Frugality & Green Living: BFFs

I was frugal way before I was a greenie. The hunt, and the thrill of saving hundreds of dollars made me giddy and a bit light headed! In fact, Garage Sale Saturdays became a family tradition of sorts, with stops at the local bakery for croissants! My children have always been dressed in high quality clothes for less than I would pay at Wal-Mart, and our house has been furnished by second hand Potterybarn and antiques. You can imagine how thrilled I was when our family started going green, and I realized how green being thrifty really was!

photo taken by: fromcollettewithlove

With our country's economic troubles, many people are focusing on making it through this crisis, and being green is making its way to the backburner. But being frugal and green living are lifestyles that often walk hand in hand. High priced eco-fashion has good intentions, but second-hand duds are actually more eco-fabulous! Gardening at home is so rewarding, and can save you tons on organic produce! This year we have saved money while making the environment cleaner by: using less water, buying second hand when possible, using less energy, driving less & walking more, and consuming less.

Even if you don't have the resources for a hybrid car, or solar panels on your roof, we can all take these easy steps that helps us save money, and make a big impact on the environment at the same time. Don't be discouraged by the doomsdayers! Work on keeping it simple, and using your green tricks to save some green!

A Deeper Shade of Green: Changes that make a Big Impact

Okay, so we've all probably changed at least some of our light bulbs to CFLs, and bought some reusable bags, but may wonder how to be more eco-conscious. Here are some tips that will make the most impact in your effort to reduce your carbon footprint. They are more intense changes than switching to organic shampoo, but are efforts that will make the biggest change in our environmental crisis.

Photo by pictoscribe

• Recycle & Compost-Studies show that only 33% of Americans recycle, despite all of the Earth Day messages we've heard since the 90s! And of those who do recycle, many don't compost. The average American produces 4.4 pounds of garbage, and half of it could be composted. Take the organic materials made of food scraps, paper and yard waste, and compost them in an inexpensive plastic bin, compost heap, or fancy tumbler. This will save you money in the long run, by providing your garden with free carbon-rich fertilizer, and cutting down on the garbage cans at the curb. Between recycling and composting, we can feasibly cut our landfill production by 75%...talk about BIG impact!

• WALK-this is simple, but often overlooked. 15% of all our trips in the U.S. are less than a mile long! If we all subsituted one short car trip a day with a walking rip, 8.4 billion gallons of gas would be saved every year! This equates to 8.2 billion TONS of carbon emissions! Take an inventory of the trips you make, and decide which ones could feasibly be walked or biked. Make a schedule: this makes it easier to stick to!

• Eat Vegetarian-I am NOT a vegetarian, but the statistics have encouraged me to make at least 2-3 vegetarian meals/wk. This is definately a help on the grocery budget as an added bonus! The UN has listed raising animals for food as "one of the top 2-3 most significant contributions to the most serious environmental problems at every scale, from local to global." This is a resource-intensive practice, using half of the fresh water, and 70% of grains grown in the U.S. Also, 80% of agricultural land is used to rais animals, and a third of all fossil fuels produced in the U.S. is used for livestock. Not to mention the excrement that pollutes the ground and surface water! When you do eat meat, buy locally, from farmer's who do free range grazing and treat the animals humanely.

• Eat Local-you can cut down on the petroleum used to ship food when you eat in season, and locally. Better yet, plant a garden and enjoy the freshest goods in town!

• Consume Less-Reuse when possible, shop second hand when available, and when you need to buy new, get fair trade, organic, and sustainable. Need convincing? Check out this video at storyofstuff.com

Effective Eco-Actions- Water Usage

photo by Red 10

Back to the issue of effective eco-actions, the next water usage topic takes us straight to the bathroom. I've ranted about my hubby's eco-vice before, so... which is it...Tubs vs showers. Is there a big difference? Well, according to the green routine, there most definately is. A short, 5 minute shower with a low flow head will dramatically reduce your household usage. However, if you can't get shower time down to 5 minutes, a 15 minute shower is roughly equivalent to a bath. So, I say, hurry up and shower, and give yourself a once a week soak! And if you are ever fortunate enough to have the opportunity to install a greywater system, use your water after your cleansing for the garden or the toilet. Speaking of which...


I've written a post before on our dramatic water savings by switching to a new toilet. This is great for all you penny pinchers out there, as well as eco-friends. 70 % of our household water usage is flushed or bathed down the drain, so these 2 places are great places to start to make your first eco-actions effective ones. Using less water is friendly on our pockets, and our earth. Conserving water puts less strain on our municipal water systems which makes for less water pollution, and protects our watershed, a vital part of sustainability for any community. Checking for leaks, and replacing high flush toilet models with low flow versions, are 2 things that most of us can do ourselves, with little effort and budget. For more water savings tips, see eartheasy.com's list of tips.

Effective Eco Actions-Laundry

Our next most frequent chore is Laundry. Some of you nuts out there enjoy laundry as some sort of therapuetic excercise...I do not! However, I will say that after we purchased my ultra energy and water effecient front loaders, it is somewhat more tolerable:) The rule of thumb here is that if your washing machine is less than 10 years old, do everything you can to make it eco friendly until you're ready to purchase a new one. For example, if you have a top loader that is in working condition, keep leaks in check, wash with cold water, and use only the amount of water you need per load. If, however, that washing machine is older than 10 yrs, you will save a significant amount of money, water and energy by upgrading to a front loader. Recycle your old one, and move to the green side! Use an eco-friendly detergent, wash in cold water, and line dry when possible.

Photo taken by elaine a

Appliances that get recycled at a scrap metal place, are going to be fed to a giant shredder large enough to shred a car into small pieces . The pieces are then run through a magnet to pull out iron-containing metals, while the non-ferrous metal, such as aluminum, is separated out by an eddy current (the wonders of science at work). If there is plastic insulation, it is not recyclable, but you don't need to worry about removing those parts; they will become the shredded "fluff" left over after the metals are separated. Refrigerators, or appliances with coolant in them, need to be handled by a liscensed handler, check Earth 911 for someone in your area.

Effective Eco Actions-Water Usage

As a mama going green, we often wonder which choices to make that will be the most effective and friendly to the earth. Cloth vs disposable, hand wash vs dishwasher, clothesline vs dryer, and on and on! It can be a bit overwhelming, so I thought I'd start a series this week tackling some of the most common decisions we face day to day, and examining which choices will make the biggest impact on the environment. I wanted to start out with our household water usages.

Photo taken by Hypergurl

First lets start with the most frequent chore in my household, Dishes! Over at Mom Goes Green, Doreen examined the long held notion that washing dishes by hand would use less water than an automatic dishwasher. But we find out that this is simply NOT true! Especially with the ultra efficient dishwashers out there, the amount of water usage is actually only a sixth, and the energy only 1/2! Now, it's possible if you are just 2 people in a household, that the responsible handwasher would be more efficient than running the dishwasher. However, with a 6 person family like mine, we fill the dishwasher to the brim at least once a day, and handwashing is just simply not efficient. Glad I don't have to have eco-guilt about this one!

We not only use water and energy when we wash our dishes though. We also use DETERGENT. If you have not switched to a non-toxic and non-polluting kind yet, SWITCH! The automatic dish detergents are the only products still allowed to contain phosphates. These are proven to kill fish, and produce dead zones in water ways by spurring algae to overgrow and depleting oxygen. Also, many conventional cleaning products have surfactants that are petroleum based, do not biodegrade for a very long time, and pollute our water supply. Safe choices we have used with success, listed in order of preference:

Shaklee's Get Clean Automatic Dish Detergent
Ecover Tablets
BioKleen Dish Powder

Join us tomorrow as we tackle more household water uses, and how to be the most effective with your eco-concience.

Green Tip of the Week

Now that we are all in summer mode, energy efficiency is key! To help keep your cooling bill down, make sure you cover your windows and french doors with heavy curtains, to help keep the sun out during the hottest part of the day. It really makes more of a difference than you think! I just finished making mine:

See! Going Green is fun and can be stylish:)!

Green Your Food Tip # 1

Us moms are always fighting against the media and peer influences when it comes to nutritious decisions in the supermarket. We hear about eating locally, and from our own gardens, but what about busy moms?! Should we feel guilty about pouring L*cky Charms in our kids bowls?

If you have the same lingering green guilt in the back of your mind every morning, I suggest you run and pick up Mom's Best Naturals. This cereal impressed me first because of the organic whole grains they use. Then while I was pouring it, I noticed the back had info about how they power their productions-100% wind power. That's right, they use ALL green energy! And if that's not impressive enough, their company is committed to recycling and using recycled materials. The best part is that this ultra green & eco-concious cereal is not $5 a box (they are rather large boxes too). I get mine for $1.99/box at Wal-Mart. Seriously. And my kids LOVE it! It's yummy, healthy, nutritious and eco-friendly. Go get some! And no, I was not paid to write this:) Just really love it!

Works for Me Wednesday-Green Cleaning

My quest has been to find a green cleaner that worked on my bathtub. You think that's easy? Well, I've already revealed to all that my husband is a perpetual bath taker. That, plus 4 kids taking a "tub" each day makes for one serious ring around the tub! I used to use Toilet Bowl Cleaner Gel to clean it. I know, horrible! But there was really nothing else that would touch the ring. Switching to green cleaners has left me dissapointed with the ring around the tub problem. Enter in Shaklee's Scour Off Paste. It is intended for really tough jobs, which I just assumed to be ovens. The lightbulb went off in my head to try it, so I pulled it out yesterday....like magic I tell ya! Best of all, you only need a little to clean and it smells very light, and pleasant. TOTALLY Non-Toxic! Try it, it worked for me!

Works for Me Wednesday

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I've found me some pretty good deals. In fact, I like to think of myself as a bargain-hunting expert. When we lived in the big city, bargains were EV-ER-Y-WHERE! From Pottery Barn quilts for $2 to designer duds for under $5, I was constantly on the hunt, even with 4 kids in tow. Until the move. The move to rural VA, where designer duds aren't exactly wardrobe staples. Most people haven't even heard of Pottery Barn! So how do I find my bargains? Well, online of course! Thrifting was so green, but I had to find other outlets to fulfill my passion for green and thrifty besides the Goodwill! Here are some of my favorite online sites to shop green and thrifty:

http://www.ebay.com/

This one is an obvious choice considering my business....consignment sales on eBay.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/

Don't buy it at Books A Million if you can find it here! Basically free, fun and saving trees at the same time!

http://www.amazon.com/

I love the great deals you can get here, and you can still buy used items.

http://www.oompatoys.com/

Great non-toxic toys for kids and a loyalty rewards program. 60% of our Christmas came from here.

There's nothing like the rush of finding an unexpected treasure in a thrift store, but these online sites help me stay thrifty and green. If you haven't given them a try, you should!

Bottled Water Boycott

Bottled water companies have got us all thinking they have the corner on "pure" water, when the reality is that their water is usually not any better than tap water. Did you know that many companies actually bottle their water from the same sources? As a frugal mom, that alone convinced me to stop wasting my money on water that costs more per gallon than my gasoline!
As an eco-concious mom, the statistics on waste and pollution that the bottled water industry produces made me SERIOUS about spreading the word.

We just received our Sigg bottles in the mail for the kids, and LOVE them! We have a Best Water pitcher to filter our water, and simply fill these up in the morning. It's great on the go, no more bottled water for us! And have you seen the cute prints for us eco-fabulous moms? I want this one next: The kids got this print: Take the "Think outside the bottled water" pledge by clicking below. The statistics are straight from their site:

Did you know?

Seventy-four percent of Americans drink bottled water, and one in five drinks only bottled water.

Worldwide, consumers spent $100 billion on bottled water in 2005.


Each year more than 4 billion pounds of PET plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside litter.

Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel for more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year - and generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide

New Year's Resolutions

According to statistics, up to 75% of Americans want to be "greener" this year. This is the perfect New Year's resolution, because it often covers the more traditional resolutions as well. One of mine this year is to lose weight. Thankfully, eating fresh vegetables from my own garden or from the farmer's market is gentle on the environment too and saves many tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. Biking and walking everywhere you can will save the planet and burn calories at the same time.

Another common resolution is to save money. Going green doesn't have to be more expensive, in fact in many cases it is actually the more frugal thing to do. Using less energy by turning down your thermostat, switching to CFL's and being more efficient with your electricity use can save the average family $200-400/yr. Buying greener cleaning products in concentrate can be much more cost effective than your traditional all-purpose cleaners, and prevents hundreds of plastic bottles from entering the landfill.

Lastly, being a good neighbor and serving others is on the top of many resolution lists. What better way than doing your part to keep the water, air and soil clean for the global community. The people who live in South America who depend on the rain forests or the small fishermen in the world who depend on the fish will be directly affected by your conumer choices. Resolutions are best kept if they are planned out ahead of time. Make a list of 10 green things to do this year, and be well on your way to going green. You can make a difference on an individual level, make it a resolution!

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.

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!