Tag Archives: reuse

50 Easy Ways to Conserve Water

by DaleneLake Posted on August 5, 2018

Whether your city is facing a drought or not, you can always think a little greener in the choices you make at home?and at work, especially when it comes to conserving water. It’s not an infinite resource, and those who have it in abundance tend to use it recklessly.

There are lots of creative ways to reduce your water usage and get it closer to the World Health Organization recommended 5 gallons per day, rather than the American average: 100 gallons. Here are 50 ideas to get you started.

Only order water in a restaurant if you plan to drink it.
Collect unused?shower water in a bucket.
Use dirty?bathwater to water plants or flush the toilet.
Use a broom, not a hose, to clean your sidewalk.
If your shower fills a 1-gallon bucket in less than 20 seconds,?upgrade the head.
Upgrade from water-cooled to air-cooled appliances.
Compost vegetable scraps, rather than using the disposal.
Decline automatic refills of water in restaurants.
Pot plants in the fall when conditions are cooler and rainfall is plentiful.
Like your water cold? Keep a pitcher in the fridge, rather than running the tap.
Monitor your water bill. Spikes will alert you to leaks in the house.
Unless your dishwasher requires it, don’t pre-rinse dishes.
Cover your pool so water doesn’t evaporate needlessly.
Soak pots and pans, rather than letting the water run.
Reuse the water your dehumidifier collects.
Don’t water your lawn on windy days.
Locate your house’s master water shutoff valve in the case of flooding.
Water your lawn when temperatures are cooler. Morning or evening is best!
Wash fruit and veggies in a bowl of water, rather than in running water.
Use this dirty water?to nurture?your houseplants!
Check outdoor faucets, sprinklers and hoses for leaks.
Purchase new appliances that offer cycle and load size adjustments.
Shorten your shower by a minute.
Shorten your shower by two minutes.
Install a rain sensor on your irrigation controller.
Know the water footprint of your food.
Insulate hot water pipes.
Decline unnecessary laundering in hotels.
Cut your grass a little higher. A taller lawn shades roots and holds soil moisture.
Cleaning out your fish tank? Give the?extra, nutrient-rich water to your plants.
Apply organic mulch to plants. It retains moisture and saves water.
Don’t let the water run while brushing your teeth.
Fix leaks as soon as you discover them.
Plug the tub the moment you start running water for a bath, then adjust.
Only run full loads of laundry. This can save?up to 1,000 gallons per month!
Load your dishwasher the right way.
Save your drinking glass and use it throughout the day.
Water small patches of greenery by hand, not with a hose.
Check for soil moisture two inches below the surface before watering.
Encourage your office to promote water conservation.
Don’t flush the toilet unnecessarily.
Wash dark clothes in cold water.
Aerate your lawn at least once per year.
Collect water from your roof in a rain barrel, then apply to the lawn.
Wash your pets outdoors in areas of the lawn that need to be watered.
Reuse your towels and washcloths when you stay in hotels.
Turn the faucet off while you lather your hands with soap.
Don’t flush things (like tissues) that can simply be thrown away.
Post notes with reminders to save water around the house.
Share these tips with your friends and neighbors!

You may have heard some of these tips before, but they certainly bear repeating. Others are a fresh take on applying dirty water to new uses, or taking the stingy route when it’s easier to take the convenient one. Remember: every little bit helps!

Here’s What Happens to a Plastic Bag After You Throw It Away

by Eldon9341hrlsbq Posted on April 20, 2018

Globally, we use more than?1 trillion plastic bags each year. Yeah, that’s A LOT of plastic. Even more shocking, only 1 percent of plastic bags actually get recycled in the US.

Plastic shopping bags are a huge environmental issue, mainly because they are so ubiquitous and there is a lot of?confusion around recycling them. The fact is, unless you are making a special effort to recycle your plastic bags at your local grocery store or drop-off location, your used bags are eventually ending up in one of 3 locations: the landfill, a tree by the highway or the ocean. And they’re not going away any time soon.

Here’s the timeline of what happens when you toss your plastic bags…

That day…

After a trip to the grocery store, you pull out a single bunch of bananas from a?plastic grocery bag. You stare at the bag?guiltily, wishing you had a better use for it, but your drawer is already overflowing with too many saved plastic bags as is. So you crumple the bag up, toss it in your trash, and forget about it.

A few days later…

You take out your trash and it gets collected. The garbage bag breaks open in the truck and all the contents spill out. Your plastic grocery?bag may?catch a breeze and blow off the truck, getting tangled in a high tree on the side of a busy road where it will cling for years to come. Otherwise, the bag makes its way to the landfill.

1 year later?

You?ve probably gained a wrinkle or two, maybe another gray hair, but that plastic bag you?ve tossed hasn?t changed all that much. At this point it has probably reached its home, one of 3 locations:

If the bag was in a tree, perhaps it fell, tattered, to the ground, where it was?eaten by an innocent?seagull. The plastic makes the bird?feel unnaturally full and causes it to starve to death. The body decomposes in a matter of weeks, but the plastic bag in its stomach remains behind, fully intact.
Your plastic bag may have?been?swept up in the breeze at the landfill and?end up near a waterway. A few hard rainfalls later, it is in a trickling stream en route to the ocean.
Perhaps the bag remains in the landfill, lifeless, perfectly preserved. In any scenario, it hasn’t?broken down at all.

20 years later…

If the bag was originally stuck in a tree, it finally decomposes after 20 years, thanks to photodegradation from solar UV light. Since bacteria do not eat plastic, it cannot biodegrade like a banana or a paper bag, which is why plastic?is extremely difficult to break down.
If it became an?ocean-dwelling bag, it likely remains?fairly intact, very slowly breaking down into smaller pieces of harmful microplastics, which are already?destroying our oceans. And just because it is in the ocean doesn’t mean it is not your problem. Small fish feed on these plastic pieces, larger fish feed on small fish and we feed on larger fish. So, effectively, that fish dinner you or your loved ones eat in 20 years might contain toxic microplastics from?your grocery bag. Ew.
In the landfill, rainfall causes water-soluble chemicals from the plastic to get carried away and leached into the ground. From there, these chemicals pollute the?water supply, poison local?farmland and harm local animal and plant life.

500 years later?

You?ve come and gone, and so have your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren (and their great-grandchildren, too). And finally, in some massive landfill, your grocery bag that held that single bunch of bananas has hopefully decomposed?although we can?t be sure, since plastic bags have only been around for about 50 years.

The process?may actually take over 1000 years, since plastic does not technically biodegrade and some types need?UV light to break down. So?it is possible that your grocery bag will be harming human health and the planet for the next 30?generations?to come. At least no one can say you didn’t leave your mark.

If your plastic bag ended up in the waterways, it is still floating around the ocean in the form of microplastics, killing sea life (if there still is any in 500 years) and further acidifying the ocean. The sad truth is that, in the ocean, plastics?may never fully break down, even in 1000 years.

Make a change!

Wow, that was bleak. But it doesn’t have to be that?way. Your humble actions today can make a huge difference for the next millennium!

While you cannot recycle plastic bags with your home recycling, they are fairly easy and convenient to recycle through a drop-off location. Just collect all of your plastic bags in a corner of your kitchen and bring them back to the grocery store, which should have a recycling drop-off?for them.?Find locations near you here. (Please do not try to recycle plastic bags in your home recycling. It causes major problems.) From there, the bags will be broken down into raw plastic pellets and get reused to create any number of useful products, from clothing to sunglasses to useful appliances. And hopefully those will get recycled or repurposed, and the cycle of good will continue.

Or, ideally, you can stop using plastic shopping bags altogether.

If you make one change this year to become greener, work on your plastic waste. Carry reusable bags with you to the grocery store so you don’t need plastic bags. Petition your local town to ban plastic bags from stores. Encourage more grocery stores?to offer recyclable boxes (leftover from their shipments) for people who forget their bags. These changes are small, easy and highly effective once they are widely implemented.

It’s all up to you. Go ahead, lead the plastic-free revolution in your town, in your country, in your planet.

?Related on Care2:

And 2018′s Dirtiest Produce Award Goes To…
8 Easiest Hacks to Reduce Your Plastic Consumption
A Guide to the Greenest Meal Delivery Kits Out There

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Here’s What Happens to a Plastic Bag After You Throw It Away

Posted in alo, bigo, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged decompose, king, leach, life-cycle, ocean, reduce, reuse, town, years | Comments Off

3 Green Energy Bars You Can Feel Good About

by JonnieMckinney Posted on May 2, 2016

Lets be honestnot all of us love spending hours in the kitchen on a beautiful Sunday, preparing tasty treats to enjoy throughout the week. While you may have pinned countless tasty-looking energy bar recipes on Pinterest, your baking sheet has yet to peek its head out fromthe depths of your cupboard. But, you want to keep your environmental footprint light, even though you simply do not have the time to whip up Instagram-worthy homemade energy bars every week.

What do you do? Luckily, there are a handful of companies that exclusively use quality, real ingredients while upping the sustainability game. Check out these three good-natured energy bar brands:

ReGrained: Innovative, nutritious and sustainable, ReGrained is making food out of what is often disposed aswaste. Specifically, they harness waste from the beer brewing process in the way of spent grain. In reality, the grain is anything but spent. ReGrained recovers the high quality spent grain from local craft breweries and puts it in their energy bars. Itis still highly nutritious, beinghigh in protein (comparable withalmonds), high infiber (with three times more than oats) and low on the glycemic index.

When you think about it, spent grain seems like the perfect ingredient for an energy bar. ReGrained bars, filledwith spent grain, honey, almond, egg whites and flax, are anutritionally and sustainably unique addition tothe energy bar market.

Exo: If you haven’t heard about cricket protein bars, it’s time to hop on the wagon. Crickets are a powerhouse of nutrition and sustainability.According to Exo, cricket flour has two times more protein content than beef, 2.2 times more iron than spinach and produces 100 times less greenhouse gases than cows. Crickets also take only one gallon of water to produce one pound of crickets, while cows require almost 2,000 gallons to produce one pound of beef.

Exo’sbars are soy, dairy, grain and gluten-free. They area friend to both Paleo eaters as well as the environment. Each bar contains around 40 crickets. Dont worry, you cant taste or see them, the crickets are ground up into a nutty roasted flour. Satisfyingand slightly sweet, Exo bars are making crickets look and taste great.

Kits Organic (CLIF Bar): CLIF, as a company, has been on the block for a while, but you cant deny their continuingefforts in sustainability. Over the years, CLIF has reduced their packaging by 10 percent, switched to operate their trucks on biodiesel, set the barto get 50 of their supply chain facilities operating on 50 percent green energy by 2020, and are on the fast track to go completely Zero Waste at their headquarters and supply chain facilities. Even though their brand is already highly successful,CLIFis relentlesslyfocused on recycling and developing more ways totransition over to renewable energy.

The great thing about theirKits Organic barsis that they aremade entirely with whole, organic foods (like dates, walnuts, unsweetened chocolate, almonds, sea salt and vanilla beans in the Dark Chocolate+Walnut bar). Plus, its nice to see a snack at a gas station rest area that you’ll actually feel good about putting into your mouth.

While making your own bars athome can be fun and may be the most environmentally-friendly option, these three energy bar companies are really upping the ante when it comes to store-bought energy bars. Give them a try if you’re on the run, and feel good about supporting brands that have you and the planet’s best interests in mind.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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3 Green Energy Bars You Can Feel Good About

Posted in alo, FF, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged alo, crickets, energy, Foods, high, king, lai, planet, reuse, Snack, specifically | Comments Off

5 Ways to Reduce Waste at the Coffee Shop

by FloreneBabbidge Posted on November 29, 2015

Plan ahead and you’ll never have to accept a paper cup again.

The controversy over the pattern on a Starbucks cup is ridiculous because, asLloyd pointed outlast week, it doesnt address the much bigger issue of generating unnecessary trash. Coffee on the go is a fabulous and necessary thing, but more coffee drinkers need to embrace reusables and make them part of the daily routine. Here are some ideas on how to avoid the paper cup next time youre at the coffee shop.

Bring a reusable mug.

Youve probably got a few kicking around in the kitchen. Reusable mugs are insulated, which keeps drinks hotter for longer always a good thing! From personal experience, I find that I always get larger portions when I hand over a reusable cup for filling than if I accept a paper cup. A lid keeps coffee from spilling while walking or driving. TreeHugger Derek recommends the collapsibleSmash Cup.

Use a regular ceramic mug.

You have to be careful with a regular mug, but it works very well as long as you dont fill it too much. Use a mug in the car (one with a narrow base); stash one in your purse for emergency coffee stops; and keep some at your work desk for filling throughout the day. They hold the heat, feel wonderful on your hands, and add a splash of color.

Carry a Thermos or insulated bottle.

Buy a few cups of coffee at once and fill a small Thermos or insulated bottle to keep you going for the rest of the day. The coffee taste does tend to be strong and will permeate the Thermos, so its best to designate a specific one for this purpose. I sometimes use my insulated water bottle in an emergency.

Ill never forget the look of confusion on a baristas face when I presented a Thermos for filling with sweet, black coffee in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. Clearly reusables have not yet caught on in Brazil, but all the more reason to persist!

Discover the amazing glass jar.

Glass canning jars, a.k.a. Mason or Ball jars, are incredibly versatile and very good at holding drinks on the go. You can screw on the lid tightly, toss it in your bag, and not have to worry about anything, which I often do when rushing out of the house with little kids in tow. Just remember that glass jars dont hold heat well and will cool rapidly, unless you insulate it.

EcoJarzsells really cool stainless and silicone lids that will convert a jar into a coffee mug. You can even buy a Pop Top to seal off the opening.

Reuse that old paper cup.

Its not a Zero Waste solution, but if youve already got a paper cup in your car or in the recycling bin, you might as well extend its life. Wash and hand it over the next time you get a coffee. It will still do the job.

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5 Ways to Reduce Waste at the Coffee Shop