Happy Halloween

We hope everyone out there has a fun, safe and happy Halloween.  We hope the ghosts, goblins, princesses and all other things have fun trick-or-treating tonight.

If you have a great tip or eco-friendly Halloween ideas, leave us a comment.  Our favorite tip for this year is to get second hand costumes.  You can get gently used costumes like Disney Princess Dresses for a fraction of their retail cost and the more times the costume gets used, the better for the environment  Most kids' costumes only fit for one year.  Home made costumes are also environmentally friendly, but can be a lot more work.

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Going Green Boston

Last year about this time, David Brown of WCVB Channel 5 in Boston did a Going Green Boston segment about our family and the things we have done to reduce our energy usage and "go green."

Check out the short segment.  He mentions a number of the basic things you can do:

Going Green Boston: Towns Participate in 'Energy Smackdown'
Hint: the video is in the upper right of the page.

We've continued to improve upon the savings and look forward to sharing what has worked for and what has not gone so well through our blog.

Happy Greening!
Jon

Tip: Skip the coffee stirrer by adding sugar and milk first

I hate those plastic coffee stirrers you find next to the coffee machine at work.  Unless you are making hot chocolate or mixing honey into tea, stirring is so unnecessary.  Instead, do what I do by putting the milk and sugar in first and then adding the coffee.  The act of pouring the coffee (or tea) into the cup will completely mix everything together and you won't need to use and dispose of one of those plastic stirrers. 

The wooden ones are a bit better in that they are not made from oil, but if you must stir, a spoon that you reuse is best.  One reuse tip that we do is to save popsicle sticks from the kids numerous popsicles and use those for stirrers.  They go through the dishwasher time and time again without any signs of wear and they are free.  Also, we find it handy to have a bunch around when the kids get crafty and want to make something.

Happy Greening!

Jon

Love My Fleece Nursing Pads

New babies traditionally bring a lot of disposable things with them, and the first thing that comes to mind tends to be disposable diapers. I'm currently doing a trial of different cloth diapers, and I'll definitely do a post or two on what I've found. However, many women also find nursing pads to be very helpful. I thought that all nursing pads were disposable until Jon came home with medela washable nursing pads one day. They were significantly more comfortable than the disposable ones I had been using.

When we were at the Diaper Lab, Jon noticed that they had fleece nursing pads there. The fleece ones put the Medela nursing pads to shame. They are wonderful. Very soft, I've never had trouble with them leaking through to my shirt (there's a waterproof side) and they can go in the washing machine - it's recommended that you put them in a lingerie bag. I got mine from the Diaper Lab, but they don't sell them on-line. We've also bought cloth diapers from Little Lions, and they have the fleece nursing pads http://www.little-lions.com/page40a.html available on-line.

If you're nursing, or know someone who is nursing, these are the way to go!

Happy Greening!
Alicia

Warmer Inside Than Out!

Over the past week I've noticed several times that our house is significantly warmer inside than it is outside. So much so that I've checked a few times to see if the heat was on. Each time our programmable thermostat was set to be much cooler than it actually was in the house (indicating the heat was not on). I have to attribute this to our new air sealing and insulation work. Over the next several weeks Jon and I will post a series of blogs talking about the work we had done and lessons learned. For now I'll point you to an excellent first step:

Have a Home Energy Audit.

There are many things that everyone can, and should, do, and we will blog about those things. However, each building is unique and the best way to decide which large investment items should be done on your house is to have a home energy auditor look at your home.

If you live in Massachusetts you may be eligible for a free home energy audit - most homeowners are. If you live in a building with 4 or fewer units and your gas (or electricity if you heat with oil, electricity or propane) is from a major utility company then you should be eligible for a MassSave audit: Go to http://www.masssave.com/ to check and see if you are eligible.

I haven't yet done research on home energy audit programs in other states, but if you're familiar with a program in your area, please post a comment with some information to help others who want to get started. Jon has also posted an entry on incentives available for home energy improvements.

The auditor will help you determine what the next big steps for reducing your energy usage should be. Usually these involve air sealing (sealing tiny spaces where air flows through your house) and then insulating. They can help you determine if you would benefit from doing a system upgrade to your heating or hot water system, but these are typically done after you air seal and insulate.

Our audit was filmed for the Energy Smackdown, so you can see some clips from our audit here (3:50 long):

Coming soon: The Audit Experience

What incentives are available for you?

One of the most common questions I get asked by friends and strangers about renewable energy, efficiency or general sustainability is:

What are the incentives for me? 

Now, there are the "green" incentives like doing good for the planet and combating climate change and then there is the other type of "green," the almighty dollar. 

Fortunately, utilities, local, state and the federal government provide a plethora of financial incentives to encourage energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. 

Read more »

Tip: Paper recycling

When I forget my cloth bags at the supermarket, I always ask for paper. Then I have a collection of paper bags to use for recycling. Our city requires that all paper recycling be in paper bags. I try to place a paper bag conveniently to locations where I will generate recycling. For example, I keep one in the kitchen for empty food boxes and because I sometimes look at the mail there. I keep another in the dining room where I open the mail - envelopes and any mail I'm not going to keep goes straight into the bag. These days, so do all the catalogs I haven't unsubscribed from yet! I keep another paper bag upstairs, for all the little things that come out of our pockets, small cardboard boxes, tags from clothes, etc. This one doesn't get full often, but these things would otherwise have gone in the trash.

How do you know what your city or town recycles? In Massachuestts the state has a website that links to each city and town recycling website:

http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/recyclin.htm

If your state has a resource like this, please post it!

I found this one for California in about 1 minute: http://www.conservation.ca.gov/DOR/Pages/Index.aspx

Also, try googling "city, state recycling" and check out the results

Happy Greening!
Alicia

TIP: Compost your tea bags and coffee grounds

Instead of throwing them in the trash or down the garbage disposal, compost used tea bags and coffee grounds.  Most people start the day with some sort of coffee or tea.  Hopefully you make that at home to save both money and the environment.  Take those grounds or tea and put it in your compost bin.  (If you don't have a compost bin, we'll be writing about setting one up shortly.)  Because the tea leaves and coffee grounds are already ground up they turn into compost very quickly.

TIP: Take the leftovers after Events

Today at the Harvest the Wind Festival as everyone was packing up, I noticed that there was still a full party tray of vegetables that Whole Foods had donated. I asked them if anything was going to be done with it and unfortunately, since food shelters won't take open food, they were going to throw it away. I offered to take it home and they were happy to let me have it and know it would not go completely to waste. Now the challenge is to consume the veggies before they go bad and we have to compost them. Alicia has already made a quick vegetable broth and our kids went to town on the raw veggies for a snack today and will get some in their lunch tomorrow.

When you are at an event that is wrapping up, there are a several things you can offer to take and help avoid waste. In addition to food leftovers, recyclables are another thing that often can't be recycled at the event, but you can just toss them in your recycle bin at home. We do this for all the water and sports drink bottles at my softball games during the summer. Feel free to suggest other things in the comments.

Great time at the Harvest the Wind Festival

We took the kids over to the Harvest the Wind Festival put on by Mass Energy and Medford. I was working the event as part of my role on the Medford Clean Energy Committee, so it was a must see for the family. The kids had a great time and they had the middle school students giving lessons about how the wind turbine worked.

The event had over 200 kids at the event who got to compete in recycling relay races, paint pumpkins and get their own faces painted.

Mayor McGlynn emphasized the importance of the students in siting the turbine at the school and about how it has been integrated into the curriculum. Mass Energy made a generous contribution to help fund the turbine, which cost about $650,000 and should generate about $25,000 worth of electricity a year, or about 10% of the school's current electricity usage. They are working to improve efficiency at the school and hope that in the future, the turbine will provide 20% of the electricity needs of the school.

EFI.org - Energy Federation Incorporated

We love EFI. They are a nonprofit Energy Star Partner that provides lots of useful information and cares about the extra sustainability stuff like packaging and shipping to minimize impact (follow link and click on Sustainability Info on upper the left).

Depending on where you live, you can get Energy Star discounts and rebates at point of sale through EFI. At the bottom of the EFI site, look for the drop down labeled "Restricted Product Discount Offers" and see if your utility provider is listed.

Read more »

Starting with Children

How early can you teach your children about doing what's best for the environment?

The earlier the better, but it's never too late. You're learning, right?

I walk around with my new baby and say "let's turn out the light to save electricity." By the time my twins were three, they were reminding us to turn out lights because it is "good for the planet". Now at 5, they don't always remember to turn out the light when they leave a room, but it's not uncommon for them to notice a light like the front hall or basement on and ask if they can turn it off.

Contigo No Spill
Kids Cup

I can't take complete credit for them, their preschool made an effort to teach them about the environment and "reduce, reuse, recycle". It definitely worked. My son has gotten so that he doesn't want to throw anything away, he even brings home his empty juice boxes from school because he thinks we can reuse them (I throw them away when he's not looking). However, we *do* try to make his lunch containers as reusable as possible - including sending him with milk in a bottle obtained from a fast-food restaurant in what is technically a beer bottle cozy (with a sports logo, not a beer logo!).
Update - we have switched to Contigo No Spill Kids Cups which don't leak.


How to teach your children? For one thing, just talk about the planet, reducing and reusing. There are also many good children's books about the topic, and I'll list some as I come up with the names. We also try to make these things fun. They started helping with the composting when they were four - I'll link a video we made of them composting. Because they got to help with the composting, they got so excited, that they started telling people all about composting. Many of the things I save, like toilet paper rolls and plastic food containers that aren't recyclable end up in their craft bin. Sometimes I just set the bin out with glue, markers and stickers and let them create things. It's wonderful for them, and I feel like these things are getting an extra life.

My strongest recommendation is to talk to your children, explain what you're doing and why. Then, ask them questions to see what they retained. Having to answer questions is a great way to help retain memory. You'll be amazed at what they learn at an early age!

Happy Greening!
Alicia

Editor's note: I have added information about the books and songs the preschool used in teaching the children in the post Teaching Young Children About Environmental Issues.

Installing a Low Flow Showerhead can save thousands of gallons of water per year

With a few dollars, a few minutes and pair of pliers you can save thousands of gallons of water and the energy and money to heat it by installing a low flow shower head. Here's how

Read more »

Getting Started

Often people want to start "being green" but they don't know where to start. It's overwhelming, there are so many things to do, so they don't start anywhere. I'd like to give you some suggestions on how to get started living a greener lifestyle. To paraphrase Confucius, every journey starts with a single step. Deciding which step is the right one for you is a personal decision.

When asked, I recommend starting with things that you can do and forget. For example, switching out shower heads, faucet aerators and lightbulbs are one time activities that you can benefit from for years. Other projects around the house, like weather stripping doors and other air sealing projects are also things that you can do one time, and suddenly your lifestyle is more green.

What to do next? If you're really gung-ho, I recommend picking one of the following bigger projects and implementing it: recycling, composting, gardening, or reducing water usage. Each one of these is something that you can work at every day and feel like you're making a difference. I *don't* recommend that you try to start more than one at a time, because you may quickly feel overwhelmed and give up on all of them.

There are some other thing that I recommend you wait for the right opportunity to begin. These include switching your cleaning & personal supplies, replacing appliances and changing what you eat. Sometimes being green means buying products that are good for the environment and using less, but sometimes it means not wasting - that is, using what you already have before buying something new. In these areas I recommend using up your current supplies, and as you come near to the end of each one, purchasing a more environmentally friendly replacement. That in itself is it's own article, so I'm not going to go into the details now, just suffice it to say, wait for the right opportunity.

Always be aware that every change is not for everyone. You need to find the tips, activities and behaviors that feel right to you and are manageable with your lifestyle and go with them. If you read about something that is the "right thing to do" or "good for the environment" but it doesn't feel comfortable for you, don't feel that you need to do that thing now, or ever. Lifestyle is a personal choice and I hope to provide for you a menu of choices that you can make, explain how I may - or may not - have implemented them - and help you decide what are the right things for you to do for yourself and your family.

Happy Greening!
Alicia