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This spring, make it green cleaning time

By Melissa Micka
Buck Consultants

It’s spring cleaning time again—time to clean up the clutter and start fresh. But before you get to work, take a few minutes to consider these tips for making spring cleaning green cleaning.

Out with the old, in with the new

(Photo: Green Right Now Network)

Traditional household cleaning products contain dangerous, toxic ingredients that can cause or contribute to serious health issues including cancer, respiratory problems, reproductive abnormalities and allergic reactions. So, if your cleaning supplies are along the traditional lines, it’s probably time to start considering greener alternatives. On your next trip to the store, stop in the cleaning aisle and look for products labeled as non-toxic, biodegradable or made from renewable resources. And, check to see if your community has toxics recycling days, so that you can safely remove your old cleaning products from your home. (If you just throw them out in the trash, you run the risk of contaminating the environment.)

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What you need to know: Composting

By Chris Reinolds

Composting can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. From piling green and brown things in a corner of the yard

Compost bins need aeration, like this metal mesh enclosure. (Photo: Bureau of Environmental Services, Howard County, Md.)

to buying that perfect compost bin, you’ll generate the same end result.  Those of us who turn and nurture our piles can expect more compost in a faster time period, but regardless our gardens will benefit from a little or a lot.

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Green drinks for St. Paddy’s Day

By Barbara Kessler

With St. Pat’s coming up, it’s time to decide how green do you want to be?

Green and Sober

In this scenario, you remember to carry your reusable water bottle. If your Kleen Kanteen were green that would be keen. But any reusable bottle will do.

Green and Tipsy

If you’re looking to imbibe, there’s the traditional green beer, a staple at Irish parades everywhere. You can make it at home with green food dye. It is best showcased in a chilled clear glass mug.

Green as in Apple Green

Of course, there’s your ‘Green Apple Surprise’, made with Midori Green Apple Liquor and tequila or vodka or rum. Midori is happy to oblige with recipes. But these sweeties can really go down easy, so drink responsibly. Make it greener with organic liquors…

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From Durham to Sacramento, cities get help with ‘climate showcase’ projects

Retrofiting by insulating pipes in Durham, N.C.

In Durham, N.C., homes will get an energy retrofit. In Salt Lake City, they’ll develop a plan to reduce auto pollution.  In Sacramento, they’ll be improving the landscape around a river to reduce pollution runoff. And in Denver, they’ll be looking at a little bit of all that — energy efficiency for homes and businesses, bike sharing and renewable energy.

It’s all being made possible by $10 million from the EPA’s Climate Showcase Community Grants, set up to help communities develop their plans to reduce greenhouse gases and lighten their carbon footprint.

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Common herbicide atrazine emasculates male frogs in study

African clawed frog (Photo: Columbia University)

Blame lawns. And Big Ag. A new study looking at the effects of the common pesticide atrazine has found that it emasculated three-quarters of the male frogs exposed to the chemical.

It turned one in ten of the male frogs into females.

The study suggests that a key reason for the vast worldwide decline of frogs could be their exposure to atrazine and similar pesticides. “The 75 percent that are chemically castrated are essentially ‘dead’ because of their inability to reproduce in the wild,” says Dr. Tyrone B. Hayes, a University of California-Berkeley professor and lead researcher of the study.

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Veggies get their own phone app

Happy Cow phone apps help you find veggie restaurants

We know there are thousands of apps available for your iPhone. But here’s one we think will be really useful, the HappyCow VeginOut Guide.

It’s available for Palms, phones that use Android and the iPhone. The iPhone app is called VegOut.

These apps allow you to easily find thousands of eating spots that are either vegan, vegetarian or veg-friendly.

If you or someone close to you is a veggie, you’ll know how valuable such a reference can be when you’re on the road encountering meat-oriented restaurants at every interchange.

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What you need to know: Household cleaners

Greener cleaners are non-polluting, indoors and out

Not so long ago, Mr. Clean and company were considered the good guys, the go-to-gang for a deep house cleaning. But in the past several years, alarms have been sounding about chemicals used in conventional household products.

Be they phosphates, sulfates, bleach, ammonia or phenols, certain ingredients are causing strong concerns among consumer-protection groups, federal and state governments, and even a few manufacturers. The new conventional wisdom asserts that many household cleaners contain compounds that pose environmental risks and can lead to health conditions such as asthma, nerve damage, reproductive damage, even cancer. (See our GRN guide below.)

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A Clean Air solution to lawn care

By Barbara Kessler

As you get ready for the annual war on weeds in your front lawn this spring, you can choose to load up on conventional weed-and-feed and launch a chemical offensive, or you can call the local lawn service to begin the assault on your behalf.

Clean Air truck with solar panels charging lawn mowers (Photo: Clean Air Lawn Care.)

Or…you can skip the harsh chemicals and the usual services and find an organic lawn service.

Organic lawn care companies are pushing into the market. So much so, that even Chem Lawn, a king of the old guard, now goes by TruGreen and offers an all-organic plan. These days a check for “organic lawn care” will usually pop up someone in your region, if not your exact town. And a search for do-it-yourself organic lawn care products, like corn gluten pre-emergent weed killer or composts for fertilizing, will turn up products at hundreds of online and off-line retailers.

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Restaurants going greener to save costs and attract customers, new study finds

Restaurant organizations of all sizes are hungry for greater efficiency in their operations, the survey found.

Sustainability practices that minimize the impact of restaurant operations on the environment appear to be gaining momentum as the foodservice industry finds ways to measure the return on its investment in green systems and technologies, according the results of a new benchmark survey from RSR Research.

The study, “The Better-Run Restaurant: Environmental Sustainability in Restaurant Retail 2010,” finds restaurant organizations of all sizes hungry for greater efficiency in their operations, particularly those solutions which cut energy costs, reduce wasteful packaging, and can be leveraged to “tell a green story” to diners. While the industry is still struggling to correlate top line revenue with green investments, it does recognize the bottom line benefits of cost savings from energy and waste management.

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‘Smart’ meters will help consumers track electricity use

By Bill Sullivan

A sudden cold snap creates a spike in consumption. Christmas lights are fun at the time, but they, too, keep that meter running. Kids routinely leave electronics on, even when they’re not in the room.

Advanced Metering System

Sure, you try to do all those little things that, in a perfect world, can help keep cost and environmental impact down. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and a big number on that electric bill each month can come as a shock to both the system and the budget.

But what if your world was just a little more perfect? What if you could log on to your computer and check consumption down to, say, a 15-minute period? What if you could figure out that your teenager is running the TV, stereo, a game player (or two) and every light in his room — all despite the fact that he’s spending the night at a friend’s house?

That’s the future of the Advanced Metering System (AMS), and that future is closer than you may think.

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