Hey, did you remember to bring the reusable bags with you when you got groceries this week, or are they still in the trunk of the car? This Green-living stuff is still a work in progress. At least you made a conscious decision to buy the bags in the first place, and that's a start, good for you! Remembering to actually use them is the challenge. "It's not easy being green" -Kermit the Frog
The grocery store is probably one of the first places that come to mind when thinking about making Green choices."Will that be paper or plastic?" Each time you make a purchase for your home, aside from your groceries, you are making earth-conscious decisions whether you realize it or not. By selecting items that follow certain principles you can make distinctions on how Green you choose to be. GreenLiving.com lists the following as guidelines for Green purchases:
Ecological Footprint:
Reduce your personal demand on nature. Choosing sustainable and lower impact goods will reduce your personal consumption of natural resources and help you do your part in returning our society to balance with Earth's resource capacity.
Handmade & Fair Trade:
Respect for communities around the world. Buying certified fair trade goods ensures an honest and open relationship between producers and consumers across the globe by giving the dignity of fair wages and safe working conditions to workers and high quality, sustainably produced goods to consumers.
Natural materials:
Healthy for everyone and easy on the Earth. Growing organic cotton, hemp, flax, or sustainable lumber without chemical fertilizers or pesticides keeps our soils, air and water clean and our farmers, workers and children healthy.
Resource conservation:
Leaves enough for everyone. By simply choosing energy-saving light bulbs and low-flow water filters, you can significantly reduce your resource consumption and therefore your individual environmental impact.
Recycled goods;
Reusing respects our resources. Buying recycled products conserves our raw materials, saves energy, generates less waste and pollution, ultimately protects our ecosystems.
In other words, this goes far beyond paper or plastic. It's much bigger than that. These are principles that everyone should keep in mind when purchasing anything and everything . So what can you do, how can you help? You can begin by making Greener choices when selecting products or finishes for your home. For instance, the paint you use on your walls or the new carpet you put in the living room have Green options (and not just in colors). You know that brand new, just finished, just installed "Smell"? It's not your money burning, it's chemicals in the air. Volatile organic compounds, or VOC, are a class of chemicals that evaporate readily at room temperature. They are called volatile because they are quick to vaporize and quick to combine the other molecules, meaning that they can react with living tissue or other airborne substances to create air pollution, inside your house. This could be why you have a headache. By choosing low, or no-VOC, paints and flooring options you can make a conscious decision to eliminate the chemicals in your home and maintain a healthier environment for your family and the planet. Benjamin Moore has created Aura latex interior paint using a Waterborne technology that is both low odor and low-VOC. Sherwin Williams also offers the Duration home brand paint that is available in low-VOC. Both lines of paint can be custom color matched.
Besides the walls in your home, your floors takes up most of the space and have the potential to create the biggest carbon footprint in your home. By thinking Green again, and choosing wisely, you can have both beautiful and earth-friendly floors. Shaw Floors offers a carpet recycling program, based out of Augusta, Georgia, that has kept up to 300 million pounds of carpet out of our landfills per year. They have been able to recycle post-consumer nylon carpet and convert it back to its original nylon material to create new carpet product. Visit Shawfloors.com to learn more about their inventive sustainability effort.
How about cork? Besides in your wine bottle, cork is an ideal flooring option. Cork is a harvested resource from Portugal. Cork trees can live to be 200 years old and still produce bark to make cork. Cork floors are extremely durable and have been used in public buildings for years. These beautiful floors have a unique softness, almost sponge-like feel about them which makes them easy to walk or stand on. Cork is an natural thermal insulator and a warm choice for flooring. Cork is definitely another Green way to go.
Who would have thought that Grandma's hand-me-down dining table would some day be eco-chic? Well that day has arrived and you can rejoice in being a leader in Green-style! Recycled and repurposed pieces of furniture are most certainly Green living at its finest and most cost effective. By choosing to repurpose furniture you reuse existing products which ultimately saves money and natural resources. It reduces pollution associated with the manufacture of new products and it cuts the quantity of merchandise entering landfills.
As you search for new-to-you pieces keep a these things in mind:
-Measure the space and measure the piece you are considering, in fact bring the tape measure with you.
- Online sites such as Craigslist.com, Freecycle.com or Furnituretrader.com offer a multitude of choices that change daily so check in often if you don't see what you're looking for right away.
-Shop locally at thrift shops, estate or garage sales or second-hand shops for great deals.
-If it isn't exactly as you'd like, don't be afraid to change it. Re-upholster with natural fabrics, add cushions, re-paint with low-VOC paint or change the hardware to make the piece perfect.
Living the Green-life is really all about remembering. Remember to make changes through our choices. Choices that initially don't seem to be that big of a deal. But, by making small conscious decisions, together we can make a big impact.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead