Sustainable Living, Giving and Enterprising

Laundry

How much laundry do you have? How many times do you do laundry? What a boring subject, getting our clothes, sheets and all sorts of fabrics cleaned. But wait, its something we all in one way or another are dealing with and doing this greener has a big impact on our energy consumption. I remember several years ago reading an article that went into quite some details how to do your laundry by and. Not that I am advocating that. The article was so amazing in describing exactly how to do this with not more work involved than when using […]

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Posted by Richard - March 28, 2012 at 11:53 am

Categories: Energy, Lifestyle, Tips, Uncategorized Tags: ecological footprint, embodied energy, energy efficiency, green lifestyle

First Potatoe Harvest of the Year?

Yesterday, I harvested about 25 pounds of potatoes! Spring equinox has just arrived, the weather here is grey, rainy and mostly cold. There is still some snow on the ground and the top layer of the ground is still frozen in many places. So how, you might wonder, am I harvesting the first potatoes in 2012? I’ll tell you in a minute, but first let me share the general idea. In climates like here, one has maybe about 90 days of good growing season, June, July and August. Sometimes the weather is warm and soil temperatures high enough in May […]

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Posted by Richard - March 26, 2012 at 9:12 pm

Categories: Food, Garden, Resilience, Tips, Uncategorized Tags: food system, gardening

Free Notes Paper

I have figured out how to reduce the use of white paper and even how to have plenty of note taking paper, some of it free. Here are some of my thoughts about it, what I am doing and how to get the free notes paper: Even though we are using computers for more and more things in our day to day lives, at work and for entertainment, to store information, paying our bills, conducting business, staying in touch and many, many more things, one of the promises of this technology was to reduce the amount of paper we will […]

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Posted by Richard - March 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm

Categories: Energy, Lifestyle, Resilience, Tips, Uncategorized Tags: ecological footprint, embodied energy, green lifestyle

Short Green Study on Candle Jars

Here we are, after Christmas, after New Years, after many other holidays one might have been celebrating. I hope you enjoyed it all! I did. Nevertheless, I have been looking for a solution to one particular recycle problem. We use candles. For some of our workshops, my wife has found candles she likes most, for various reasons: The don’t smell and are unscented, they develop hardly any smoke, almost all the wax is burnt and they burn for 100 hours. Moreover they are made from palm wax, which is, potentially, a renewable resource. Of course, to be a sustainable or […]

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Posted by Richard - January 10, 2012 at 2:02 pm

Categories: Energy, Lifestyle, Resilience, Tips Tags: ecological footprint, embodied energy, green lifestyle, product review

Green Living Contradictions

It seems that when working towards leading a sustainable lifestyle often I am ending up in some sort of contradiction. Let me give an example. I live in the US since over a a decade. My immediate family lives in Europe. As I do want to be in touch with them I call regularly or send emails. Once in a while I really like to see them in person. For a while I was visiting about every 2 or 3 years. Since a while I have been visiting once a year, due to two realizations. One that traveling will become […]

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Posted by Richard - November 16, 2011 at 5:50 am

Categories: Coaching, Energy, Lifestyle, Technology Tags: ecological footprint, embodied energy, green lifestyle, internet

Singing Connects

Currently I am working with a friend on a workshop that is designed to dive into the process of building community. This is an experiential class on how to form and work within a group that is combining the task orientation with the heart orientation and make those two aspects work together in a synergistic way. One element that we have found is really helping to connect with each other in a group setting is singing and music. There are many of melodies around that are just wonderful. Today I want to share with you one that is build around […]

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Posted by Richard - November 4, 2011 at 10:24 am

Categories: Community, Personal Development, Resource, Tips Tags: fun, green lifestyle, personal development, thrive

What to do with Newspaper Bag?

For the longest time we did not know what to do with the plastic bag the daily paper is put in that is delivered to our house door. The recycle situation of both these items in our county is such, that they would end up in the landfill. So after a number of ideas, including to maybe not order the paper anymore, we came up with two different solutions. 1. We take one of the bags and put it a convenient spot in a cupboard, which itself holds the other bags. When we pick up the paper, the plastic bag […]

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Posted by Richard - November 3, 2011 at 11:44 am

Categories: Economy, Energy, Lifestyle, Resilience, Resource Tags: ecological footprint, embodied energy, green lifestyle, sustainability

Sustainable Smoothie (part 3)

2 Smoothie Recipes Well, here are my “secret” smoothie recipes. The first one is what we have been doing until recently. It has some major issues in regards to sustainability. For example the banana and orange are not grown here but transported from far. And then the special ingredients are not grown here either and besides the flax seed, couldn’t be grown here. The second one has also the green super food in it. It is not locally from here, but could be replaced with some green kale, cucumber, spinach, etc. During the winter, which is cold and snowy here, […]

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Posted by Richard - October 25, 2011 at 11:42 pm

Categories: Food, Health, Lifestyle, Tips Tags: food system, gardening, green lifestyle

Ecobuilding Retreat

Over a long weekend the Northwest Ecobuilding Guild (NWEBG) held its member retreat, which is also open to non-members. If you have never heard about the NWEBG you are missing out on one the premier green building associations in the Northwest. And, it is not just building, but related areas as well, landscaping, design, manufacturers of green materials and more. According to their website “It is a community of builders, designers, suppliers, homeowners, and partners concerned with ecological building in the Pacific Northwest. The Guild empowers people through education to transform the built environment for long term sustainability.” have to […]

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Posted by Richard - October 24, 2011 at 9:42 pm

Categories: Building, Ecological Design, Resource, Technology Tags: embodied energy, energy efficiency, green lifestyle

Rain of Plums & Pears

Our plum trees have been pouring plums on us in the last few days. The moment we have finished picking the ones fallen down, the next ones are dropping. The squirrels feast on them and so do we. The trees are a little late this year to offer their bounty. Like all the years before, they have a wonderful flavor. We can’t eat them all, but figured out a great way to use them – as Christmas gifts! We dry them in a dehydrator and store them. When December comes we make little packages for family. They have been so […]

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Posted by Richard - October 20, 2011 at 10:32 pm

Categories: Food, Garden, Tips Tags: food system, gardening, healthy diet, sustainability

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