Towards a greener home

How environment-friendly is your home? Amidst all the propaganda for eco-friendly living, there are still millions of homes that could do with a little more of a ‘green’ touch. A non-toxic home is good not just for the environment but also for your family and pets.

If you look around at any given time in your house, how many of the things you see are non-toxic or non-recyclable? You may be amazed at the percentage of environmentally hazardous stuff lying in your living rooms, kitchens, garages and bathrooms. Unused and unwanted materials such as paints, brake fluids, pesticides, batteries, light bulbs and cleaning chemicals ought to disposed of at a proper waste management facility.

With little or no effort, you could save water by properly closing the faucet, using a high-efficiency toilet and taking a ’slightly’ quicker shower. You can even keep the environment clean through regular maintenance programs, such as using a septic tank cleaner for less tank pumping. That is also an effective to being more earth-friendly.

What if everyone in your neighborhood recycled all their aluminum cans?

Sometimes I wonder if everyone understands completely what recycling can do for sustainability. Check out this photo I found on NewsCom:

Bales of crushed aluminum cans ready for recycling at the Novelis plant in Oswego, NY. Each bale contains approximately 34,000 used beverage cans.
(PRNewsFoto/Novelis Inc.) Location: Atlanta, GA, USA

That led me to try and find out what if EVERYONE recycled their aluminum cans?

Thankfully, Novelis Recycling provides a ‘recycling calculator‘ to find stats about just that.

Assuming 100 people lived in your neighborhood, this is what the calculator says:

(These statistics are based on US data, assuming 100% recycling rate.)

Total Cans Recycled: 29,900
Total Weight Recycled: 874 LBS
Amount of Greenhouse Gases (C02e) Saved vs Using New Aluminum: 4 Metric Tons
Energy Saved: 56 MBTUs
Barrels of Oil with Equivalent Energy: 10 Barrels
Equivalent GHG Emissions from Cars Not Driven in One Year: 1 Car(s)
Length of Cans if Stacked End to End: 2 Miles
Value of Aluminum: $656
Water Saved: 2 Cubic Meters

Use the calculator to see what if everyone in NYC recycled all their aluminum cans? (Population: 18,800,000)

When can we start?

Fix-a-Leak Week helps Green goal

Little did I realize that those tiny drips from faucets could amount to like one trillion gallons of water wasted each year in US homes alone. That was the figure the Environmental Protection Agency came up with during Tampa Bay’s Fi-a-Leak week last month.

Do-it-yourselfers do it exactly that way — they know how to fix a dripping faucet. Then again, there’s no need to wait until then; you could take preventive measures such as checking washers and gaskets for wear and/or cracks, and in cases where necessary replace them with Watersense models. That would not be a daunting task, for a search for faucets online would yield some quality, leak-proof, life-time warranty faucets and hoses products.

It was also interesting to read about Purdue’s thoughts on an environmentally friendly campus. They came up with two concepts — automated faucets and hand dryers.

You’d Have to Go Nude to be More Eco-friendly Than This

How eco-friendly can you get? In the words of EcoGear founder Robert Hii, “you’d have to go nude to be more eco-friendly” than the world’s first 100% recycled clothing.

Incredible EcoGear is just about to change forever the way we think about our clothes. Robert Hii, a 20-year veteran of Toronto’s garment industry, began researching the possibility of creating a 100% recycled fabric in 2007, following a string of devastating natural disasters around the world. His research led to the possibility that a wide range of clothes could be created for even the fashion-conscious, and that was when Hii struck out with Incredible EcoGear.

The fabric is created from leftover cuttings from the floor of clothing factories. The cuttings are separated by color and shade, then cut into ultra-fine fibers and attached to a continuous strand of polyester thread made from recycled plastic bottles. The resulting yarn is then spun into EcoGear clothing products. The process is free of dyes, bleaches and other harsh chemicals. To top it, the inks used on EcoGear labels are organic, and garments’ hang tags are printed in soy inks on recycled paper.

“EcoGear clothing is the first 100% recycled clothing available to consumers,” said Hii. “We realized that any difference in climate change will have to start with you and me, and that is the founding principle of EcoGear.”

Incredible EcoGear’s commitment to environment doesn’t end with producing eco-friendly clothing. It also donates 1% of sales to environmental organizations, including the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the World Wildlife Fund and the Toronto Zoo to name a few.

SOURCE Incredible EcoGear