Mountain Top Removal

This is an issue, that hasn't been widely covered in the media, but that is one of the major environmental issues of our time. Coal is a dirty, dirty reality in our energy use, and we have to start demanding different energy sources, and using less of the harmful ones. This affects us all, take a look.

Green Tip of the Week

Green Tip of the Week: Buy renewable energy from your power company!

Not everyone has this option. Here in SW VA, it's seriously limited. Check out your power company, and see what options they have. This power may not be much more than what you are already paying, and when demand goes up, these companies will hurry to keep up the supply! We, as consumers, have POWER when it comes to our dollar! If you don't have renewable energy options...demand them! Write to your power company, your state senators, your local officials, your Congress and the White House! There is no reason any new coal plants should be built. Our energy consumption, and the way it is produced is the biggest environmental dilemma of our age. If we can stop the coal burning plants, demand renewable energy, and fight with our monetary choices, we can help solve the global warming problem. This is a great feeling! You don't have to be Brad Pitt and donate $5 million dollars! All you have to do is vote with your money, and you will make a difference! Check out this site for more info on renewable energy and fighting new coal plants scheduled to be built near you.

The Christmas gift that Makes a Difference

Need a gift for someone who wants to make an impact in this world? Instead of filling their house up with another bauble, head over to Make It Right, and see what's happening in the 9th ward of New Orleans. This project is focused on rebuilding this community, with a GREEN focus and sustainable materials. They have merchandise as well as a place to sponsor houses and donate towards purchasing solar panels and the like. Take a look, it may be just the perfect gift this Christmas!

Give the Gift of Green This Christmas

This was one of her favorite things, and is a great gift for Christmas! You can save a bundle here, they won't last long!

Green Christmas

This holiday season has snuck up on us fast, and we are trying to stay as green as possible this Christmas. So what does that mean? Here are my top 10 Christmas green tips:

1. Buy a real Christmas tree. Some people mistakenly think that going green means you should never cut down a Christmas tree, and should instead buy an artificial one. Christmas tree farms are the superior choice over artificial due to the petroleum products used to manufacture the artificial trees. Recycling your Christmas tree is a great way to stay green, and even better is buying a rooted tree you can replant.



2. Buy Local. Find a local artist, winery or the like and buy gifts that haven't traveled thousands of miles from overseas and you will have cut carbon emissions!



3. Use LED Christmas Lights. These will use less energy this holiday season, and last longer, reducing waste and saving you money!



4. Include Rechargeable Batteries with gifts. Less toxic waste for our landfills. These must be disposed of properly when they are no longer able to hold a charge.



5. Reuse Gift Bags and Wrapping Paper. Don't throw it away! Be prepared now with organization to save what you can and reuse it! Reuse newspapers this year with fun ribbon and homemade tags.



6. Buy gifts at antique stores or thrift stores. You would be surprised at how affordable you can shop at a swap shop or antique store. Many of these places have the perfect treasure for someone on your list. Also, many thrift stores have brand new items that were never used that you can get for a steal! Kids don't know if the board game was opened and played with twice! Save some money and the environment!



7. Recycle your Christmas Cards. And buy ones made out of post-consumer recycled content or go paperless and email your Christmas greeting.



8. If you are upgrading, donate your old electronics. Don't let your downgrades end up in a landfill!



9. Buy online. If you have to travel, make a whole day out of it and plan your trip to cut down on gas.



10. Last, but not least, Give Less. This can mean smaller things that take less waste like theater tickets, online downloads like iTunes, etc. Or it can mean just LESS. Don't try to keep up, buy one gift instead of five, and keep it simple.

Roger Barnett and a Greener You

I had the privelege of listening to Roger Barnett speak this morning, and was so inspired! Roger Barnett recently purchased a great Green company that makes one of her favorite things, and was featured on the Today show and Time magazine. This company has been in business for over 50 years, and is on the leading edge of the Green movement. We are loving their green cleaning products, and haven't found any better! Check them out!

Green Tip of the Week- E-cycle

Electronic Consumer Waste is one of the fastest growing category of municipal wastes. The EPA reports that in 2003, nearly 3 million tons of electronic waste were discarded. Only 11% of this was recycled. The threat posed to the environment is huge due to the toxic chemicals contained in our TVs, cell phones, Computers and other electronics. The tip this week is important as we are coming up on the Christmas holiday, where upgrades are abounding. If you can't donate: RECYCLE YOUR ELECTRONICS. Research the options in your area online. Some recyclers actually export the electronics to be dumped into landfills in other countries, so check to make sure they are responsible. Many companies are now accepting old electronics to recycle, check with the manufacturer for more info. Don't let it go to waste! Up to 90% of electronic waste can be reused. Make it a habit for the planet!

Green for Christmas

Greening your holidays can be easy! These great cards were made from 65 % post-consumer recycled paper and the rest from sustainable or well-managed forests, purchased at Target. Try to buy recycled paper for wrapping this season, and reuse as much as you can. We could save millions of trees, and wrap a bow around the globe if we just reused and recycled. Over the holidays we throw away a million extra tons of garbage! Recycle it instead, and use less stuff. The most rewarding thing is time spent with family and friends.

Easy Ways Your Family can make an impact Going Green

Green is the new black! Everywhere people are talking about "green". From politics, to fashion there is a green slant to nearly every arena nowadays. How does that translate for the average family? I always conjured up images of hippies who lived in tents and protested against tuna fisherman when someone mentioned the environment. I never worried about if I left a lightbulb on, much less about how much water I used when I took a shower. So what has turned me onto green? Being a mother. Suddenly, the importance of taking care of 4 tiny humans and ensuring their future has become my top priority. As parents, we worry about their education, their future jobs, and what kind of person they are going to be. What about what kind of planet they are going to live on? And while they are in my home, what kind of toxins are they being exposed to? Cleaners, energy, and food were on the top of my green priority list, and they should be on yours to.

There have been studies published at the Toronto Indoor Air Conference that concluded that women who stay at home have 54% higher occurance of cancers. This was concluded to be the fault of toxic cleaners used by these moms to clean their homes. Start simply! It doesn't have to be expensive! You can make your own cleaners today with a few things from your pantry. Things like baking soda, lemon juice, vinegar and borax make all the difference in the world. If you are like me, and don't have the time or energy to start making your own cleaners, there are so many companies with great green cleaners out there. Look for a reputable company who labels the ingredients, and sells in concentrate. No reason to waste packaging and pay for water!
The next place to move to green is your energy consumption. The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. This can easily be reduced with a few simple and frugal steps. First, turn up or down your thermostat, depending on which season you are in. Next, change your most used lightbulbs to compact flourescent. This saves you money and energy. Lastly, take an energy survey of your house. These are usually done for free by your local utility company and can give you a personal plan of attack for lowering your energy consumption.
One of the harder places to go green as a family is with your food. But if you are creative and resourceful it doesn't have to hurt your pocketbook. Buy local as much as possible! Visit your area farmer's market, and find the sustainable development agency in your area. These are great places to find organic meat, vegetables, eggs and goods at fair prices. Do you have a service to offer? Barter! Buying local saves the atmosphere from absorbing millions of tons of carbon emissions. If you are inclined, start a garden! This is such a great activity to do with your children to teach them about the work it takes to get our food. Other options are joining a coop or visiting a farm to help with the harvest. Organic milk and eggs are easy to begin buying first, and you can branch out from there.
Start little, and find what works for your family. The important thing is to start! Don't put it off until you have more information, or more time, or more money. Do what you know can help now, and work on the rest! You'll be surprised at how simple it can be.

Bee Colony Collapse - What can your family do?

The Bees have left! No, this is not my attempt to write science fiction. As weird as it sounds, bees are disappearing. Commercial bee pollinators have lost 23% of their bees this year, and estimates show that up to 70% of the managed bee populations have collapsed. Sooo, what does this mean exactly?

This first came to my attention this spring while I was out at some yard sales. One lady had several items for harvesting honey and making beeswax. She commented several times that her bees had left, so they weren't making honey anymore. I was a little confused, and asked her-"What do you mean your bees left? Did they die?" She said that her bees just left, and have never come back. They are getting confused, and not returning to their hives. This astonished me, so after some research I found out more.

First, I had no idea that there were professional bee pollinators. Did you? These people travel with truck loads of bee hives, and let them loose in an orange grove, or other type of farm for pollination. This is a major industry, and one third of our food depends on this practice. The bees have sophisticated homing mechanisms built into their anatomy, which is what leads them back to their hives, even after traveling miles away. Suddenly, these bees aren't able to find their way back to their colonies.

What can we do about it? This is a complicated question, since experts still don't have the answer to WHY the colonies are collapsing. But here are some suggestions:

• Plant some bee-friendly plants in your garden. Free seeds can be obtained here.


• Support your local organic farmers. The use of pesticides is widely thought to be a major factor in the colony collapse.


• Buy local honey. This is good to do for your children and you if you have allergies, as the honey will build up your immunity to local pollens and allergens.


• Stop using lawn pesticides and fertilizers. Find organic ways to keep your lawn lush, or even better, conserve water and nature by planting native plants.


• Go see the Bee Movie, and educate your children about being kind to bees to help preserve their habitats. Visit this site for more info.

A Green Approach to Dieting

So, if you are like me, and over 60% of Americans, you want to lose some weight. After 4 kids in 6 years, I have about 50 lbs to lose. In my quest to go green, I was searching for the right program. I wanted a company I could trust not to just be going with a fad, like ephedra for example, but one with proven scientific results. Also, I didn't want something like alli that could be potentially embarassing. I have the privelege of living across the street from one of the greatest biking/walking trails in the country, and so I have comitted to walking a lot more. This is in line with the greening of my life, because I can walk to the post office, the bank, the playground, the grocery store and the library! We even walk to piano lessons! The next step I took was to start on this plan:

I love how easy it is, and I love how it makes me feel! No more early afternoon drops in energy, or ravishing hungry feelings! Check it out, it may be the right start for you!

San Francisco Bay Oil Spill

This is an issue that is not getting near the media coverage it deserves. A major shipping vessel hit the bridge in San Francisco Bay on Wednesday morning. An estimated 58,000 gallons of dirty oil were spilled into the Bay, endangering wildlife species for miles. Let's hope the environmental clean up team acts quickly and can lessen this impact for all who enjoy this beatiful area and the amenities it provides.

I Village is Going Green! The Today Show Too!

Wow! Isn't it great to see something you are actually interested in on TV? We are so busy homeschooling in the morning, I rarely watch the news. But someone clued me into the Today Show topics this week, and they were great! iVillage also went green, and I found some great tips on their website. Here are some for teaching your preschoolers:

Kids in Preschool
Water: Teach them to keep the water flow to a pencil-thin stream when using the sink.
Energy: Tell them to turn off the lights when leaving a room and to leave the lights off during the day. Natural sunlight is generally good enough.
Toxic Exposure: Cleaning up messy little hands? Be sure to avoid anti-bacterial hand soaps and hand sanitizers that contain triethanolamine. Anti-bacterial hand soaps have been proven to cause more harm than good because they kill beneficial bacteria as well as the bad stuff and may be leading to super-strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Hand sanitizers that contain the ingredient triethanolamine can damage liver and kidneys.
Waste: Recycle newspapers, magazines and junk mail. You can present it as a game that involves sorting out the different types and putting them in their special bins for points. Assign a daily chore to help with the sorting and recycling.
Food: Teach your preschooler how to help pick out ripe seasonal fruit and vegetables for their snacks and meals. Show them that when they have finished their fruit and vegetables, there are parts that can be composted. Involve your children in composting your food scraps, coffee grounds, etc. Get them used to seeing that food waste is not garbage but rather something that can be turned into soil to grow more food.
Transportation: Walk whenever possible. Plan out your weekly menu and shopping needs, and go to the store once to cut back on multiple trips.

Have fun with your preschoolers, and visit these sites for more tips!

SIMPLY IN SEASON- A World Community Cookbook

The recipes in this book offer a taste of how yummy your table can be cooking in season and buying locally. But it is so much more than a cookbook! It is filled with relevant facts and inspirational stories of people who are trying to live more simply, frugally and locally. It is exciting to read that these are people from all over the country and the globe.

From metropolitan areas as big as NYC to Amish country, you will find encouragement that you too can eat locally, with or without a big farm next door. Eating locally is one of the best ways to cut down on carbon emissions. The organic food grown in Argentina is more harmful to our environment than the non-organic food grown locally because of the fossil fuels burned to transport it to your local grocery store. Farmer's Markets have popped up every where, and aren't reserved just for Europeans anymore! You may live in an area, like me, that closes down in October. Don't worry, your grocery store will carry in season produce.

This cookbook is a great for someone like me who has never cut a butternut squash up, much less knows what to do with it. Very reader and user friendly. If you are a gardener, this will be a great resource as well to help give you ideas for new things to do with your bounty. I love trying out new things, and most are fairly family friendly. I haven't been able to use it for a whole weeks' worth of menu ideas, but at least one or two a week have worked out well. If you are the frugal type, you will love this book as well as others from this series, because it also helps you to buy what is in season, which is always the cheapest at the grocery store anyhow. Included are tips on picking ripe veggies and fruits, and how to cook them. Every season is color coded for you and divided into Breakfast, Sides, Main Dishes and Desserts. This week I am planning to make Butternut Squash Soup from the Autumn section. Mmmmm!

Paper or Plastic?

Paper or plastic? The answer is neither! It’s been estimated that the US was responsible for the felling of 14 million trees to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used back in 1999. But plastic is not off the hook either! Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. According to the EPA, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year.

This is the first reusable bag I have had the pleasure of using , and I love it! Of course, everyone has a Canvas bag hanging out somewhere, but I only have a couple, and they are a little flimsy unless you have the heavy duty Land's End ones. The Green Bag is sturdy, can stand up on its own and the straps fit over my shoulder for easy carrying. I hang them up on a hook by my door and every time I leave the house I take one or two just in case. If I am going to the grocery store, 5 of these babies is all I ever need! I bought 5 of these on ebay for about $2 each after shipping. Great price! Now I just have to figure out how to use a different option for my veggies and fruits instead of those produce plastic bags.

Christian Perspective on Going Green

I am a strong believer that the Bible is sufficient to answer any problems or questions that we may have. If not in direct answer, the principles and normative patterns will tell us the biblical answer for any question.

2 Tim 3:16-17: All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

So what is the Christian perspective on going green? Many conservative Christians think of going green as something that alarmist hippies do. They turn their noses up at the environmentalists who chant about global warming and dying animals. This is a terrible tragedy! To quote Francis Schaeffer:

"The Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who--with God's help and in the power of the Holy Spirit--is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be [when Christ returns].... God's calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature... is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now."

When we look at the biblical perspective on going green, we see that being a caretaker of the earth is at the very heart of who God our Creator is. To honor and glorify our Creator, we should seek to be caretakers of all that He has created, preserving it as best we can until His return where His Creation will be restored. The Bible says that all of Creation speaks of God. What are we, His creatures, saying to the world about Him when we consume without thought and live without any concern for what impacts our actions have on the Creation, and the people living in it.

The poorest of the earth's inhabitants are the ones who are most impacted by environmental issues. They can't afford a water filtration system, air purification or clean food. Our toxic tendencies directly affect them first. Christ cares for the least of these, and we should too.

The prevailing thought in most homes is that our small individual actions couldn't possibly make a difference. Most of us can't afford to install solar energy or drive a Prius, even if our kids would all fit in it! But the truth is, the small efforts we can make to conserve the energy we do use and other creation caring actions we can take, make a big impact on our earth. Don't get overwhelmed, taking one step at a time, we can be better stewards of this world God has created.

Seventh Generation Review Go Green and Stay Clean

My primary concern that has lead us to go green and pursue green living standards is the health of our family. The chemicals we use in our every day cleaning products have always concerned me. It took a while for me to make a change though, because I didn't know where to start! I also thought it would cost too much for our small budget. I have found out that making one step at a time in this journey to go green is the most important. I decided to start with the items I used the most. So, since I am constantly doing laundry, and cleaning up my kids' messes, this Seventh Generation All-Purpose Cleaner was the next green cleaning product we decided to test.

Seventh Generation products are the most well-known, and fairly easy to find. Most Target stores carry Seventh Generation cleaners, and they are most definately at your local health food store. Here is what we thought of this cleaner:

Overall effectiveness: Did a great job on tough areas like the kitchen and bath

Packaging: Attractive, easy to use

Price: $5

We found that a little goes a long way with this, and you can water it down some to make it last longer. It is great on hard surfaces, including marble and tile, although it says not to use it on wood. Got the soap scum off of my tub without too much effort, and doesn't smell at all. Our only complaint would be the price, and the fact we couldn't find a concentrated version to save on packaging, etc.

First steps in GOING GREEN

According to a 15-year study presented at the Toronto Indoor Air Conference, women who work at home have a 54% higher death rate from cancer than those who work away from home. The study concluded that this was a direct result of the increased exposure to toxic chemicals, many of which are found in common household products.

Do those statistics startle you? I am always leery of statistics. DH majored in Sociology, and took statistics and is always telling me how easy it is to weight them in favor of your "cause". I also don't like the fear tactics people use to try to get me to do the right thing, but this does concern me. I know that the chemicals we use in our cleaners aren't healthy for my family. But I also don't have the extra time, energy or really the desire to make them myself! Plus, I really like my sink to shine and my clothes to smell fresh....So what's a girl to do? Try to find GREEN products that work, and are affordable! Here is the first one I started with:

Mountain Green Skin Sensitive Laundry Detergent

I purchased this from my local health food store. We have front loading washing machines, and this was labeled HE. It is concentrated, so I wasn't buying any water! It washes 66 loads, and is biodegradable and chemical free.

What we liked:

Easy use, looks just like my "non-green" detergent that I am used to

The smell-it's absolutely heavenly! In fact, my clothes smelled fresher, longer with this detergent than with my previous non-green detergent.

Effectiveness-my clothes were definately just as clean as before.

Cost-at first it seemed really pricey, at nearly $20. But when you compare number of uses out of this and others, it compares with Tide prices.

Overall consensus: We would buy this again, and would highly recommend it to anyone who asked.

We will be trying another Laundry detergent when we are done with this one. So far we've done about 50 loads with this.

Mama Goes Green

Are you living in the city, but looking for ways to live simply? Would you like to be greener, but don't know where to start? Does the term "Green" or "Environmental" make you think of hippies and extremists? It doesn't have to be so confusing, and we are going to take a step by step approach to taking green from the media and hype and putting into our practical lives. We will be reviewing methods and products along the way, and letting you know what we think. Are they practical, affordable, and do they work as good as the non-green stuff? These are all questions we will answer for you, from the perspective of a family of 6 without an endless budget or endless time to spare. Join us for the journey!