Homemade furniture polish

I do love the smell of Pledge, as it makes furniture smell all clean and non-dusty, but unfortunately, it's just packed with chemicals. I found this lovely tip on making homemade furniture polish and it's easy-peasy (lemon squeezy!). Just squeeze five lemons and mix it with a cup of olive oil. Voila! Furniture polish!

Green Mobile Phone

T-Mobile is now offering a green account with paperless billing statements, e-mail updates and Easy Pay automatic bill payments. If you sign up, a tree will be planted on your behalf by the Arbor Day Foundation. If you do so by the 31st of May, you can get a chance to win a 6-day eco-adventure or a bike through their Mobilize with T-Mobile sweepstakes.

You can also avail of the Moto Renew, the first cellular telephone made from recycled plastic bottles. T-Mobile will also plant a tree on your behalf if you upgrade your telephone with a 2 year agreement by the end of May. Click here for more details.

Plan It Green

You think you can do a good job of creating and running your own green city?

Now there's a chance for you to show it! Try playing Merscom and National
Geographic Games' Plan It Green.


Here are the system requirements for Windows:
* OS: Windows XP/2000/Vista
* CPU: 600 Mhz
* RAM: 256 MB/512 MB
* DirectX: 6.0
* Hard Drive: 120 MB

Nothing for Macs though. The game was launched during Earth Day 2009. Here's a description of the game:

"As the Mayor of Greenville, players have the opportunity to create a green city in Plan It Green. As mayor of your hometown, you have vowed to bring about a new green future by changing the ways of the past. You are working with close supporters to restore Greenville to its former glory and beauty. Watch as Greenville transforms before your eyes as you build eco-homes, apply green upgrades, and bring new clean jobs and industry to your hometown!"

My husband played it and thought it was cool. Now that's saying something since he's a big-time gamer.

Image from the Plan It Green game website.

Liar, Liar

If you have Fine Living Network, you might have watched Big Green Lies presented by Seventh Generation's president Jeffrey Hollender this past Earth Day. In case you missed it, it'll be re-aired on 02 May at 2 PM EST.

Sylvania's giving away free ice cream in NYC!

Do you live in New York City? This bit of fun news made me wish I did.

In celebration of Earth Day, SYLVANIA (the lighting innovations leader) will have an ice cream truck roaming the streets of New York City and giving away FREE soft serve ice cream (yeah, coz they have those swirly-shaped CFL bulbs). They will also give out coupons and share tips on going green and saving green when using their eco-friendly lighting products.

You can find the Sylvania Ice Cream Truck here: Lowe's Brooklyn, Union Square, Times Square and Bryant Park.

5 quick & easy tips to save energy

Earth Day's coming up! Thanks to our friends from Retrevo for sharing these energy-saving tips.

1. Turn off devices when you're not using them - especially game consoles and TVs.
Large plasma TVs are the biggest hogs but game machines are a close second. Shutting down game players in the U.S. for just 24 hours would save enough energy to power the city of San Diego for a day.

2. Make sure they're really off - use a power strip and flip the switch.
Many products draw power after they're turned off. If the charger in the wall socket is warm it's likely sucking power. Use a power strip and shut it down to insure gadgets are really off.

3. If you're going to leave your computer on, at least set them to Hibernate or Standby.
Energy Star says the PC's Hibernate or Standby mode can save up to $75 a year in electricity. And, don't be fooled by screen savers - they're no help at all.

4. Unplug the gadgets you only use occasionally.
If you only use them once in a while - fax machines, or peripherals attached to your computer such as USB hard drives for backup - unplugging guarantees they're off.

5. Use renewable energy to recharge small devices like iPods, cell phones and GPS.
Inexpensive devices like the Hymini wind turbine, Solio's Hybrid 1000, Freeplay Freecharge, or Kinesis Industries combo are easy to use and get your gadgets going in minutes.

Retrevo even came up with a "Survival Guide to Greener Living with Electronics". Check it out!

Earth Week begins

Earth Day is this Wednesday, the 22nd of April. You can celebrate by volunteering in your community. Click here to search for volunteer opportunities.

Hot yoga fashion

And by that, I mean "fashion for hot yoga," not "hot outfits for doing yoga," although that'd work too. Hot yoga or Bikram yoga is growing more and more popular lately, and I actually started taking classes late last month. I'm not too keen on the founder's lawsuit-happy ways, but I do love the yoga itself. My back pain disappeared, for one thing.

Anyway, during my first few classes, I would go in wearing a small shirt and long sweatpants, though people are generally advised to wear as little clothing as possible because heavy clothing + buckets of sweat = not good. Lately, however, I've taken to wearing knee-length pants and sports bra because a completely sweaty shirt is far from comfortable, so I've been on the lookout for more hot yoga-appropriate clothing. I haven't had any luck in that arena, but I have found this interesting article entitled What to Wear to Hot Yoga, which talks about eco-friendly yoga apparel, which uses fabrics such as bamboo, hemp, and soy. It would be great if these were more widely available, and hopefully, at an affordable price, too.

Eternal Rest

Not to sound morbid, but if you want to stay earth-friendly during your eternal slumber, how about an eco-burial? These types of burials take up less space; use biodegradable, recyclable or renewable coffins; and don't use embalming materials like formaldehyde. Come to think of it, why do they use embalming fluid? Aren't we supposed to naturally return to the earth?
During this Easter week, as we ponder on life and death, here are links from Ideal Bite on how to have a natural burial:

• Ecopod--recycled paper coffins
• Eternal Reefs
• Uono Cocoons--caskets that biodegrade in 10-15 years.
• Econatur Ecourns--urns that degrade in 3 months.
• For more information, visit the Green Burial Council.
  

Get a whiff of something fresh and green

I'm not the biggest beauty buff, but I like looking at beauty products from time to time just to see what's out there. What I've found recently is eco-friendly perfume. What makes a perfume eco-friendly, anyway? Based on the ones I've found, these should be:

cruelty-free, meaning not tested on animals

made of natural, organic ingredients...

...which have been sustainably harvested

dye-free, artificial perfume-free, and chemical-free

in recyclable, environmentally responsible packaging

Aura Cacia offers a few perfumes, Root, Wood, Leaf, Flower, and Fruit, which are made with natural oils. As part of Frontier Natural Products Co-op, Aura Cacia implements the Well Earth program, which helps ensure that they create sustainable products using organic ingredients.






Ecco Bella offers two scents, lavender and lemon verbena, both of which use natural grain alcohol. If you check out both product pages, take note of the ingredients: they're incredibly simple and recognizable.






Kate's Caring Gifts carries this all-natural vegan perfume made with essential floral oils in organic jojoba oil.

Green Easter

Easter is associated with spring, fertility, new life. Kids are outside, hunting for colored eggs and candy. How to keep a green celebration truly green? Nature Moms offers the following tips on having an eco-friendly Easter bash:

• If you can DIY, make your own baskets or buy good baskets that you can reuse every year.
• Instead of plastic grass, fill the basket with paper you were gonna recycle and cut or shred them.
  
• Dye the eggs with natural coloring techniques, for example, red wine to make purple eggs, spinach for green, etc.
  
• Instead of candy, you can put books, crayons, toys, arts and crafts materials, coloring books in the basket. Or pick healthier candy options.
• Buy Fair Trade chocolate or gift packs.

A Happy and Healthy Easter to all!

The Bee's Knees

I've also stopped using regular soap because of its toxic ingredients. I found Burt's Bees body bars at my local supermarket. It is pricey but the bars last a long time. They even come in 2 packs now.

For more information on what soaps and shampoos to avoid and what to buy instead, click here.

Review: Earthwise Products

Earthwisebags.com located in Commerce, CA offers a lot of choices in their arsenal of reusable bags. They manufacture reusable bags for companies, so some of the samples you see here were produced for other companies. Here are some of them:

Lunch bags and hot & cold insulated bags
Outer shell - 100% non-woven polypropylene
Inner lining - aluminum foil
Spot wash with sponge.


Yes, they're all Kellogg's bags designed for kids. It's cute.




This baby did a good job of keeping things at or near the temperature I wanted. Of course, it didn't keep food steaming hot or chillingly cold. Just hot/cold enough.


Shopping bag
100% non-woven polypropylene
Cold hand wash
No bleach or tumble dry.



This bag was the same size and look as our Stop & Shop reusable bag. I didn't realize that Earthwise produced Stop & Shop's bag. That one was green, this was blue. And different logos. But that's the extent of the difference. Needless to say, this bag is seeing much action.

Black bag
PET (100% recycled material)
Cold hand wash
Don't bleach, tumble dry or iron.



Canvas bag
100% organic cotton
Cold wash on gentle cycle
Tumble dry on low heat.

The black bag and the canvas bags haven't been truly tested yet. Just used them in mini-shopping expeditions. It's doing well, so far. I'll post an update once I've tried them during a major shopping galore.


Stew Leonard's
Bag - 100% woven polypropylene
Handle - 100% polyester
Cold hand wash
Don't bleach or tumble dry.


The Stew Leonard's bag on the right never leaves our car because we buy produce from Stew Leonard's. So far, each time we used it, we haven't completely filled the bag yet. More shopping is in order.

OmniPeace Reusable Shopping Bags 4 in 1

100% Polyester
4 in 1(pouch becomes one of 4, bags)
Machine washable
Don't tumble dry.



According to the Earthwise website, "OmniPeace donates 25% of all profits to charities targeting these goals. With the simple purchase of an OmniPeace product you are supporting a movement that begins with you. Can you think of a better return in life than saving one?"

And that's why I like it.

VTech turns green, step by step

I used a VTech phone before, so it was pretty interesting to hear that they've begun to implement more eco-friendly changes to their products.

· Energy Star®-certified to offer the same or better performance than comparable models, while using less energy
· RoHS compliant for reduced hazardous substances
· Available in 100-percent recyclable club store packaging
· Available in gift boxes that are 41 percent smaller and use 14 ounces less PET plastic

Nesting Behavior

Most of us have heard by now about the hidden dangers in our own houses, giving new meaning to the word 'homesick'. I saw the Green Nest founders featured on The Doctors yesterday. Go to Green Nest for more information on how to test your home for contaminants and toxins, and what to do about them.

Low Carb

Low carbon diet that is. I read this article on the Seventh Generation website and here's a summary on how to lower your carbon footprint by making better choices at the grocery store.

• Reduce your consumption of red meat, which alone is responsible for 30% of our country's total food production-related GHG (green house gases) emissions.
• Cut back on dairy products, too, which account for another 18%.
• Focus your protein consumption on chicken, fish, and eggs, which together account for just 10% of food-related GHG emissions. Replacing red meat and dairy products with chicken, fish, or eggs for just one day a week, for example, would yield the equivalent of driving 760 fewer miles each year.
• Fill up on fruits and vegetables, which create just 11% of the GHGs on the nation's plate. Going vegetarian one day per week would be like driving 1,160 miles less per year.
• Buy locally-produced food whenever you can.
• Buy organic foods. Healthier organic soils are able to absorb and store far more carbon than chemically-treated soils. By some estimates, we could remove 580 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere simply by growing all our corn and soybeans organically.
• Watch your waste! Buy in bulk and avoid heavily packaged products. We can each prevent the release of 1,200 annual pounds of C02 simply by cutting our garbage output 10%. When it comes to cooking, prepare only what you'll actually eat and clean your plate. Save all your leftovers for other meals and throw out as little as possible.
• Similarly, skip the junk and snack foods, and other heavily processed products. These all take more energy to make than raw foods prepared at home.
• Buy fresh foods rather than frozen foods, which require ten times more energy to produce.
• Eat foods in season. Out-of-season foods transported from distant locales have much larger carbon footprints than those grown nearby. Can, dry, and freeze fruits and vegetables during local harvests so you can enjoy them all year round.
• If you buy non-local, assess the impact. Foods transported by ship have a far lower GHG footprint than those that are trucked or flown. So a Boston resident, for example, is better off drinking wine from France than California, while someone in St. Louis should opt for the West Coast choice. Non-local fresh foods like fruits and vegetables are likely to have been flown in while packaged foods from overseas will most likely have arrived by water.

Deep Green Living

I check out The Huffington Post practically every day, and one of today's articles was about an eco-evaluation recently done on Arianna Huffington's home. The evaluation was conducted by Deep Green Living, a New York-based company founded by Susan Short. You can contact Deep Green Living to come to your house or your office to conduct an analysis on how eco-friendly your surroundings are, evaluating aspects such as energy efficiency, water efficiency, and the toxin levels. If you want to make the change and green up your home, they can help you get started, too.