Living Green is about living consciously, with awareness of your actions and the impact they have on your body, the health of life around you and the sustainability of our planet. Sustainability, in the most basic terms, is the ability to provide for the needs of the population in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, in this generation and for generations to come.  In practical terms, sustainability involves taking specific actions (like those included in the tips below) that have a positive impact on the health of our environment.

All of the the tips included here are either free or very low cost, and in many cases, actually save you money, are easy to do, and make a big impact. Here are some quick, easy, low cost tips that you can do today:

Shop Online The best part about internet shopping is that you can find just about anything, there is no waiting in line and you can shop in your pajamas.  In addition to the major convenience factor, online shopping also saves energy, resulting in enormous environmental benefits. On average, e-commerce warehouses use 1/16th of the energy of that used to operate a traditional retail store. It also saves transportation energy. Although we always recommend ground shipping, even overnight air shipping uses 40% less fuel than the average car trip to the mall - and that's not even counting the drive around the parking lot to find a decent parking space.  In fact, each minute spent driving to the mall uses twenty times more energy than a minute spent shopping online.  SHopping online will reduce your carbon footprint too according to the Department of Energy.  Here at BuyGreen, we have partnered with Native Energy to carbon offset your shipping, making your total shopping experience carbon-neutral. 

Save money too !   With gas prices reaching well over $3 per gallon this summer, consider the true cost of that trip to the mall. 

The BuyGreen Team Tip   Put the kids to bed, pour a glass of wine (preferably organic) and surf the web for some stylish eco-friendly clothes and accessories or the gift you need for that upcoming event. Now that's some relaxing, low-carbon shopping.

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Drive Less, Drive Smart  Almost one third of the carbon dioxide produced in the United States comes from our cars, trucks and airplanes. Here are some simple, practical things you can do to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide you produce when driving: 

• Check your tires regularly to make sure they're properly inflated - Properinflation can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Since every gallon of gasoline saves money and keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, every increase in fuel efficiency makes a difference! Keep the tires on your car adequately inflated. Check them monthly. Save 250 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $840 per year.

• Make sure your car is well-maintained - Regular maintenance helps improve fuel efficiency, reduces emissions, and helps keep your car running at its best. When just 1% of car owners properly maintain their cars, nearly a billion pounds of carbon dioxide are kept out of the atmosphere.

• Start a carpool with your coworkers or classmates - Sharing a ride with someone just 2 days a week will reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by 1,590 pounds a year.eRideShare.com runs a free national service connecting commuters and travelers.
• Walk, run or ride your bicycle - If you avoid just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year!

• Try car sharing - Need a car but don't want to buy one? Community car sharing organizations provide access to a car and your membership fee covers gas, maintenance and insurance. Check outZipCar for more information about car sharing.

• Try telecommuting from home - Telecommuting can help you drastically reduce the number of miles you drive every week. Just as important, no sitting in rush hour traffic and more time at home with your family.

• If it is time for a new car, choose a more fuel efficient vehicle - If we could all get an average of 35 mpg instead of the 27 mpg on average we get now, we could end U.S. dependency on mid-east oil by 2025.  You personally can save 3,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year if your new car gets only 3 miles per gallon more than your current one. Visit these web sites for information that will help you identify clean and fuel efficient vehicles in any part of the country:  EPA's Green Vehicle Guide, or The DOE/EPA Fuel Economy Guide, or The U.S. Department of Energy Clean Cities Site

The BuyGreen Team Tip   Running a quick errand and need to get some exercise?  Walk to the store to pick up a couple of items or run to return that DVD.  Good for your body, good for the planet.

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Just say NO to Paper or Plastic BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag) is the way to go. Did you know that 380 billion plastic bags are used annually in the United States, each bag is used for about 25 minutes, less than 3% are recycled and they never biodegrade? In fact, they photodegrade, which means they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits that contaminate soil, pollute waterways and enter our food-chain. Paper bags are not a good option either - we cut down 14 million trees per year to produce 10 billion paper bags for grocery stores in the US.  So the next time you go to the store, bring your own bag (or two or three). You can buy a reusable bag in most grocery stores for around $1 or you can check out our line of high-quality reusable bags. Each quality reusable bag you use eliminates the use of thousands of one-time use bags. So do your share to reduce your use, which is an average of 18,000 plastic bags per person in a lifetime. Start reducing your personal use today.

The BuyGreen Team Tip   Keep your reusable bags in your car so you don't forget them at home the next time you run errands.

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Reduce your use of plastic water bottles The bottled water business is booming.  In the U.S. alone, we use 1.5 million  barrels of oil each year just to create plastic water bottles.  We collectively use billions of plastic water bottles each day in our country and only about 12% are recycled.  The rest end up in our landfills, or worse, littering our roads, rivers and waterways.  In fact, every plastic water bottle ever produced is still in our environment today.  So what's the answer - reduce your use of bottled water and bring your own water from home in a reusable bottle.  Scared of tap water?  Consider that municipal water supplies are checked diligently for safety while water bottlers operate with little to no oversight.  There are also many great water filtration systems available today, priced to accommodate any budget, and a variety of quality, stylish water bottles.  With additional concerns about the safety of plastics and potential leaching of toxic chemicals like bisphenol-A (BPA) into our beverages, we say “just say no” to plastic bottles. 

Save money too !  A reusable water bottle is a one-time expense.  If you replace just one plastic water bottle per day, you would save about $200 per year.

The BuyGreen Team Tip   We fill up our SIGG bottles in the evening and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  When we take them out in the morning to go in the car with us or send to school with our kids, the water stays cold almost all day - with no “plastic” taste.

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Replace Your Light Bulbs Replace your regular incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent (CFL) ones.  CFL's use 60-75% less energy than a regular bulb. Today's CFL's offer brightness and color rendition that is comparable to incandescent lights. This simple switch of just one CLF bulb in place of an incandescent one will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. If every family in the U.S. made the switch, we'd reduce carbon dioxide by more than 90 billion pounds!  For more information on CFL's, visitEnvironmental Defenseand click on “light bulb guide.”

Save money too !  If you switch 5 standard incandescent light bulbs to CFL's, you would save about $60 per year in electricity costs.  In addition, CFL's last about six times longer than conventional bulbs, so that's more money in your pocket.

The BuyGreen Team Tip   There are some lamps and lampposts that won't fit traditional "curly" CFL bulbs.  Luckily, there are new CFL bulbs on the market that look like traditional round incandescent bulbs so they fit those snap on lampshades and hard to fit lamps - nice!

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Reduce:

• Consider Packaging -Approximately ten cents of every shopping dollar is used to pay for packaging and about 30% of municipal waste comes from packaging.  Packaging is nothing but waste so try to avoid heavily packages products. 
• Buy in Bulk- Small sizes use more packaging for each ounce of product than larger sizes.  Less packaging could reduce your garbage by about 10%. Save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide and $1,000 per year.
• Don't over buy - do you really need that new item or can you spruce up or make do with what you've got?  It's amazing what a coat of paint or some new throw pillows and accessories will do to revamp you space.  You can check out our line of eco-friendly low-VOC paint to remodel your space.

  Reuse - Here is a list of some uncommon things that others can reuse.

  • Books - your local school or library almost always accept donations or you can go toReader to Reader
  • Glasses - Go toGive the Gift of Sight to find your nearest drop off location.  After cleaning, they will send them to developing countries and pair them up with people with similar prescriptions.
  • Coats - Go to One Warm Coat to find out how to donate your old winter coats.
  • Computers -The National Cristina Foundationgives companies and individuals the opportunity to donate their used computers, which are matched to charities and schools in their area.  This keeps good working equipment from local landfills, and provides training and computer access for people with disabilities, students at risk, and economically challenged persons.
  • Mobile Phones (and other rechargeable batteries) - The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporationis a non-profit agency dedicated to rechargeable battery and cell phone recycling.  Go to the site locator where you can type in your zip code to find a participating location near you.  Mobile phones are refurbished and resold if possible with a portion of the proceeds going to charitable organizations.  Rechargeable batteries are recycled to reclaim reusable materials such as nickel and iron to make stainless steel.  None of the by-products of this process are sent to landfills.
  • Packing peanuts - most mail and delivery stores will accept small quantities of packing peanuts for reuse.  To find a store near you, go to Earth 911.

    Recycle:

    • Recycle your holiday lights - HolidayLEDs.com will take your old incandescent lights and recycle them.  To recycle your lights, just mail them to:  HolidayLEDs.com, Attn: Recycling Program, 120 West Michigan Avenue, Suite 1403, Jackson, MI  49201.
    • Recycle your glass - glass is the best type of food and beverage container because it is completely recyclable. Recycled glass can be made into new beverage bottles, food jars, insulation and other construction materials.  Just take off the caps and lids before your put your glass in your recycling bin - these are typically not recyclable.
    • Recycle your aluminum - aluminum has the highest redemption value of all household recycling items. Just rinse your cans briefly so you don't attract ants and put them in your bin or take them down to your local collection facility if you want the cash.  Other sources of household aluminum such as clean aluminum foil, clean pie tins, aluminum siding, and aluminum frames of lawn furniture also can be recycled. For these items, check with your local waste management company or recycling program to make sure they accept them.
    • Recycle your plastics - unfortunately, plastics are not as easily recyclable as glass and aluminum. The plastics industry has developed a coding system to help us identify different types of plastic resins used in packaging. The codes can be found on the bottom of most plastic containers. These numbers mean very different things, so you will probably need more information to sort it out - you can find more information about recycling plastics at Earth 911.
    • Recycle your paper (including newspaper, office paper and junk mail) - If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees — or about 26 million trees per year. It takes less 70 to 90% less energy to make recycled paper, saves 5 lbs. of carbon dioxide per ream of paper, and it prevents the loss of forests worldwide. 
    • Recycle your E-waste - This is the fastest growing segment of the waste stream.  The U.S. spewed 2.6 million tons of e-waste in 2005, and only 12.5% was recycled.  If you can't give it to someone to reuse, don't throw it in the trash.  You can log onto the EPA ecycle site to find the closest Ecycling facility. 
    • Note on cleaning your recyclables - you do not have to clean recyclable items until they are spotless or remove the labels.  Just get rid of major food particles and throw them in your bin. The heat used in the recycling process gets rid of contaminants.
    • Check to see if and where you can recycle it - you can go to Earth 911 for information about recycling, reuse and proper disposal options for over 250 different materials. At the top of the home page, just type in the description of the item you wish to recycle and your zip code.  You will be instantly connected to the locations closest to you that accept that item. 
    • Buy recycled products - In order for recycling to be sustainable, we need to also purchase items with recycled-content. Look for and purchase post-consumer recycled content packaging and products whenever possible. When buying paper, look for 100% post consumer recycled paper.

     

   

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Stop using toxic chemicals As we strive to have a clean home and ultra-white clothes, we have inadvertently invited a whole host of toxic chemicals into our homes, raising concerns about our own health, the wellbeing of our family, and the health of the environment.  When we use traditional cleaning products in our home, the chemicals contaminate the air and remain on surfaces.  We then absorb these chemicals through our skin.  In addition, those harsh chemicals are washed down the sink, entering the waste stream and contaminating ground water.  Did you know that household cleaners are not even required to disclose their ingredients; so many times you don't even know what's in the products you're using? The good news is that household cleaners don't have to be toxic to get the job done.

When using household cleaners, keep these things in mind:

• Do not use detergents or stain removers with phosphates, alkylphenol exthoxylates (APE's), linear alkylate sulforate (LAS), all are known toxicants.
• Do not use bleach with chlorine or sodium perborates.  Chlorine gets into the waste stream and contaminates ground water.  Use non-chlorine alternatives made from hydrogen peroxide or oxygen.
• Do not use products with chemical fragrances or conventional fabric softeners.  Did you know that these are a skin irritant and also build up on clothing, making it look dull?  Fabric softeners lower the absorption of your towels.
• Use safer products, such as baking soda, lemon juice and white vinegar instead of harsher chemical cleaners.
• Check out our line of safe, natural, non-toxic, biodegradable cleaners.

• Don't run the water when you brush your teeth - save 8 gallons of water
• Toilets are the largest water consumer in your house.  Install a low-flow toilet dam or displacement device (like a filled bottle) to cut down on the amount of water needed for each flushing - reduce water use by 20%
• Only wash a full load - of laundry or dishes that is.
• Don't over water your lawn. As a general rule, lawns only need watering every 5-7 days in the summer. A hearty rain eliminates the need for watering for as long as two weeks.
• Water lawns during the early morning hours when temperatures and wind speed are the lowest. This reduces losses from evaporation.
• Avoid hosing down your driveway or sidewalk; use a broom instead and save hundreds of gallons of drinkable water.
• Do not use running water to thaw meat or other frozen foods. Defrost them overnight in the refrigerator, or by using the defrost setting on your microwave.
• Washing machines are the second largest water consumer behind toilets.  Consider purchasing a High Efficiency washer, which uses 40-50% less water and 50-60% less energy than traditional top loading machines.  These machines cost a bit more, but save water and energy in the long run.  You can also qualify for energy rebates when you purchase these items.
• Consider using a commercial car wash that recycles water. If you wash your own car, park it on the grass, use a bucket with soapy water, turn off the water while soaping, and use a hose with a pressure nozzle to decrease rinsing time.
• For more information on all aspects of water quality, log on to theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water
• To find out how to save water throughout your house, and for great kids' activities and teacher resources, go toGetWise.

The BuyGreen Team Tip   Never put water down the drain when there may be another use for it such as watering plants or cleaning. Water your plants with that leftover drinking water instead of sending it down the drain and you will probably find a pleasant side benefit - you can actually keep real plants alive.

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Conserve Energy

• Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket - You'll save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple action. You can save another 550 pounds per year by setting the thermostat no higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.  Better yet, consider a tank-less or solar powered water heater.
• Set your thermostat as low as is comfortable in the winter and as high as is comfortable in the summer.
• Clean or replace filters - on furnaces once a month or as needed.  Clean warm-air registers, baseboard heaters, and radiators as needed; make sure they're not blocked by furniture, carpeting, or drapes.
• Be a sun worshipper - The sun produces more energy in one second that all the fossil fuels we burn in the course of a year in the U.S.  Solar energy technology is growing by leaps and bounds.  Solar panels for your home are great, but there are a number of smaller budget solar items available today (such as garden lights, backpacks) that make solar energy affordable for just about everyone.
• Look for energy star appliances - If you need to replace an appliance, look for the energy star label.  These products perform at the same or better level than standard products and use significantly less energy.  Save money too - Since they use less energy, these products save you money on your electricity bill.  The typical household spends $1,900 a year on energy bills. With Energy Star appliances, you can save up to 30% or more than $600 per year.  Go to theEPA's Energy Star website for more information.

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Compute smarter, not harder

Did you know that the average desktop PC wastes half the power it consumes? The majority of this unused energy is wasted as heat and never reaches the processor, memory, disks, or other components. As a result, offices, homes, and data centers have increased demands on air conditioning which in turn increases energy costs. The good news is that there's an easy fix that can make a big impact. Individuals and businesses can reduce power consumption and the emission of greenhouse gases simply by using power management on their existing computers, and by buying a more energy-efficient computer the next time they're in the market for one.

The Climate Savers Computing Initiative is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from PC and server use. The Initiative seeks to reduce global CO2 emissions from the operation of computers by 54 million tons per year, equivalent to the annual output of 11 million cars or 10-20 coal-fired power plants. With your help, this effort will lead to a 50 percent reduction in power consumption by computers by 2010, and participants could collectively save $5.5 billion in energy costs.

The BuyGreen Team Tip   Visitwww.climatesaverscomputing.org for instructions on how to enable power management on your computer and to find energy-efficient systems you can buy today.

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Stop receiving Junk Mail  Yes, it annoying, but it also wastes an incredible amount of paper, energy, and time. Did you know more than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail? About 28 billion gallons of water are also wasted, and the energy used to produce and dispose of junk mail exceeds 2.8 million cars.  An average of 41 pounds of junk mail is sent to every adult citizen of the U.S. each year. Approximately 44% of this mail goes into a landfill unopened.  Thankfully, you can reduce the amount of junk mail you receive easily (when you have a company do it for you) and cheaply (actually for $1 per name if you follow the “do it yourself” tips below). 

If you want to hire a company to stop your junk mail for you, visit41pounds  They promise to stop your junk mail for five years for $41, which is less than 70 cents a month. The service covers your entire household for five years. And, 41pounds.org donates more than 1/3 of each new subscriber's fee to an environmental or community organization of their choice - current partners include Trees for the Future, American Forests, Friends of the Urban Forest, WildWest Institute, Center for the New American Dream and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

If you want to do it yourself (total cost of about $1, but takes a fair amount of time, follow these steps):

Start with the Direct Marketing Association which most organizations use to market their businesses by mail.  From the homepage, click on “Remove my name from mailing lists”.   Then, you can then proceed one of two ways:

1. Fill out the online form with all required information and hit send (Note that there is a $1 fee, payable by credit card for each name and address you register)

    

2. Fill out the mail-in registration form available on the site with all required information. Print the form and mail it with a $1 check or money order to the address on the form. (Note that it takes time to process your request.  You should see results in about 3-4 weeks.  Processing by mail takes longer than online registration.)

Opt-out of an individual company's mailing list  If you do not want to receive mailings from a particular company, the quickest and most effective solution is to contact the company directly and ask to be removed from their mailing list. We have found the fastest way is to locate the company online and submit a request to customer service to remove your name from the mailing list.

Because many companies plan mailings far in advance, please allow 30-90 days for mailings from that company to phase out.

Opt-out of pre-screened credit offers If you would like to reduce the number of pre-screened credit and insurance offers you are receiving, visitOptOutPreScreen or call 1-888-5OptOut (1-888-567-8688) to opt-out of these offers. OptOutPreScreen is and joint venture among Equifax Information Services, LLC, Experian Information Solutions, Inc., Innovis Data Solutions, Inc., and TransUnion, LLC.  It's a free service that allows consumers to opt out of the lists these companies provide to creditors or insurers to make offers of credit or insurance that are not initiated by you.  You can opt out for five years online, or write to them to opt-out permanently.

Tell companies that send you unwanted or too many catalogs to stop or reduce what they're sending. For example, you can ask a company to send you one catalog just a couple of times a year (or less). When you order from a catalog, ask them not to send you ads and not to exchange your contact information with other companies. Companies will obey your wishes, since they don't want to lose your business!

Refrain from giving your address and phone number to companies  If they request this information, find out if it is required (often it is not). If you cannot avoid releasing this information, make the company agree not to send you advertising or to exchange your contact information with other companies.

Don't fill out warranty cards warranties are effective even if you do not fill out the card. Warranty cards are just a way of getting personal information about you, both for the company's own marketing purposes and to sell to other companies. The exception is a registration card for a product that may later undergo a safety recall, such as a car seat. You are likely to hear about a recall in the most timely fashion if the company has your contact information.

Packets of ads or coupons addressed to “resident” should be accompanied by a card displaying your address and the address of the marketing company. If you do not live on a rural route, then you can write to the company and ask them to take your address off their list.