Supernatural Botanicals

About two-thirds of households that regularly recycle credit the woman of the house as the “recycling enforcer,” according to a 2009 survey. That’s a big deal since women continue to shoulder most of the housework, experts say.

Get rid of those Christmas trees responsibly this year….recycle them.  Why recycle?  Christmas trees take up tons of space in landfills, and the decay of the trees are painfully slow due to the lack of oxygen.  Instead, the trees can be ground into wood chips or made into useful compost.

Check with your city’s online website to find if your township is holding a Christmas Tree Recycling day…and most cities do.  You can also check out Earth911 for additional resources to get rid of that tree responsibly.

Start the year off  Green and do the right thing.  Recycle!

For every 38,000 bills paid online, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved, according to NACHA — The Electronic Payments Association, a non-profit. Using direct payment also saves a person about $150 annually in stamp and check costs and late fees, NACHA estimates.

Have your employer pay you through direct deposit to further cut back your paper trail.  If you feel you absolutely must continue to get paper billing, make sure and recycle the paper.  Very simple steps make a huge impact on the environment.  Step up to the plate and do your part.

We all know the 411 when it comes to recycling, and that’s simply to DO IT.  We know better than to make excuses.  We should also know it’s simply a way of life for us now.  It’s should be a way of life for your children, too.

So lets take it a step further and precycle.  What is precycling?  It’s Proactive meets Recycling.    Here are 10 ways to proactively recycle.

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1. Bring reusable bags to the store with you. Cloth or paper will do!

2. Buy Large Quantities. If you buy products in bulk or in large sizes and quantities, you can put them in smaller containers as you need them and this uses less containers.

3. Buy products with the least amount of packaging or none at all. Items packed in multiple containers may look nice, but they are a waste!

4. Buy products packed in recycled packaging. If you have to use a container, it might as well be green. Additionally, you help support green corporations. (Important: make sure you look for the recycled symbol)

5. Don’t buy disposable items (plates cups, pens, diapers, batteries, etc.) They only fill the landfill more.

6. Buy less paper towels and napkins or none at all. Use cloth ones!

7. Buy long life and concentrated items (batteries, bulks , etc.) This saves on packaging as well as product.

8. Don’t purchase styrofoam. It contains polystyrene, which is the most difficult material to break down in our landfill and is considered a hazardous waste.

9. Buy items in cardboard. aluminum, steel, glass, and plastic containers marked 1 and 2 ( They are stamped on the bottom 1 and 2). These containers can be recycled more easily.

10. Read labels for ingredients. Stay away from chemicals that harm our plant and animal life and poison our land.

Did you know that 84% of all household waste can be recycled?  Recycling is one of the easiest ways to go Green, yet makes a monumental impact to the environment.  At a bare minimum, everyone should be recycling.  Take care of the waste you create.  Be eco-responsible.

What could be better than winning the HGTV dream home?  Winning the HGTV Green home!  The HGTV 2010 Green home offers so many fantastic gems, like the mud room/recycling center (seriously..that room spoke to me!)  The third floor tower room would be the perfect place to blog from!  Love it.  Take the tour below, then enter to win it at HGTV.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6RmCVQXS3w

Way to impress the pants right off of us, Los Angeles!  

Los Angeles is going to start a new pilot program with RecycleBank that will compensate households for recycling!  The hope is that the city’s recycling rate will go up from 65% to over 70%.

15,000 homes will be eligible for the program and the contents of their tagged bins will be weighed and recorded each week. Depending on the weight, residents earn points that they can redeem at businesses like CVS, Bed Bath & Beyond, and El Pollo Loco.  The total tally can reach the equivalent of $400 a year per household!

Super-impressive initiative, LA!  Cincinnati…take notes!

Bottled water is not evil.  Sure, it’s gotten a bad rap in the past few years…everything from plastic bottles taking over our landfills to causing cancer.  In theory, those things are true, and yes, bottled water can be frowned upon in that regard.

Here’s the upside…keep bottled water out of extremely high temperatures, for instance, your car.  Some scientist believe that the plastic can omit toxins into the water when the bottles are extremely hot, thus, perhaps, being the cause of breast cancer.  Simply keep your bottles out of the heat and the plastic is otherwise harmless.

About the landfills…Our landfills are being polluted with millions of water bottles.  Since the bottles take an estimated 600-1000 years to decompose, it’s an absolutely horrible idea to throw the bottles into the trash.  Sadly, only 10% of plastic water bottles are recycled in the US.  That means a whopping 90% are going straight to the landfills.  It’s so easy to recycle.  If you don’t…you should start.

At the end of the day, bottled water is not evil.  It can be an evil if you aren’t properly disposing of the bottles and you are letting them sit in a car all day omitting toxins into the water.   As long as you follow the rules, bottled water can be a very, very good thing.

• Recycling
• Wind Power
• Solar Power
• Composting
• Alternative Transportation
• Pollution Laws
• Organic Gardening

• It takes 90% less energy to recycle aluminum cans than to make new ones.
• The garbage in a landfill stays for a for about 30 years. In 1995 over 200 of the world’s landfills were full.
• Each person throws away approximately four pounds of garbage every day. If we are cognizant, we can reduce that…a lot!
• Most lighters are made out of plastic and filled with butane fuel, both petroleum products. Over 1.5 billion end up in landfills each year.
• Going Green” doesn’t have to be a daunting task that means sweeping life changes. Start by planting a tree in your backyard.
• Lighting an empty office wastes enough energy to boil water for a 1000 cups of coffee and doubles a company’s annual electric bill.
• Adjust your thermostat 1 degree higher in the summer and 1 degree cooler in the winter. Each degree less will save about 10% on energy use.
• Nearly 90% of plastic water bottles are not recycled, instead taking thousands of years to decompose. Why? It’s so very easy to recycle.
• Recycling just the Sunday papers would save more than half a million trees every week.
• A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
• A laptop is more environment friendly than a desktop. It consumes five times less electricity.
• A plant on your desk acts as a natural filter, absorbing airborne pollutants and computer radiation while replenishing oxygen levels.
• An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now! It’s so easy to recycle. Please do!
• Everytime we burn oil, coal and gas to generate electricity and power, we produce the heat trapping gases that cause global warming.
• Average number of pounds of paper used annually by every American: 680
• Number of gallons of water wasted by a leaky faucet dripping once per second: 2,700
• Eco Facts: Number of trees required by every American to meet their yearly demand for paper and wood products: 7