Recently by:
Regina

Christmas. It is the mortal enemy of trees around the world.

Why?

KearnyHub.com says that Americans throw away 38,000 miles of ribbon, buy 2.65 billion holiday cards, and chop down 33 million christmas trees during the holidays each year.

Guess where all those cards, the ribbon, the wrapping paper, and trees end up after the new year?

Yep, the dump. Merry Hanaquanzimas Planet Earth.

On top of that, you don't even get a chance to be eco-friendly during the holidays since traditional wrapping paper isn't even recyclable.

Yikes!

So what CAN you do to help green that christmas gift wrapping?

Indoor pollution is a real problem in our modern age.

The paints we use to adorn the walls of our homes can really contribute to that problem, which in turn contributes to the pollutants in the air we breath, in general.

House paint can include such nastiness as formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, and ethylene glycol to name a few.

These chemicals can spend time evaporating and becoming part of the air you breathe years after you've painted your living room. This is a scary thought, but what can we do to help prevent this type hazard in our homes?

Believe it or not, your dog has more of an environmental footprint pawprint than you're probably aware of.

Did you know that domesticated dogs defecate 10 million pounds of poop every year in the United States alone?

That's a lot of poop.

Because of the bacteria inside doggie poo, not cleaning up after your pet is a very bad idea.

Unfortunately the eco-pawprint doesn't stop at poo. The good news is there are plenty of easy ways to green that dog...without paint.

It's an interesting fact that most of us who take steps towards living green by recycling, using products that are less harmful to the environment, and whatever else we can do to keep our world healthy, don't live this lifestyle while on vacation.

Why do many of us completely forget about the environment while on vacation?

We leave the lights on in our rooms when we're not there, we rent a car that guzzles gas, and spews toxins into the air, and many other things without even thinking about it.

Yet when we do these kinds of mindless things while on vacations it has just as much of an impact on the environment as it does if we were to do it while we were at home.

Scary thought isn't it?

However, the good news is that just as we can green our habits at home, we can also green them on vacation.

If you've ever really paid attention to what a bottle of laundry detergent or window cleaner costs, you know that overall consumers are spending big money for cleaning products these days.

Greening your cleaning habits is an awesome step, but what if you could make your own cleaning products for pennies, rather than purchasing over-the-top priced cleaning items? As if saving money isn't enough to make you stand up and take notice, how about this:

Making your own cleaning products from natural products you may already have around your home is uber environmentally friendly!

That's right, making your own cleaning products can save you money and be part of your plan to live a greener lifestyle. What's more, they actually work!

We live in a world where most of us are becoming quite concerned about the state of our environment.

We know that our overuse of energy and natural resources is becoming a real problem. Landfills are overflowing, and our air and water sources are becoming seriously polluted.

While there are things being done to help rectify these problems we don't really know if they have been done in time. Even worse, if the damage has already been done, is it too late to go back to the pristine state our environment was once in?

One thing is for sure, all the eco-marketing and greenwashing really doesn't make those simple steps any simpler.

As you have probably figured out by now, children learn how to do things by watching and mimicking adults.

If adults set a bad example by doing tasks in front of children the wrong way then of course the children learn to do these tasks the wrong way as well. They don't know it's the wrong way, they are just learning.

This is true for any task or set of tasks, including living green and doing what you can to help preserve the environment. The world is going to someday day belong to our children and if we ourselves do not step up to the plate and take responsibility for our own actions then our children will learn not to take responsibility too!