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Category: Green Home & Garden

Share Your Pics to Help Bring Families Access to Clean Water
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

-Loren Eiseley

Water. It’s vital for our life and our health, and we take it for granted.

According to the World Health Organization: 683, 967 deaths per year could be prevented if people had access to clean water. How can we help?

[Tweet “683, 967 deaths per year could be prevented with access to clean water. How can we help?”]

Water For People works towards providing sustainable and reliable access to water and sanitation to every family, school, and clinic that needs it. They’re currently active in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and India.

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Share a photo showing how you appreciate water on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook using the hashtag #iheartwater and tag @WaterforPeople. For every unique photo publicly shared through the month of April, ICF will donate $5 to Water For People.

[Tweet “Share a pic showing how #iheartwater and $5 is donated to Water For People. Details here:”]

Be creative! Do you love water most while cooking? Enjoying a cup of tea? Jumping into puddles? Hydrating after a long run? Tag me too (@robinelton) so I can see.

Help out at home during Earth month and every month with these 10 tips from ICF. (Bonus: you’ll save green by using them too.
1. Install aerators to reduce water and watts. It takes energy to heat and deliver water to the bathtub, faucet, and other fixtures in your home that use hot water. Installing aerators in these fixtures can reduce the amount of water needed by 30%, and reduces the amount of energy required to heat and deliver the water.
2. Save water with low-flow toilets. Consider installing a low-flow toilet, such as WaterSense labeled toilets that use 20 percent less water. If your toilet is from 1992 or earlier, replacing it with a high-efficiency model would use 60 to 80 percent less water.
3. Garden with care. Grow plants that are native to where you live and that don’t require irrigation. Collect rainwater and use it to water your houseplants and garden.
4. Make it a full load. Run your dishwasher only when it’s full. Don’t prerinse dishes—tests show prerinsing doesn’t improve dishwasher cleaning, and you’ll save as much as 20 gallons of water per load. When you buy a new dishwasher, look for one that saves water. Water-efficient models use only about 4 gallons per wash. Learn more about using water wisely here.
5. Wash your laundry in cold water. Most loads don’t need hot water, and 90% of the energy used by washing machines goes into heating. The higher the water temperature, the higher the cost to you and the planet.
6. Lower the temperature on your hot water heater. Many manufacturers set thermostats at 140°F (or 60°C). Most households can save energy and money by turning the temperature down to 120°F (or 49°C).
7. Dry clothes naturally. A clothes dryer requires a lot of energy. Save money and energy by hanging your laundry to air dry. When you do use your dryer, clean the lint filter thoroughly after each load and don’t over dry the clothes.
8. Enjoy natural light. Resist turning the lights on for as long as you can during the day. Instead, open your curtains to enjoy natural light.
9. Replace light bulbs with LEDs or CFLs. LEDs use 80% less energy than incandescent lights and could last 10 years or longer. CFLs use approximately 30% less energy than incandescent lights. Several major retailers recycle CFLs, so now you can conveniently recycle at the end of their life.
10. Truly turn off electronics. When plugged into an outlet, electronics and appliances use energy, even when turned off. Some electronics use the same amount of energy when on “standby” as when in use. Plug your devices into a power strip. One flip of a switch on the power strip lets you turn everything off when not in use.
How do you conserve water and energy?

Don’t forget to tag me in your water photos!
April 3, 2015
Don’t Kick Your Christmas Tree to the Curb! Repurpose or Recycle It.

To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice
as well as its feature.

―Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

The ball has dropped, it’s after New Year’s and time to undeck the halls and untrim the trees. Every year I see tons of trees sitting curbside waiting to be picked up with the trash and taken to the landfill; it makes me sad that they had purpose for such a short time. While I do think real trees are better than fake (especially if you buy one from a local, family owned business!) we can do better, people.

Get more out of your Christmas tree: repurpose or recycle it by giving it back to nature.

Gimme shelter

Birds and other wildlife need shelter from the elements and any stray cats or other predators that may be lurking. Simply drag your tree out to the yard rather than the curb, or make a brush pile with the branches. A simple family family project if you’re feeling festive is to hang some pine cone “ornaments” rolled in peanut butter and rolled in sunflower seeds to decorate your gift to your feathered and furry neighbors. (More edible ornament ideas for wildlife here.)

Mulch much?

Insulate your flower beds against cold temps with your pine needles. They’ll also suppress weeds, help retain moisture without allowing the soil to become compacted and are especially good around acidic-favoring plants like roses. Pine needles are soft to walk over, and just look more natural and woodsy than your typical store bought mulches— you’re not going to get a ton out of your one tree, of course; consider asking your neighbors if you can have theirs too.

If you’re local (upper Delaware), you can drop your tree off at a DNREC site where they’re recycled with other yard waste and ground into mulch. I believe this mulch is available periodically for New Castle County residents for free.

Worm Food

If you’re a composter, pine needles will keep your pile nice and fluffy so it stays aerated and “hot.” They can take a while to break down though, so it’s recommended that you either run them over with a lawn mower before adding or use the needles that have already spent a season pulling mulch duty. Keep pine needles to about 10% of your total compost pile at any given time.

Donate

Check around for local restoration efforts or animal sanctuaries that are asking for tree donations. In Louisiana they use them to restore the wetlands; in other places leftover Christmas trees preserve sand dunes. Locally, the Tri-State Bird Rescue adds trees to the birds’ cages for “cover, perches and warmth” and to make them more natural, less stressful; you can take evergreens there from 9-5 seven days a week. Some zoos and animal sanctuaries will accept trees for animal enrichment (drop off to the main lot of the Plumpton Park Zoo in Maryland, locals).

I’ve also heard that people hang on to the pine needles, sealed tight in the freezer, and simmer on the stovetop or pack into sachets for natural air freshening. I’ve not tried this so I don’t know how effective it is, but it can’t hurt to try.

Any other ways to repurpose or recycle your Christmas tree? Let me know!

January 2, 2015
Love This: Lifefactory Glass Food Containers and Water Bottles
Now that’s what I call high quality H2O!

-Bobby Boucher, The Waterboy

Note: this post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click through to Amazon I get a small % of any resulting sales. If you’d prefer not to use those links, you can check out the full Lifefactory line on their site.

I work out 4-6 times a week. Maverick comes with me 3-4 of those times. Cassidy has soccer practice and games. We drink a LOT of water in this house: during workouts, and in between.

At home, we use the CamelBak Relay Pitcher I was sent on behalf of the Fitness Magazine FitBlog event to filter our hard well water (I should really write a separate post about that, we love it). But on the go, I have one true love and that is Lifefactory glass water bottles.

Why? There are a couple of reasons:
- I’m convinced stainless steel and reusable plastic water bottles retain some taste from the dishwasher or from dish soap. It can be helped by using special cleaning tabs (or you can use something like Efferdent) but I’d be using those all. the. time.
- I don’t like that I can’t see inside stainless steel bottles to make sure they’re not building up funk inside.
- Glass bottles, by contrast, can go into the dishwasher and come out clean— no extra step.
- There’s none of the “do they or don’t they?” concerns about chemicals leaching like you have with plastic bottles.
- Glass is infinitely recyclable.
- Lifefactory glass bottles are clothed in a silicone sleeve so they’re super sturdy (we’ve had ours for years now and trust me, they’ve taken some abuse), don’t leak even a little bit so I am comfortable tossing in my gymbag or a kids’ backpack, and come in a bunch of fun colors.
I scanned back through some of my Instagram and Facebook posts and easily came up with proof that my Lifefactory bottles rarely leave my side:

No joke, this pic used to be on some of my business cards

You get the idea. I prefer the flat cap that screws on & off easily; it’s widemouthed so I can add ice cubes or protein powder. But they also sell with a flipcap or a straw cap.

Well, I just discovered that Lifefactory now has food storage containers! We already use Pyrex glass containers for our leftovers, but I’ve never used them for packing lunches because I was afraid they’d get broken. These come in 1, 2, and 4 cup sizes and the smaller ones would be PERFECT for kid lunchboxes.

These may seem expensive out of the gate, but I know I’m forever replacing plastic tupperware, especially small ones. The lids fall onto the dishwasher bottom and get mangled, they crack, and pretty much the first time anyone uses it to hold onions or anything with red sauce it’s done for.

Lifefactory also has water or wine glasses (depending on the day you’ve had. With different color sleeves, you’ve never take someone else’s glass by accident again!) and baby bottles (4 and 9 oz), as well as silicone teethers. The baby bottles are made from thermal shock resistant borosilicate glass, so they can transition safely from freezer to boiling water. You can also buy sippy caps or flat caps for these bottles, so they’ll get years and years of use! Cass has a 9oz bottle with a flat cap and it fits into her lunchbox (it’s the only bottle Jeff will let me use to pack milk in his lunch on PB&J days).

Now, I’m really hoping that you don’t need to be sold on the idea of reusables in general. Plastic doesn’t go away, and reusables divert a ton of waste from landfills. They also alleviate a lot of concerns about chemicals released when plastics break down over time.

So any reusable is better than none. But IMHO, Lifefactory is the best. Who do you like?
September 1, 2014