“…..we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. ” — – Dwight D. Eisenhow One beneficial consequence that comes from things getting uncomfortable is that it forces change. That is true whether you get a cramp from sleeping in a funny position, or when the recycling market collapsed after China no longer accepted the world’s discarded plastics. As uncomfortable and distressing as it is not to be able to recycle as we did before, we are now forced to acknowledge all that stuff we bring into our homes.…
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A Waste Free Life in PDX
When people think of Portland, Oregon, they think of bridges, bike paths, microbreweries, and coffee houses. The word “eco-friendly” comes to mind.
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Change Yourself Change the World
Sometimes I think, “Wouldn’t it be great to change the way things are?” Well, yes it would, aside from the huge responsibility were it possible.
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Apartment Composting Made Easy
If you are passionate like me about managing your home waste, but live in an apartment, Bokashi composting may be your answer to your food waste dilemmas. Bokashi is a Japanese method of composting that essentially uses live microbes to “pickle” food waste.
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Rethinking the Perfectly Manicured Lawn
For many, lawns have become a status symbol. In exchange for a sea of green, homeowners are expected to provide water, gasoline for mowers, time for maintenance, and often herbicides.
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Voluntary Simplicity
Think about it this way: if you buy a $4 coffee every workday, that’s approximately $1000 a year spent on coffee. If you make $10 an hour, that equates to 100 hours of work just to buy coffee. Voluntary Simplicity is about making conscious choices.
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Moving to a New Home, the Green Way
Moving is not a fun task, and a move can become wasteful, considering all the non-recyclable material and household goods being tossed out as garbage.
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Save Gas With Hypermiling
Gas-saving driving habits, called hypermiling, can help you achieve up to 40 percent more miles per gallon (mpg) than your car’s official fuel economy estimate. Take, for example, a 2005 Honda Accord, a best-selling sedan with a mpg rating of 24 (21 city, 31 highway). According to Wayne Gerdes — who coined the term “hypermiling” and is considered by many to be its leading expert and trainer — an Accord driver who is savvy to hypermiling can expect to get about 35 mpg. Dedicated hypermilers can achieve 50 percent or better improvement over their vehicles’ estimated mpg figures. Last year, Gerdes set a world record for distance in a gas-powered,…
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8 Ways to Reduce Your Water Waste
Water is wasted waiting for the shower or sink to warm up, on the slow leak you have in the toilet bowl that you never knew about and from sprinkling your lawn every day.
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Wood in the Course of Human Events
Wood has got to be one of nature’s most miraculous gifts to the human race. We have depended on wood for fuel, tools, weapons, and shelter since before the dawn of history. Even in this high tech world of the twenty first century there is wood everywhere, in one form or another, no matter if we are flying across the country at 30,000 feet, riding in a subway beneath the streets of Manhattan, or sitting on the sofa in front of the TV set. The sad fact is that wood has been with us for so long and is present in so many different forms that we no longer notice…
