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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Getting Around
In today’s life for many it is unthinkable to not have transportation available at will at any time. This wasn’t always like that and certainly isn’t like that for the population in many places. Once the automobile was becoming the center of fulfilling our transportation needs, our city and land use plans were designed around the need of the car. Eventually this has contributed a lot to the fragmentation in our lives. We live at a different place where we shop, where we work and where we meet with friends or where we learn. The distances are often so far […]
Zero Organic Kitchen Waste
In our kitchen we produce a fair amount of organic waste. When we make our smoothies there are peels and seeds. When we prepare for stir fries, there are always some cut offs. Be it the greens of carrots or beets, some wilted or brown leaves from salads. Sometimes we don’t use some veggies or fruits in time and they go a little bit moldy. Then there are tea bags or skins from nuts or the table flowers are passed their time. So, what to do with all this? Is there a way to make this waste into a resource? […]
