Day 84 of our Green Year: Free Rice

Rice is a staple of billions of people all over the world, and with rising costs in food, there has been a rising cost in rice.
Those people who rely on rice everyday for their diet, need to get rice, but as a Canadian, thousands of miles away, how can Layla and I help?
Thankfully, there is a site called FreeRice.com that will help us.

Through FreeRice.com, all you have to do is keep taking a vocabulary quiz. For every word you guess correctly, they will buy 20 grains of rice. You may think that is not much, but in just five minutes of doing the quiz, I had raised 720 grains of rice to be bought for those who cannot afford it by the site's sponsors. That amounts to about four bowls. Now, when you factor in all the other people using this site, you have a lot of rice. In fact, as of right now, the site has bought 38,979,346,150 grains of rice. If the average bowl of rice has 100 grains in it, that means the site has donated 389,793,462 bowls of rice. If someone eats three bowls a day, that is enough to feed one person for 129,931,153 days, or 35,000 years, give or take a decade. That is a lot of rice and that has all been raised since October of 2007. It is pretty amazing, and all it takes is you going there and spending five minutes to do a vocabulary quiz. You play the game and raise the rice, sponsors buy the rice and those who need the rice get it.

So far, the rice has fed 27,000 refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh for two weeks. In Cambodia, it provided enough take-home rations to last 13,500 pregnant women two months. In Uganda, it fed 66,000 school children for a week. In Nepal, it fed over 108,000 Bhutanese refugees for three days. in Bhutan, it fed 41,000 children for three days and in Myanmar, it fed 750,000 people for three days after the killer cyclone.

So, for our 84th day we will start taking five minutes every now and then to raise rice for those who need it.

Day 46 of our Green Year: Bills, Bills, Bills and wasted paper

We all get them, and we all hate them. They are bills and they come into our lives and ruin a perfectly good day. You know what else they ruin? The environment. Every month, millions of bills are mailed out to homes and that constitutes thousands of trees cut down to let us know we are past due on our cable.

To continue with the trend of the past few days, Layla and I are again going to be saving paper and this time we are doing it by getting our bills delivered to us online. Rather than find out from Shaw that we owe so much money through the mail, we will be getting online billing to our e-mail. Not only does this keep us from losing our bills, but it also helps us save trees.

Most companies these days offer billing online, so there really is no reason for you to receive your bills through the post office. I know many of you out there already do this because of the great convienance it provides, but more need to. Think of how many trees would be saved if we simply got our bills through e-mail. Of course, that uses energy on the servers to send e-mail, but many web hosting companies these days are green and actually offset their emissions or power their servers through green methods.

As well, I have to give a big thank you to Ethical Bean Coffee. They are based out of Vancouver and they were nice enough to send Layla and I some wonderful fair trade and organic coffee. We received two blends of coffee and some tea for Layla. The coffee was excellent as most organic coffee is (free of nasty pesticides). Their coffee is also bird-friendly and shade grown (grown without clear-cutting) If you are interested in checking them out, go to www.ethicalbean.com or click the Green Friends link on the side. Thank you Samantha for sending us the samples!

Day 45 of our Green Year: What to do with the reciepts?

Layla and I were out getting some things, and we used our cloth bags of course. However, as we left we soon realized that while we were putting what we bought in cloth bags, we were not giving much notice to the paper receipts that we had received.
Then, today we realized that how green are we really being when we use cloth bags but throw away our receipts?

So, naturally we decided that from now on we will be recycling our receipts, along with doing some other things to reuse them so we don't have to buy something else. One of our friends, Jennifer, commented on her own blog (Mothers Going Green http://www.mothersgoinggreen.blogspot.com/), that she uses her receipts as To-Do lists, grocery lists and more. This is a great way to save paper, and it helps you keep track of what you have already bought and how much it cost!

You can also use your receipts for composting just like you use newspaper. Of course, the best thing to do is simply recycle them with your regular paper.
You can also use receipts for various projects like paper mache, and even as a cheap wrapping paper. Remember our motto "Reuse then Recycle"

Am I missing anything? Let me know so that we can all figure out great ways to reuse receipts before we recycle them!

Also, we hit 1,000 hits today! It took us one month to hit 500, but only two weeks to hit another 500! That is awesome! Thank you so much to everyone who has helped us spread the message of Our Green Year and let's look forward to not another 500, but another 5,000, 50,000 and more!

Day 44 of our Green Year: Enough Of The Junk

We all get it, sometimes every single day, and we all hate it. Junk mail is the bane of our existence, advertising at its worst and not surprisingly, it is harmful to the environment. All those flyers, booklets and more that we get, result in pollution and lost trees. Why? So that we can think about buying a computer we see is on sale? Why not just look on the internet if you want a computer?

Each year, Americans receive about four million tons of junk mail, and if the energy to make a day's worth of junk mail were used to heat homes, it would heat 250,000 homes. When you think of the millions of trees that are cut down, simply so we can be advertised to, it is deplorable. This is especially the case when advertisers shoot for only a two percent success rate on junk mail (someone buying from something they see in the junk mail).

Some places, like our own post office, has a recycle bin for junk mail, and recycling it is a great idea, but what about eliminating it at the source?
In the United States you have GreenDimes.com, but as of yet I can't seem to find if it is available for Canada. No problem, there is already a Canadian solution!

The Red Dot Campaign is a Canadian initiative that deals with junk mail through effective measures, it also helps get rid of mail not addressed to you, like pamphlets from politicians.
First, go and download the form letter at RedDotCampaign.ca, which is addressed to the Canada Post Consumers Choice Program. Fill it out and give it to your letter carrier or mail it to them yourself.
Next, download the "No Junk Mail" notice and put it up in your mail box to say "I don't want it!"
Lastly, get yourself removed from any marketing lists by going to the Canadian Marketing Association and signing up for the "Do Not Contact" service on this site: http://www.the-cma.org/?WCE=C=47%7CK=224217

This won't prevent all of it, but it will get rid of the vast majority, and that is what Layla and I have done for Our Green Year. No more wasting trees for junk mail with us, hopefully everyone else can do the same.

Thank you to one of our readers, Mindy, who sent us some photos of her son Colin going green. These pictures are also in our photo gallery. If you want to send us photos of you doing green things, send us the photos to crwbaird@gmail.com

Day 42 of our Green Year: What About Pillows?

After waking up this morning with pains in my neck from the poor pillows I have been sleeping on, I decided that I have to get new pillows. However, to keep with Our Green Year, I have to do two things. First, I have to find a way to recycle the pillows I have without throwing them out. Second, I have to get pillows that are not going to be produced in a way that is harmful for the environment.

Things you can do for your pillow, rather than simply throwing them out include:

1. If you want stuffed pillows that go a bit further than most, take the stuffing out of your old pillows, and then take your stuffing and put it in your new pillow. Then, take the pillow case, hand wash it and air dry it and use it as a sack for vegetables.
2. Keep it in your animal's pen or cage so that they can sleep on it, or donate it to the SPCA or vet so they can use it for the pets they have.
3. If you camp, you can cut it in half, sew it along the open end and make it into small camping pillows.

When you are looking to buy new pillows, you can get some from Loolo Textiles, which uses a process to make pillows that are free of toxic chemicals and by-products, and can even be composted when you are done with them. That is right, you can compost your old pillows from Loolo Textiles. Within a year, they will bio-degrade.
There are several other companies who use soy-based fabrics in their pillows, which will help you when you need to decide on the pillow you want that is not only comfortable, but also earth-friendly.

Do you know of a company that sells soy-based pillows or earth-friendly pillows? Then let us know!

Remember, if you have pictures of you doing green things, fire them off to us and we will put them on our blog to show the world what you are doing (crwbaird@gmail.com)

Day 40 of our Green Year: Greeny Kitty Litter

As we go forward in Our Green Year, we will do several blogs on how to green things up when you have pets. Layla and I have several pets, two dogs, two cats and a bird. Plus we are taking care of another dog during the month of June.
One of the worst things for the environment, is something every cat owner has and it is kitty litter.
Most people do not think about the kitty litter when they throw it away, but while many people use the clumping kind to easily get rid of waste, it has a big impact on the environment.
First, when it gets wet, it solidifies, and this turns it into large gooey messes that do not bio-degrade and slowly seep into the ground. In total, two million tons of cat litter is thrown in the land fill, each year in the United States. That is a lot of gooey messes seeping into the ground.

As well, the clay and silica types of litter, which are the most common kinds, are made through heavily destructive methods of strip-mining that get clay and silica, but destroy the environment around the mines.

Therefore, Layla and I will only be buying natural cat litter, which can come from a variety of natural materials. Two of the most common types of natural cat litters are made from corn and sawdust, and are wonderful for your cats and even better for the environment. Layla and I are now proud to have 100 percent environmentally friendly cat litter, that will not harm the environment when it is taken out of the ground, or put back into it.

Remember, send us your photos of you and your family doing green things like we have in our blog, and we will put them up!

Day 39 of our Green Year: Recycling

Now I know what you guys are thinking. Craig, recycling? Come on that is an easy one. You are right, it is an easy one. Everyone knows they should recycle, but for whatever reason, a lot of people do not recycle. While the percentage of recycled material used by the United States rose dramatically between the 1980s and 1990s, it has not climbed over the past few years. This means that people have more or less 'reached their peak' with recycling, and that peak is far from perfect. Recycling has actually fallen in several cities in the United States, including Seattle, where recycling was once king. Recycling rates in the United States are also their lowest in over ten years, and Americans are throwing away more beverage cans and bottles than ever before. In fact, in 1995, 37 percent of Americans recycled, while in 2002 it was only 21 percent.

That is why for our 39th Day of the Green Year, we are committing to recycling everything that we can. You can see from the picture that we already recycle cardboard, bottles, cans, milk jugs and papers, but we are going to start going a step further. A lot of what we do here in the Baird household is centered on taking what can be recycled and reusing it for another purpose in the house before we recycle it back into the manufacturing line, but we are going to go a step further, and if it can be recycled, we will. No more throwing out items. We aim to be no-impact with our garbage now. I would also like to point out that in that photo you see plastic bags, those are from before we turned Green, and we are slowly getting rid of them through recycling.

The point of this blog is to show people that we are recycling everything we can, and you should to. Far too many people only recycle pop cans and newspapers, when there is so much more that can be done. That is what this Green Year is about, teaching others how to go greener than the norm.

Here is a list of the many things that can be recycled:

File Folders, envelopes, paper, paper clips, staples, newspapers, flyers, magazines, catalogs, text books, coffee trays, phone books, beverage cans, food cans, glass jars, glass bottles, plastic bottles, plastic containers, ink cartridges and electronics.

Here are some 'fun' facts about recycling in the United States.

• Recycling aluminum saves 95 percent energy than making it from scratch. You can power a TV for three hours by recycling one aluminum can (in terms of energy saved).
• Enough aluminum is thrown away to rebuild the commercial air fleet of the United States, four times over, every single year.
• Recycling one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours.
• Recycled glass generates 20 percent less air pollution and 50 percent less water pollution than making it from scratch.
• One ton of glass made from 50 percent recycled materials saves 250 pounds of mining waste.
• You can reuse glass an endless amount of times, yet 41 billion glass containers are made each year.
• It takes 60 percent less energy to recycle paper than make it from scratch, while generating 95 less air pollution.
• For every one ton of paper recycled, 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water is saved.
• Every year enough paper is thrown away to build a 12 foot wall from New York to California.
• If Americans recycled every plastic bottle they used, it would keep two billion tons of plastic out of the landfills.
• Americans use enough plastic wrap to wrap all of Texas, every single year.
• If you incinerate 10,000 tons of waste, you create one job, putting 10,000 tons of waste in the landfill creates six jobs, but recycling 10,000 tons of waste creates 36 jobs.

Did I miss anything that can be recycled? Let me know. Don't forget, send us your photos of you doing green things as outlined in Our Green Year and we will post it on our website.

Day 38 of our Green Year: Going Green With Newspapers

I am a big fan of reading the newspaper. I love to learn the news of the day, find out about upcoming events and more. Not a week goes by that I don't pick the paper up a few times. Now, each time I do this I am creating paper waste, because I use the paper for only a few minutes to an hour, it seems like a big waste.
Naturally, you can take your paper to be recycled, which is a great thing, but why not reuse the paper to reduce your purchase and use of other items. There is no better way to be green than by taking items you already have and using them to prevent you from buying more items.

So, Layla and I have decided that not only will we recycle our papers, but we will also use them in other ways to go green.

1. We have already talked about how you can use newspaper in compost, as long as it is not color pages. However, why not use the newspapers as a great way to block weeds? There have been several people who have laid down newspaper in their backyard, after digging out a bit of space, then putting dirt and compost over top of the papers. This helped prevent weeds from growing, and allowed beautiful flowers that were planted on top of the newspapers to bloom nicely.
2. If you have kids, nothing works better for them to scribble on than paper.
3. You can line cabinet bottoms with newspaper instead of buying cabinet paper.
4. We have already shown how you can clean windows with newspaper, but did you know that using newspaper to clean windows prevents streaks on the window?
5. You can also use newspaper in a seed starter pot? It is truly amazing how this can be put together and it eliminates the need for you to buy pots for the seeds. Here is a great tutorial: http://www.geocities.com/newspaperpots/
6. It can be used as wrapping paper, instead of wrapping paper from the stores.

The great thing is that after you use it for scribbling, cleaning or whatever, you can still go and recycle it, so you have reused it for something else, and then recycled it. Win-Win!
Do you have any ideas for what you could use newspaper for? Let us know!

Remember, if you have pictures of yourself or your family doing green things we have mentioned in our blog, be sure to let us know by sending us a picture. We will put it up in the blog to show the world the steps you are taking in your own green year. E-mail pictures to crwbaird@gmail.com

Day 37 of our Green Year: Unplugging The Power

Today, we decided to do an easy one and it is one that every one of us can do in our own green years. When you turn off something like your television, Wii, DVD player, stereo and more, you do not necessarily keep it from using power. Many devices these days will have lights that will show they are still plugged in and to show that light, you need power.

Unplugging things when you go to bed, or leave the house is not only safe as it can prevent fires from shorts, but it can save you money. By unplugging everything in your house, you can actually save up to $20 to $30 on your energy bill, depending on how much you pay each month. This means that not only are you saving power, but you are also saving money. It is just one of the many ways that you can go green, and save green.

Unplug your electronics, your coffee makers and your microwave. None of these things need to be plugged in when you are not using them, so you can save some money by just taking the time to unplug them

As well, Layla and I decided to do a demonstration of the baking soda and vinegar drain cleaner, which works great, so we did a video. Enjoy!

Day 36 of our Green Year: Green Birthdays

Today we hit Day 36of Our Green Year and there is a birthday in the Baird household. I won't tell you who it is, but there are only two of us here and it is not Layla's birthday.
So, the point of this blog is to focus on going green for birthdays. Too often during someone's birthday we will try and buy them as much as we can to show how much we care, and this is a nice gesture, but it feeds into the consumerism and unsustainable mentality too many have about our world.
Instead of buying things that are not 'green' or 'environmentally friendly', why not go green for a birthday. There are a number of ways that this can be done, and all it takes is thinking green.

1. Why not plant a tree for someone on their birthday? You are adding another oxygen producer to the world, and you are also putting down a living symbol of this person that will grow for decades and decades.
2. You can do what Layla did and paint a flower pot, which she planted a Marigold in. For me, this gift will last longer, and mean more, than any other gift she could have given.
3. Donate to a green charity in someone's name. This is a great gift but some do not like it because it seems like you gave their gift to someone else.
4. Buy the person something that is consumable, like organic tea, fair trade coffee, dried fruits, or fresh flowers. This is a great gift that will bio-degrade and not sit in a closet.
5. Give the gift of yourself. Sometimes a coupon (on recycled paper) for a free hug can mean a lot, or simply a cozy date in front of the fireplace.
6. Buy a gift that is made locally or grown locally. This will support your local economy and you won't be spending money on clothes or products that are made in Third World Countries in sweat shops.
7. Think about the packaging of the gifts. Too many people buy wrapping paper that is used for a moment and then ripped apart. Instead, why not use cloth bags to hold the gift? Why not use some of the scrap paper, newspaper or even subway sandwich wrappers as something to cover the gift? You can buy gift bags that will last for years instead of buying wrapping paper that will last for two minutes.
8. Buy fair-trade, eco-cotton shirts that are made with green screen printing processes and that use natural dyes. This will allow you to get them some nice clothes, without having to think about where they come from.

Personally, getting the gift of a flower pot that I can use over and over again is a great gift for me that I will cherish for a long time, just like the pen monster Layla made for me last year out of cardboard, yarn and an old jar. Sometimes the greatest gifts are creative, personal and green.

Here are a few stats on gifts to get you thinking about going a bit more green for gifts this year:

• There is a 25 increase in the trash generated during the holiday season.
• Most people feel their kids have too many things, but they continue to buy them more things during birthdays and holidays.
• About 97 percent of restaurant gift certificate receives say they would like to receive that type of gift again. This is a great green gift because it supports a local restaurant (make it a local one, not a chain one), and it is a consumable.
• About 83,000,000 square meters of gift wrap ends up in United Kingdom garbage dumps after the holiday season.

Thank you to Treehugger for those stats.

Also, thank you to our good friend Min in Hanover who submitted our name to her local radio station, 101.7 The One for the Website of the Day. We won today and are listed on the radio station's website.

Also, don't forget to send us your own stories of going green so we can put them on our bandwagon page (link is on the right hand side), as well as pictures of you using green solutions outlined here for our photo gallery!

Day 35 of our Green Year: Keeping Out Ants

Nearly every home from time to time has pests, and our home is one that will get ants. We have seen the scout ants coming in, looking for food and we know it is only a matter of time before more and more show up. Therefore, Layla and I are looking for ways to keep this from happening as we like a clean house and don't want ants inside of it.

However, this being Our Green Year, we have to find ways to fix the problem without resorting to anything that could be deemed harmful or cruel. Therefore, we can't use any poison, or anything that will kill the ants in a way that would be described as cruel (like the sticky 'never leave' ant motels).

Thankfully, we do know some ways to get rid of ants that will fit in with Our Green Year. They are:

1. Coffee Grounds
2. Lemon Juice
3. Cucumbers

The coffee grounds and lemon juice we have mentioned as ways that you can get rid of pests like ants, but one of our readers, Tracy, was nice enough to mention cucumbers so we are going to give it a try.
What we will be doing, is putting these three items out in three ant hills in our yard, where we will then see how the ants like or dislike them, and whether or not they work at all. Later on, probably in a week or so, we will let you know the results so you too can use these natural solutions to a pesky pest problem like ants.

Day 32 of our Green Year: Reusable Takeout

When you go out for something to eat and you bring home what is left in a Styrofoam container, what do you do with it? When you go to McDonald's or Subway, what do you do with the paper wrapping, plastic bags and more?
If you are like most people, you simply throw it away and before all of this, Layla and I were the same way. However, Our Green Year is all about changing the way we deal with our day-to-day lives and understanding how everything we do affects the environment.

So, as part of our Green Year, Layla and I have decided to do away with these containers. From now on when we go out for supper and there is food left over, it goes in a Tupperware container. When we go out to Subway, as we sometimes like to do, we will be putting the subs, without the paper, in the containers. Doing this can eliminate large amounts of waste in your home because you only use the paper, bags and Styrofoam for a few hours at most. By spending only $10 to $20, you can get the containers you need to never worry about how your food wrapping is affecting the environment.

You should probably get used to not having take-out containers, the Styrofoam ones at least. San Francisco has banned them out right, as has China, and I am sure the rest of the United States and Canada won't be far behind.

Thank you again to the Trail Daily Times for their wonderful story on us today. It is nice to see we can get the word out on what we are doing.

Remember, we will be posting pictures of our readers doing green things, so if you have any, send them to us at crwbaird@gmail.com and if you have any suggestions, let us know.

Day 31 of our Green Year: Lovin' Lemons

We now enter our second month of Our Green Year and things are going strong. We have had some wonderful feedback from our readers, who have suggested some great ideas that we will be incorporating into our future blogs. As well, today we were interviewed by our local paper, The Trail Daily Times, who are doing a story on Our Green Year.

For today, we have decided to show the great environmental side of lemons, much like we did with vinegar, to show some of the great things it can do and to help prevent chemicals and other harmful substances from getting into our air, water and earth. It is important to note that when you use chemical cleaners, you are breathing the fumes into your body and it can stay there. Going natural is the best way. Here are some great tips:

• Take equal parts lemon and water and you have a great air freshener.
• Pour lemon juice on places where you have ants and they will stay away.
• Forget about cleaners with harmful chemicals in them, just mix equal parts lemon juice and water and you have an all-purpose cleaner. You can also mix it with vinegar and the lemon juice will mask the smell of the vinegar.
• If you need to clean chrome or copper, just mix lemon juice with baking soda and wipe away the blemishes on the copper or chrome with a towel.
• Use hot lemon juice with baking soda to clean drains.
• If you want to kill the germs on your chopping board, sprinkle lemon juice on it and wash it off.
• Lemon juice works great for cleaning glass and mirrors, as well as serving as a great furniture polish.
• On top of this, if you mix it with equal parts water, then you have a natural mouth wash, and it can also be used to disinfect wounds.

There are many uses for lemon juice in your home, and we are only scratching the surface. However, it is important to use natural products like this instead of chemicals because then you are not contributing to waste or putting chemicals into the environment.

As well, if you implement any of the solutions we have offered in Our Green Year, from the solar cooking to this, send us some photos. We will put them up on our website. Remember, this is not just our green year, it is everyone's green year and we are all in this together. E-mail pictures to crwbaird@gmail.com

Also, today I baked some dandelion leaves in the solar cooker and made some coffee out of it and I gotta say...mmmmm it is surprisingly good, and healthy. See how we made it in our tutorial section later this week.

Day 30 of our Green Year: Teaching Green

Yay! We hit our first month marker and the Our Green Year initiative it pushing forward as more and more people visit our site.
Thank you to everyone who came to our site yesterday, and whom offered suggestions about things we can do in the future for Our Green Year. Layla and I both really appreciate it.

For our month-anniversary of Our Green Year, Layla and I took a road trip (yes we carpooled) to a nearby provincial park where we helped in teaching children about the forest and how much it does for us. The day lasted from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it saw six Grade Five classes come out to the event to learn about how firefighters fight forest fires, how the watersheds are so important, what the forest has in it and even some orienteering.

Layla and I took part to help out our good friend Darcee O'Hearn, who works with the West Kootenay Forest Education Fund (http://www.learnforestry.com/), who helped put on the event with the Ministry of Forestry.

Now, we do not have any pictures today because our digital camera ran out of battery juice and we had to borrow Darcee's film camera. However, we will be getting the pictures printed tomorrow and uploaded to our Photo Gallery, where we will be putting photos of ourselves at various stages through our Green Year, as well as photos of you when you implement the changes we have. Send us your own photos!

All in all, a very long day but one full of education that we hope will help a lot of children appreciate what the forest does for them.

Day 28 of our Green Year: Dandelion Tea

Now I know what a lot of you must be thinking. How is drinking Dandelion tea a way to go green?
Well, first of all we aren't going out to our yard and ripping them out of the lawn (from the roots), we are not preventing them from seeding and we certainly are not using herbicide to kill them. So, why not use something from the Earth to get something beneficial in your body?

The truth is that Dandelions are far from a weed, they are one of the best plants you can have for your body and they have been cultivated for literally thousands of years. Just a few of the benefits of Dandelion tea include:

• They are a source of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C and E
• They are rich in calcium, chromium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, selenium, silicon and zinc
• They are a laxative, cholertic, tonic antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory
• It is one of the best herbs you can have for gall, spleen and liver problems, and it can relieve symptoms of menstruation in women.
• They keep the liver at peak efficiency and they can purify and build blood when ingested and will even cleanse and regenerate cells. They help the pancreas and they absorb toxins in the bowel.
• Some even say it can help relieve diabetes when consumed as a tea or food on a regular basis.

So, we have decided to use it in tea instead of getting rid of it with herbicide or ripping it out by the roots.
To make dandelion tea, just follow these easy steps:

1. Pick five or six dandelions
2. Cut off the stems
3. Wash the heads slightly
4. Place the the heads in a cup
5. Pour boiling water on them
6. Let sit for 10 to 15 minutes
7. Enjoy!

That is all there is too it! Tea from your yard, free and very healthy!

If you are not into tea, then you can use young dandelion leaves in salad, you can steam them or you can add them to stir-fries.

You can even use the roots of the dandelion to make non-caffeine coffee by waiting until the plants are nine to twelve months old (growing inside). Then you roast them in the oven until they are a coffee colour, grind them and use them!

It is a plant we think of as a weed that actually has many uses and can be very green and beneficial to you. Give it a try and let us know what you think! Send us photos of you with your dandelion tea and we will post them on the blog!

Day 27 of our Green Year: Drinking Coffee The Green Way

With coffee, I am an addict. I will drink one to two pots per day and I simply love everything about coffee. However, despite this I am going green with it, as Layla is with her tea. How do you go green with coffee? Well, it is actually quite easy.

First of all, you want to buy local brews. These are brews that are roasted and made in your area. Talk to your local coffee shop to find out if they brew it locally and roast it locally. If they don't, try and find one that does.
Second, instead of going into Starbucks, with their oddly named cup sizes, to get a coffee, why don't you go in with a reusable mug. When you think about the waste that is generated by those mugs, it is quite amazing. You have the lid, container and safety wrap (keeps your hands from burning), which all contribute to waste.
Third, try and get organically grown and fair-trade grown coffee. We have decided to do that here by buying coffee from Kicking Horse Coffee Company, which is located in B.C., so we can kill three birds with one stone on that one.
Lastly, you want to compost your coffee grounds, as well as get a reusable coffee filter. There is no need to constantly buy coffee filters when you do not need to, and coffee grounds make a great compost material for the garden.

Also, in terms of coffee grounds, here are some great uses for it:

1. You can use it as plant food for rosebushes, azaleas, rhododendrons, evergreens and camellias that like acidic soil.
   
2. If you are having a problem with ants in the yard or house, then sprinkle some of the grounds in the areas you do not want them and they will not go anywhere near the grounds.
3. If you would like to make your own paper (an upcoming blog ;) ), then you can use coffee grounds as brown dye for paper, as well as fabric and Easter eggs.
4. Cats hate coffee grounds, so mix it with some orange peels and put it around your plants.
5. Mix some of the coffee grounds with some shampoo when you are giving your dog a bath, it will not only get rid of fleas, but it will make the dog's hair feel softer.

I would also like to give a shout out to a new affiliate of our blog, Eco-Libris. The people here are an environmental leader in that they will plant a tree for every book that you buy through them. As a book lover and a writer, this provides a wonderful solution to me as the books I buy end up costing a tree its life. Check out their website at: http://www.ecolibris.net/

Here is a list of coffee companies that practice the principles of fair trade and organically grown, courtesy of Treehugger.com:

Birds and Beans
Blue Smoke Coffee
Bodum
Cafe Bis
Cameron's Coffee
Global Exchange Fair Trade Online Store
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
The Groovy Mind
Grounds For Change
Kicking Horse Coffee
Merchants of Green Coffee
Newman's Own Organics
Simple Coffee
Solar Roast Coffee
Sweetwater Organic Coffee Roasters
Today Was Fun
Oso Negro

Day 26 of our Green Year: Limiting Our Showers

Wow, only a few days before we hit our first month of Our Green Year. Things are going well, we have our story in The Province (the largest paper in British Columbia) tomorrow, and we have been getting a lot of hits from Treehugger.com, so it is nice to be mentioned there as well.

Today, we decided to save some water, and the best way to do that is by limiting your showers. Typically, people will take a 10 to 15 min shower, and this wastes about 150 to 250 liters of water each time. Now, it is entirely feasible to have a shower, get yourself clean and wash your hair in five minutes, and when you do this you save 75 to 175 liters of water as a result. That may not seem like much, but here is a quick little lesson on water wasting:

• If you have a 20 min shower, you waste 300 liters of water. Multiply that over a week and you waste 2,100 liters of water. Multiply that over one year, and you waste 100,800 liters of water!
• If you have a 10 min shower, you waste 150 liters of water. Multiply that over a week and you have 1,050 liters of water. Multiply that over one year and you waste 50,400 liters of water.
• Now, if you have a five minute shower, then you use 75 liters of water. Multiply that over a week and you get 525 liters of water. Multiply that over one year and you will only use 25,200 liters. In fact, a five minute shower per day for a MONTH will use the same amount of water used in a 20 minute shower per day for a WEEK.
  

The water savings, which translate into money savings for you, amounts to 75,600 liters of water saved a year if you switch from a 20 minute shower to a five minute shower.
In our own house, we averaged 15 min showers, which came to 225 liters of water. Each day that meant we used 450 liters of water for the shower, which comes to 151,200 liters of water. Switching to five minute showers will save 145,800 liters of water each year here.

To ensure we follow this, we have bought an egg timer that will allow us to know when our five minutes is up.

Some more tips for saving water in the shower is to put a bucket in the shower with you. Let it fill up, then use that bucket to water your garden. Do not leave it in the shower if you are washing your hair or using soap.
You can also only shower a few times a week, like every second day. If you do that, you cut as much as 57 percent on your water.
Don't forget about showering together, that can save water too!

Day 25 of our Green Year: Building A Solar Cooker

Hey everyone,

Day 25 has come and it was a big one. To start, we took to task to build a solar cooker that would allow us to barbecue outside during the summer by using free and renewable energy; the sun. The solar cooker was built mostly by Layla who has a knack for these kinds of things. She was able to put it together using just reflective material, electrical tape and cardboard.
We tested it outside and within about 20 min it was over 200 degrees so we hope it works all right.
We will be posting up the steps to build the cooker soon and they will be displayed on a link to the side. Then you will be able to make the cooker yourself.
To build the whole thing, we did not spend over $20 so it is very affordable. We will post pics soon of how well it worked cooking. It may need fine tuning but overall it looks like it will work pretty well.

Also, thank you to Kate Webb from The Province newspaper here in B.C. This is a big paper and they were nice enough to do a story on us, which will appear on Tuesday. Kate also provided me with some links to other individuals who are living the green life:
No Impact Man - http://noimpactman.typepad.com/
Green As A Thistle - http://greenasathistle.com/

We should be using some ideas from those sites as well for our green initiative.

Stay tuned everyone as we begin to go more and more in-depth with the things you can build and use to help you go greener. We are hoping to make this an all encompassing year and want to cover everything, so thank you all for visiting.

Day 24 of our Green Year: Spreading Wellness

For Day 24 of our Green Year, Layla and I decided to do something simple by setting up a booth for a local environmental organization we volunteer for, Natural Control Alternatives, at the Trail Wellness Fair. This fair is put on to help promote wellness in body, mind and environment and Layla and I manned the booth for 5 hours and brought on two more volunteers!

Later on we did an interview with the local paper regarding the group and we did a tour of a ground squirrel mound that has been built to keep ground squirrels out of the cemetery area.

Thank you to everyone who has been providing tips and tricks to us, we will be using them in the future to help us in our Green Year. For all of you who have told others, thanks so much! The message is spreading!

Day 23 of our Green Year: Going Green On The Lawn

Well, with spring comes the time to mow our lawn, and since Layla and I have a large front yard and backyard, there is a lot of lawn to mow. That being said, we have decided we will not be mowing our lawn with a gas or electric mower, and have instead decided to go old school with our mower.

We will be using a Reel Mower, which is a mower that cuts grass as you push it around. The motor is you and they have been designed to be lightweight and easy to push around.
So now not only do we get great exercise pushing the mower around, but we also don't deal with gas at all, which means we do not put any CO2 into the atmosphere just so we can cut our grass.

We were quite surprised by prices for the mower, we thought they would be expensive but the one we are purchasing one for only $99 at Canadian Tire. These mowers have been proven to last longer than other mowers, if they are cared for properly, and they are even better for your lawn.
When most people cut their lawn, they cut it too short for one thing, but they also collect all the grass in bags and then dump it elsewhere. When you let the Reel Mower cut up the grass and leave it on the lawn, it creates a great natural mulching system that will actually help your lawn.

This is just the start of going green with our lawn. You can check back in the future as we use a rain barrel to deal with watering, we use natural fertilizers and more!

A traditional gas lawnmower puts 22 pounds of CO2 in the atmosphere for one hour use. This means, that if we mow the lawn, one hour every two weeks from April to September, that puts 264 pounds of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is exactly what we are taking out of the atmosphere with our Reel Mower.

Some good news! We were awarded the Blog of the Day award from http://blogofthedayawards.blogspot.com/ so that is great! Word is getting out! Thanks everyone!