Saving The Planet, One Load At A Time

I am, little by little, bit by bit, moving toward a greener lifestyle. I’ve been recycling for years, use vinegar and water or Simple Green to clean most things in my home, replaced my old air conditioning unit with a more efficient one and haul a load of reusable grocery bags (and use them, too) in the trunk of my Prius. There’s still more to be done, obviously. I’m weaning us off plastic storage bags and gearing up to ban paper towels and paper napkins, all of which is harder than it seems. One change that has been very easy has been eliminating harmful laundry detergent and fabric softener from my weekly routine. Several months ago we switched to Seventh Generation 2x Concentrated Laundry Detergent and Seventh Generation Fabric Softener.

I haven’t looked back.

We’ve talked here about making your own green laundry soap, but I’m not ready for that yet. I honestly don’t have time to deal with one more thing to do. Maybe eventually. In the meantime, the Seventh Generation stuff is perfect.

The cleansers are plant-based rather than petroleum-based (they are also biodegradable), and contain sustainable palm oil. There are no dyes or synthetic fragrances. It uses enzymes to clean stains and is safe for standard and HE washing machines. The container is 80% post-consumer recycled plastic (and is also able to be recycled).

But does it work?

Yes. It does. I haven’t noticed a difference from my old detergent. At all. Well, except for the smell. I get the Blue Eucalyptus & Lavender scent in both the detergent and the fabric softener (also plant-based, free of dyes and biodegradable), a scent you cannot find in traditional detergents. The scent lasts too.  The fabric softener only comes in the Eucalyptus scent and unscented – that might be a drawback to you, but it’s fine with me.

The drawbacks?

Expense. It’s more expensive than what I was buying before, a generic detergent from my local supermarket chain.  But it’s an expense I’m willing to bear; the environment is too important. I can budget elsewhere (like all the money I save using vinegar and water instead of commercial cleaners).

If you’re not ready to make your own detergent yet, this is a great and readily available alternative. You can find it Target as well as local supermarkets or you can buy it online through Amazon or directly from Seventh Generation.

They’ve just come out with some new laundry products like an oxy stain remover and a 4x concentrated detergent in a recyclable, compostable bottle. I’m dying to try those as well. When I do, I’ll let you know how it goes.

About The Author:  Megan is a professional writer, amateur photographer and an accomplished beauty product crash test dummy. She'll try anything once, especially if it's a free sample. She's still trying to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up, but it will probably involve travel and Colin Farrell. And maybe some writing and photography. You can visit her at onethousandwordsormore.com or follow her on Twitter: msmegan.

Small Changes, Big Difference

Confession : I used to be a total brat when it came to all things “Environmentally Friendly”.  And by “brat” I mean “total uber beyotch”.  Yeah – I was the girl snickering at your reusable bags and wondering just how in the hell someone could afford to be green.  Because, ya know, I was totally an authority on the lifestyle and just knew that going green had to be expensive, what with all that research I had done.  #sarcasm

I look back at the person I was just last year and I’m almost ashamed of myself.  Not only was I naive and uninformed, I was ignorant in the worst way possible.  I guess you could say that I’ve grown up a lot this last year.  I mean, not to say that the BP Oil Spill was this huge defining moment in my life that made me just blink and then *bam*, all of a sudden I just turned over this new leaf and became a tree huggin’ hippie.  I guess the oil spill, combined with a few other issues that we as a country have faced over the last few years, was the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused me to see things from a different perspective.

So here I sit, this regular old wanna be middle class girl, trying to make a difference in the world around me.  I’m obviously not perfect – I still buy Spray N Wash, I still drink way more Dr. Pepper than any normal person should and I still have a lot to learn about this new lifestyle my family and I are incorporating into our lives….but it’s the little things that add up and can cause a huge impact in the end.

One single person can scream as loud as they possibly and only a few will hear them.  But get a few groups of people to start whispering to their friends and family and then hundreds of people start to whisper and it spreads until there are thousands of people whispering and then millions of people whispering and so on and so forth.  And all of these little whispers turn into one giant voice that can be heard throughout the entire world.

Those little whispers are what you make happen each time you grab a glass from your cabinet to fill with tap water instead of reaching into your fridge for a bottle of water.  Every time you remember to take your reusable bags to the grocery store?  Another whisper. When you walk or take public transportation instead of driving your car?  Another whisper. Did you plant a garden last Spring?  That’s another whisper.

When I first started “getting into” this, my extended family was pretty much flabbergasted but I’m slowly getting them to cooperate and participate in some of my whispers.  My mom almost always takes her reusable bags to the grocery store and she makes her own laundry detergent.  My dad is a recyclable products police officer….before anything is thrown away, we better make sure it’s not recyclable.  These people?  They’re part of my whispers.

I know that my life will never be “certified green” because, in my opinion anyway, that’s impossible in the world and society that we live in….but I can try, right?

What are some of the ways that you whisper?

Photo by: Sheila Charm School Reject

Going Green: Cloth in the Kitchen

I’m Sarah. I blog at sarah-morgan.com. I’ve known Britt since she was one of the original Hot Bloggers, and to know her is to adore her and her great ideas, so when she invited me to the Buy-Her team, I jumped at the chance!

You’ll learn that I am Tangent Girl. So to start off being real, let’s set the scene: I’m lying on the carpet catching up on DVR as I’m writing. So can I just tell you, since Chuck is on, how many times I keep starting to type ”Buy-More” instead of “Buy-Her“? There’s an extra recommendation: go watch Chuck. It’s adorable. And by “it” I mean Zachary Levi. Also, a second recommendation: stop multitasking.

Anyway. Let’s talk shopping.

Growing up with my ex-hippie mom, we didn’t have sponges or paper towels. Not in our house. We had “dishrags”, which I, in the all-knowing wisdom of teenagerdom, found utterly loathsome. It was totally gross to clean the kitchen under the best circumstances, but to use rags to do it? OMG. (Not that we said OMG then, but I would have.) It required much dragging out of syllables and rolling of the eyes. Clearly, my mother was a lunatic.

You can see where this is going, right? Just like the best of us, I find myself turning into my mother. This summer, I’ve bought cloth napkins, terry dishtowels, and hand-crocheted dish scrubbers.

And once I got over the fear that I had gotten onto a slippery slope that would see me hand-knotting macrame plant hangers and wearing patchouli oil next, I realized that cloth in the kitchen does make sense.

Less waste. I like the idea of throwing fewer paper towels, paper napkins, and plastic sponges away. Sure, it’s great for the environment, but let’s be real. I hate taking out the garbage. I know it takes 15 seconds, but I still hate it. The less I have to lug around full bags of trash, the happier I am.

Cleaner kitchen. While I know some heavy-duty-green people may disagree with this choice, I love that I can wash these items with hot water and bleach. Seems like that would be even cleaner than the disposable alternatives, doesn’t it?

Less money. I do still keep paper towels on standby for the really gross jobs, but I buy a lot less disposable products now. Sure, that’s better for the environment, but selfishly, it’s also better for my wallet!

I’m actually looking at these pictured scrubbers from Etsy and thinking about washcloths now too. How cute do they look in that little bowl?

Please, nobody tell my mom she was right.

Water Bobble : Saving the Planet, Saving You Money

Water.

We all know that we’re supposed to drink eight glasses a day, blah blah blah blah.

But some of us have trouble making that happen.

Personally, I just never really liked the taste of water.

I know.  Stupid, right?

But I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned is that passing out and having to spend the day in the hospital having fluids pumped into you because you’re severely dehydrated will work wonders on putting your taste buds in their place.

Water tastes a lot better than a needle feels.

But……I work in an office with no access to water beyond what I purchase for myself or get from the sink in the little mini-kitchen area.

To put it bluntly,water within the city of Chicago, well, sucks.  Really.

Also, I work in an old building with, d’uh, old pipes.

This means that when you run the tap to get some nice, refreshing cold water, you wind up with lukewarm water with little things floating in it.

Yum.

So I was buying bottled water by the case in an attempt to keep myself hydrated.

After the BP Oil Spill though, I began to get more environmentally conscious.  Sure, I recycled when I could and cut the little rings that six packs came in so a duck wouldn’t get tangled up inside it but news flash [!!!] plastic is made from oil and here I was using practically a barrel a week on water.

I was starting to feel like I was going to have to choose between drink scuzzy water, keep throwing more plastic bottles into the recycling bin or just only drink fluids when I was at home with my handy little fridge filter.

None of those scenarios were going to work for me so I just kept refilling my plastic water bottles at home and carrying them into work every day, which let me hit two R’s until the bottles were so decrepit that they had go into the recycling bin.

Then my brother bought me a present.

It’s called a Water Bobble and is pretty much the most bad ass invention ever.

I mean, besides the refrigerator, stop lights and DVR.

It is a reusable, refillable plastic water bottle that has a carbon filter to remove impurities (like chlorine and old city pipe crud) from your tap water.

It’s made from recycled PVC plastic and can be recycled when you’re done with it.

But why would you ever be done with it?

The filter should be replaced every two months or, if you want to be really accurate, every three hundred refills.

And yes, I can drink water at work now because it really does filter out the funk of our fine city’s public water source.

The best part?

For less than the cost seven bottles of water at the gas station – or fewer if you buy the fancy schmancy water -  not only can you still hydrate on the go, you can help keep plastics out of land fills, reduce oil consumption and save a shit ton of money.

I don’t really know how much money I’ve saved using this little “bobble” because I’d probably just wind up being pretty pissed at myself if I really and truly figured out how much money I’ve wasted on something that is practically free.  I just know it’s a lot.

As with all things though, this bottle is not perfect.

I know, I know.

The only “complaint” I have is that it is not really chuggable so if you’re working out on a hot day and need to down some H2O pronto, well, it doesn’t really work for that.

Luckily, I never work out so this isn’t really an issue for me.

You can buy the Water Bobbles for about $10 and replacement filters for about $7 on Amazon.

Recycled Business Cards from 123 Print

I’m the kind of person who wants to be environmentally concious, but loves to save a buck.

These two values have come into conflict on more than one occassion.  It can be expensive to choose eco friendly products, and the easiest way for me to help the environment is usually to just consume (and buy) less whenever possible.

And so it was with extreme hesitation that I began the search for recylced business cards – that is, business cards made with recycled paper, not someone else’s business card that they’re no longer using because they got fired or something.

I’m going to a BlogHer conference in Chicago this summer and I want to take business cards with me.  Apparently people show up to these networking events and expect you to have more than a cocktail napkin with your email addresss hastily scribbled on the back of it.   If at all possible, I’d like to hand out business cards that are printed on recycled paper – because I’m pretty sure that most of them will be used to hastily scribble someone else’s email address on the back of them and it would be nice if they were at least doing it without killing a bunch of trees.

However, I will be paying for these cards myself so cost is a major factor.

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