Natural and Sustainable

• Use a dime-sized portion of shampoo and conditioner when washing your hair. Then when you get halfway through the bottle, add a little water to make it last even longer.

• Love cut flowers? Weel, most are treated with pesticides and flown thousands of miles, and usually die in about three days. Instead opt for indoor plants such as hydrangeas, which come potted.

• Try to buy local over organic when in the supermarket. Of course organic is important to your health as well as your families, but buying local you support local growers. It not only forces you to eat seasonlly, when produce is freshest, it also eliminates the energy coasts of shipping food from around the world. Also, small farmers are more apt to care about their environmental impact than industrial agriculture, since they live on the land they work.

• Bring a tote to the supermarket when you do your shopping, and try to remember plastic produce bags as well, so you are not collecting more and mroe each time.

• Test your own drinkinbg water yourself with a water purifying kit from a local hardware store. Or get an easy-to-install water filter. So instead of buying plastic bottles, use a carafe of water in the fridge.

• When you order take-out ask for the condiments of only what you plan to use. Who really needs 12 packets of soy sauce, eight packages of ketchup or four pairs of plastic knives? It’s sad to see them all end up in the trash eventually.

• Opt to pay a few cents extra to support wind-powered electricity, which comes from a renewable energy source. Your power company won’t hook you apt. or your house up to a different generator, but it does make sure that a comparable amount of wind energy is used in another place and it will overall make a tiny difference for a better world.

**Looking for tips on what stocks are up and what stocks are down? Check out Rick’s suggestion over at My Stock Winners. He states that The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors Index (HMO – 1,798.6) is facing long-term resistance at the 1,800 level. Read more here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Swap, don’t buy (Try eBay, Craigslist, and Freecycle.)

Dust is full of chemicals!
Clean Production Action, a nonprofit group that promotes the development of sustainable products, tested the vacuum dust in 70 homes across the country and found toxic chemicals in every sample. The list included not only PBDEs but also phthalates (plasticizers in vinyl, hair sprays, and nail polishes), organotins (an additive in vinyl), alkylphenols (found in paint and cleaners), perfluorinates surfacants (in floor polishes, herbicides, and insecticides), and pesticides. These substances may cause allergies and asthma; harm your cardiovascular, nervous, and reproductive systems; and lead to breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers.

So how did they get into your house? It is beleived that these chemicals are in every home with consumer products. Computers, shower curtains, and wallpapper emit chemicals that settle into dust, which we breath, eat, and absorb through our skin. Manufacturers didn’t expect these chemcials to leach out of their products, but it’s happening. They off-gas the most when the’re brand-new, but continue to do so at lower levels through their life. What is not know yet is the level at which this exposure become a poison. To be safe, lower your home’s chemcials burden by keeping it well ventilated (open windows!), using a HEPA vacuum, and avoiding products made with flame retardants and vinyl. Go to Safer-Products for a list of manufacturers that are phasing out these chcmeicals.

For more environmental knowledge go to Environment Talk

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: To reduce your carbon footprint, only leave footprints when you travel. Never leave behind trash. Never pick vegetation unless you’re going to eat it. And you should never pick flowers, trees, or berries in a nation forest or nation park.

I recently attended a home show at Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, where I, of course, drifted over to the environmentally friendly booths. There was everything on how to green your home to getting grass to grow in an environmentally friendly way. I ended up taking a brochure from every booth it seemed and my husband was checking out the environmentally friendly lawn equipment. What is it with men and machines anyway? But, I digress……

I ended up going home and looking through all the brochures I had taken with me and came across one company that has an interesting mission, the are calling themselves “GreenPrint“.

They are trying to get the word out about wasted paper when printing. I was quite intrigued by this seeing that, this so called, phantom sheet of paper they are referring to that prints after your main print goal sheet has come through the printer never happens to me. So of course, being the curious person I am, I dug deeper into this so called “GreenPrint” world and this is what I found out.

“GreenPrint software eliminated unwanted pages, saving paper, ink, money, and millions of trees.”

Okay, hold on……first of all, I don’t think the issue with the “extra” sheet of paper after printing is the problem with the paper waste issue as much as paper waste in itself. I think you should educate people on how not to waste paper in the first place. And start this education process early, like my son’s age. Age four. Teach children (and some adults) on ways to prevent this “extra” sheet you speak of from coming out in the first place. It as simple as copy and paste into a word program and then you know for a fact that the extra sheet won’t be coming.

I am as tree-hugging-friendly as the next person, but this just seems a bit odd to have a company start based solely on the fact of phantom paper waste. Let’s see you have business cards, brochures printed, the making of the CD you are selling, not to mention the free sample CD like I was given, plus the cost of ink to produce all of that printed advertising for your company.

I ask you GreenPrint, who is really the wasteful one here?

But, you do come backed and endorsed by, The National Arbor Day Foundation, Friends of Tree, as well as Sustainable Forestry Initiative and Friends of the Forestso with those backings it does give your company a bit more of a better reputation. And you also donate at least 1% of sales to tree-planting efforts through your environmental partners. So I guess if anything, you are at least doing your own part to help out, even though I think all your brochures and cards you gave me was enough paper waste to save a tree, maybe two.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Start your childs school or preschool year off right with a backpack or messanger bag, lunchbox off being PVC-free. And give them a head start with all-natural school supplies as well. Try, Natural Home’s version of the PVC backpacks and messanger bags.