Live Earth

Did you know that Live Earth is less than one week away? I wonder how many people do. While I am sure that music enthusiasts and environmentalists already have their Tivos set for the World-Wide benefit event, I wonder how many others actually know that the 24-hour mega concert will take place on Saturday, July 7th.

Check out Live Earth's website for more event info, global warming news and suggestions on what you can do to help.

You can even host your own Live Earth party. Visit evite.com for some great suggestions.

Regis and Kelly Speak Eco

Watching Live with Regis and Kelly this morning, I learned about a new book by Danny Seo called, Simply Green Parties. Here are a few tips for hosting an eco-friendly summer party that Danny shared on the show.

1. Use solar lights. These are easy to find almost anywhere. I got some for my parents last year at Target.

2. Use paint chips as wine glass ID tags. Simply write a name on one color sample, punch a hole in the corner and fasten to the glass with a binder ring (available in office supply stores).

3. Serve organic and/or local wine.

4. Use edible herbs as centerpieces. Guests can snip off some herbs for their salads.

5. Serve easy to find organic salad and toppings.

6. Recycle leftover tiles from home renovations as coasters.

7. Make a trivot and coasters out of your old wine corks.

8. Give a live tree as a party favor or a hostess gift.

Danny Seo has written many books on living green. You can check out some of them here on Amazon.com.

Eco-Friendly Stores?

Target has long been somewhat of an eco-friendly store. Wal-Mart made news earlier this year in its efforts to go green and now Home Depot has followed suit.

Personally, I choose to shop at Target over Wal-Mart because they seem to offer more earth friendly products. They follow LEED standards of building. According to their website they cut waste by 70% last year and plan to continue. They've incorporated energy efficient lighting, heating, cooling and hardware in their stores and offices. In addition, all new stores will be built using low-impact development standards. You can read more about Target's efforts here.

According to a press release earlier this year, Wal-Mart CEO, Lee Scott, announced a formal long-term goal to run his company on 100% renewable energy and produce zero waste. They have also incorporated energy saving lighting and hardware in their stores. A creative approach was that they installed more north-facing windows and mirrors to track the sun. They plan to reduce shipping costs by 5% by 2008, saving them $3 billion and their suppliers and additional $11 billion. Wal-Mart is currently looking into installing solar panels in many of their stores. You can click here to read more about Wal-Mart's green goals and what the skeptics say. I found this on their site.

Home Depot has recently begun its Eco Options marketing campaign. According to an article in Monday's NY Times (thanks to my friend Kim for forwarding the article), "Home Depot is working with Scientific Certification Systems, a private company based in Emeryville, Calif., that audits and certifies company claims, to develop new broad-based standards. They will grade a product based on its environmental record over its entire life cycle — including the sustainability of its production process, its efficiency and longevity and how it can be recycled when it is no longer useful." Like Wal-Mart, Home Depot has many critics. You can read the entire article here. I want to point out that the boy in the picture is standing in front of a shelf full of Method products. I'm excited by this because Method (also sold by Target) is a fabulous line of eco-friendly products that are inexpensive and work great. You should give them a try and if you do, let me know that you think of them.

Lowe's stores have started offering organic gardening supplies, including fertilizer, soil and insecticides, that are friendly to children and pets. Lowe's opened a prototype environmentally friendly store in Austin last year and plans to open another later this year in Toronto. They are also now carrying eco-friendly bamboo flooring and blinds and low-flush toilets, which once had to be specially ordered. I couldn't find as much information on Lowe's but I'm sure as Home Depot's competitor, there will be more to come.

The Green Guide

The Green Guide is a great site I found which is sponsored by National Geographic. They have a print magazine you can subscribe to but the site is loaded with lots of useful information as well. You can find green news, tips, product reviews and more. Check out the new "Green Guidance" box on the right side of this blog. It will be updated each week with new information. Find out how you can add Green Guidance to your site by clicking on the bottom of the box.

Experience Earth

I'm reading a book I just picked up called,The Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry. The book is comprised of essays Berry wrote over many years conveying how we can understand and protect our environment. So far I've only read three of the sixteen essays. The first one, however, really rang true with me.

In "1. Returning to Our Native Place", Berry writes of how we must make an effort to experience our planet to truly understand it and therefore make a positive impact. Simply stated, get outside! All he means is that we need to be outdoors, see and smell the flowers, hear the birds during the day and the insects at night, feel the sun on your face. As an indoor society we take these things for granted. Yes, we all attend the occasional picnic and we walk from the house to the car and back inside but is that enough to know our world?

Patrick and I like to go on little nature walks as often as possible. We enjoy discovering new plants, insects and animals. We also enjoy seeing these things together. I challenge you to go for a walk. It could be a place you've already seen but this time try to look for new things you never new existed. Count how many different flowers you see, how many bugs cross your path, butterflies, birds, mammals. The list could be endless. You'd be surprised what you never knew was right in front of you.

If you absolutely cannot get outside, take some time to read a nature book or watch some nature programs. The fabulous series, "Planet Earth" has shared an inside view of the world we otherwise could not see from our comfy recliners in our air conditioned houses. I am grateful to Discovery Channel for sharing these magical wonders with us. If you didn't see it, you can buy the complete DVD set here.

Now go experience Earth!

PS- More books by or about Thomas Berry can be found here.

Earth Friendly Shopping

In one of my previous posts I wrote about some things we can recycle. I mentioned plastic grocery bags as one of those items. Here is a great site for some alternatives to those nasty toxic plastic bags. It turns out when they do eventually break down, they leave behind a toxic powder that contaminates our land and waterways.

For you Amazon.com lovers, you can add these reusable bags to your cart. I know a few people who will be getting some for Christmas this year.

You Can Recycle That????

I've always been a recycler. You know...soda cans, glass and plastic bottles, newspapers. But did you know you can recycle aluminum foil? We don't think about it when we take it off the leftover pizza, crumble into a ball and toss it into the trash. Yes, you can throw that aluminum foil in the recycling bin. Try to get it as clean as possible (just shake the crumbs out and wipe the sauce off) and place it with your bottles and cans.

Some other items you may not have known you could recycle:
- Many fast food cups. Just look at the bottom of the cup for the recyclable symbol.
- Packaging from Amazon.com. Patrick blogged about this one.

- All plastics. Just check with your recycler if there are any limitations.

- Plastic grocery bags. Most recycling centers have a spot for them and many grocery stores will take them back. Asking for paper bags helps reduce because it's easier to recycle paper but the best thing we can do is take reusable bags with us when we go shopping.

Happy Recycling!

Home Composting

I remember my dad had a compost pile when I was a kid. It was a huge wooden bin that he built next to his gigantic garden. I didn't know much about it but I knew a lot of garbage went in there and it somehow helped his garden grow.

Today, I have my own compost pile. It's much smaller than my dad's was but the concept is still the same. I looked into composting after seeing that many recycling sites recommend it. Patrick and I live in a condo so we don't have room for anything to the scale my father had but we have a small amount of property next to our back porch where we have placed a giant plastic flower pot for our compostable garbage. We throw everything from the kitchen in there, with the exception of meat and dairy. It's been wonderful because we have so much less trash now. You'd be amazed at how much waste you can eliminate (or disperse to a better place) by composting. Even if you don't use it in a garden, composting is better than trashing. It's easy and doesn't cost anything but the container you choose to use. We got our giant flower pot for about $10.00.

Here's a home composting site to get you started. Just remember you can use any container you want. You don't need to spend a lot to compost.

Welcome

The goal of this blog is to help raise awareness to the little things we can do to make a difference. I am an average, middle-class person, just like most of you. I live with my middle-class boyfriend, Patrick and our middle-class parakeets, Roger and Amelia. Among our many goals in life, we aim to reduce the impact we have on earth so our great-grandchildren will have a safe, healthy and spacious environment to grow up in. Whether you believe in global warming or you don't, the truth is we, and our garbage, take up a lot of space. There are little changes we can all make that will make a huge difference in the end. Welcome to easyecoliving!