perc is carbon dioxide dry cleaning. CO2 dry cleaning is so eco-friendly that it is even endorsed by Greenpeace and the EPA. And on top of all that, Consumer Reports says that CO2 dry cleaning actually cleans clothes better than using solvents like perc.
Of course, it’s best not to dry clean at all, but if you must, go green by using an eco-friendly dry cleaners that uses CO2 instead of perc.
Greenify your family’s dinners by turning the oven off 10 - 15 minutes before the baking time runs out. By doing this, the food will continue to cook in the already warm oven without using wasting any extra electricity.
Most families go through at least one gallon of milk a week. Even if you recycle each container, that’s still a lot of waste! Keep those plastic milk jugs out of the landfill by reusing.
Here are 5 ways to reuse plastic gallon & 1/2 gallon milk jugs:
1- Painting: Cut the front, top quarter off, keeping the bottom and handle in tact. Fill with paint for a portable, easy to hold bucket.
2- Piggy Bank: Cut a 1/4 inch slit near the top of the milk jug & drop all your extra spare change into the jug. Before you know it, it will be full and time to go to the bank to cash in. You can also decorate your new penny saver to match any decor.
3- Scoop: This works best with a 1/2 gallon jug, having the handle as the top of your scoop. Cut diagonally around the jug until you have a nice scoop shape. For a bit of a lip to your scoop, keep a little bit of the bottom of the jug intact. This is super useful for things like birdseed, fertilizer, dog food and potting soil.
4- Lantern: Cut of the top of the gallon jug, fill the container with sand and a votive candle. If you have several, you can line a walkway or driveway to welcome guests.
5- Plant Markers: Cut the jug into strips, write plant varieties in permanent marker, and stick it in the dirt for easy reference.
Effective October 1, 2008, Ikea is banning the plastic bag. That’s right, Ikea will no longer offer plastic bags in stores starting this October.
This all comes about with the great success of Ikea’s “bag the plastic bag” program, which asked for customers to either use their own reusable bag, purchase the Ikea blue bag for $.59, or purchase the regular plastic bags for $.05.
Ikea reported that 92 percent of its customers have stopped buying plastic bags since they started the program last year. With results like that, Ikea has decided to take another step forward, and as of October 1, 2008 Ikea will no longer offer plastic bags.
