Greener living

The current trend and wave of the future is greener living! I hear arguments daily that we will never be alive to see the fruits of our labor in saving the planet so it really doesn’t matter. Well, my goodness, it matters to me! My descendants will feel the effects of a healthy planet. Hopefully, yours will too! Most of us get a lump in our throats if asked to envision our children in a life-threatening situation. When I mentally place my children’s children there, I feel the same way. What kind of an environment do we want to leave the future? On whom does the owe-ness fall? The Baby Boomers? Gen X? Our children? It has to start somewhere, why not us and why not now?

I look around my house and I feel pretty good about my efforts. I have a container in the kitchen for recyclables. We use cute and trendy reusable shopping bags for grocery shopping. We use dish-washer safe water bottles 90% of the time rather than buying bottled water. We use paper and plastic products that were made from recycled materials, and we all turn off the bathroom water faucet when brushing our teeth! Well hunky dory, good job us! Right? I used to think so, but lately it doesn’t quite seem like enough.

As I drive around in my SUV and toss my baby’s disposable diapers in the landfill, with the assurance that it will take at least 100 years for decomposition…something feels amiss. Hmmm…

AS IF! I’ll admit I do have an SUV, but it gets 18/22 miles per gallon, so a far as SUV’s go, it’s not SO bad. And I exaggerate the diapers; at least 60% of the time we use diapers that are cloth with flushable/bio-degradable inserts called “G” diapers which only take a year to decompose in a landfill. Never-the-less, I think there is more we can do.

Thus, I begin to research ways to improve our greener living and wouldn’t you know, there are so many things that I didn’t even have a clue about?! To share some of what I learned, below is a link to Realtor.org that gives some great ideas.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect everyone to run out and completely remodel their homes, but bamboo cabinets? Who knew? If you are in the market to remodel, bamboo actually is a great material to use because it is strong, grows quickly without the use of fertilizers or pesticides, and needs no replanting. It can be used for cabinets, flooring, or furniture (even clothing if your interested). Unlike a tree that can easily take 30+ years to grow back, bamboo is a grass that has a reproduction cycle of just a few years (4-5). Cool, right? Definitely green!

The video also talked about LED lighting. Seems easy enough; what is it though, really? Well, in technical terms, A Light Emitting Diode (LED) is a semiconductor device which converts electricity into light. What’s the advantage? They are more damage-resistant than both fluorescent bulbs and incandescent bulbs and they don’t flicker. They work well for reading lamps, linear strip lighting (similar to what the video shows), niche lights, porch and landscape lighting…well, you get the idea. That’s great, right? So, why are they green? They are green because they have lower energy consumption, longer service life, no infrared or ultraviolet radiation, contain no mercury and remain cool to the touch. The disadvantages are that they are a little more expensive and they don’t do well in excessive heat.

So there you go, a few extra ideas on how to be a little more green in your household and daily living. There are definitely more areas to research, such as how to take Tucson’s amazing 300+ days/year of sunshine and turn it into solar power, home gardening and composting, the list goes on and on! While I do intend to go there, I think I’ll reserve that for another post!

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend! TGIF!!

-Bondi