Green Challenge: Paperless Christmas

Picture courtesy of: http://www.contentfy.com/christmas-decorations-themes/

During the holiday season, Americans will generate an additional four million tons of waste than average just from wrapping paper and shopping bags. With lovely paper that comes in all colors and patterns and with a healthy dousing of sparkles, all those gifts under the tree can make a beautiful sight on Christmas morning. But after all the paper is ripped off and you’re struggling to stuff it all into a large trash bag, it begs the question; is it necessary?

Sacrificing wrapping paper at Christmas doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice the beauty of Christmas morning. There are a few alternatives to typical wrapping that won’t leave you feeling as dirty as a climate denier after everything has been opened.

Weekly Green Challenge: Ask for a Plastic Bag Ban

Last week, I challenged you to sign at least ten environmental petitions through organizations like the Rainforest Action Network and Care2Petition. How many did you sign? What issues were your petitions about? Let me know in the comments section of this post!

I signed a total of twelve petitions this past week. Here’s what they were about:

I asked that funding for orca rescue programs be reinstated, via Friends of the Earth. I demanded that mountain-top removal coal mines be banned, via the Sierra Club. I supported the Save America’s Pollinators Act, which would ban pesticides that harm bees, with Organize CREDO. I asked that both captive and wild chimps receive protection, instead of being considered separate in the eyes of the law, via Center for Biological Diversity. I endorsed GMO food labeling for the state of Washington with Yes on 522. I demanded that there be restrictions on factory carbon emissions with the League of Women Voters. I told Congress to act on climate change by reducing carbon emissions and increasing use of renewable energy with Care2Petition. I expressed my outrage with the use of child and slave labor for palm oil production with the Rainforest Action Network. I asked for the low speed limit law in endangered Right Whale waters to be renewed with the Center for Biological Diversity. I demanded that American wolves remain protected with Defenders of Wildlife. I said no to Arctic drilling via the Sierra Club. Lastly, I demanded that the bushmeat trade be banned, which would help out endangered chimpanzees, with Care2Petition.

The organizations I listed above make it easy to make your voice heard with petitions and connect with your representatives and leaders. Sign up with them today (for free) to receive action alerts about petitions!

Plastic bags are difficult to recycle, which is why ninety percent of bags in the United States are not recycled. Despite this, between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used annually around the world, with 380 billion of those used in the United States.

 Picture courtesy of: http://myplasticfreelife.com/2011/11/speaking-out-for-tougher-plastic-bag-laws/

This week, I’m planning on writing to my local government to ask for a ban on plastic bags in my town, and I want you to write a letter too.

Weekly Green Challenge: Reduce Your Trash

This past week, I traveled a total 14.8 miles on my bicycle in replacement of my car. In my car, 14.8 miles translates to .68 gallons of gas, which is worth $2.48. That may not seem like a lot, but if I saved that much each week of the year, that amounts to $128.96 and 769.6 miles of exercise and miles not on my old car. The money savings are great, but I must say, I really enjoyed the exercise I got over the week. Not to mention, the sun has been shining, and I got a great tan! (Well, a sunburn that turned into a tan. Wear sunscreen when biking!)

I plan on continuing to use my bike more often!

How far did you travel on your bike? How much did you save? Email me at viridorari@yahoo.com and let me know! Did you miss Green Challenge #14? Read it here.  

This week’s green challenge is inspired by Amy and Adam Korst, who I featured in an Activism Spotlight. If you haven’t read about them yet, here’s the punch line: over an entire year, they only produced a single shoebox full of trash (items that could not be recycled, reused, reduced, or composted). Since the average American produces 4.5 pounds of trash a day, that means they prevented over a ton of trash from entering a landfill.

Using their advice for a trash-free life, which you can find here, for this entire week, I want you to commit to either significantly reducing or eliminating your trash production. Like Amy said, you don’t have to give up life as you know it to be environmentally friendly. A lot of the transitions they made were easy to do, and much more efficient. Adam believes that living trash-free can be a perfectly normal lifestyle.

Suggested Reading & Activism Spotlight: Trash-Free Living

Activism Spotlight

“Every time you reach for the trash,” Amy said, “if you make that motion a conscious thing, [you realize that you] reach for the trash so many times a day. I really was kind of amazed.”

Imagine living for an entire year without producing garbage. Impossible, right?

Apparently not, because that’s exactly what a young professional couple, Amy and Adam Korst, did from July 6th, 2009 to July 6th, 2010. Their original goal was to produce no more than one garbage bag of waste, and instead, they ended up with only a shoebox full of items that could not be recycled, reduced, reused, or composted between the two of them. 

Picture courtesy of: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2010-07-21-trash_N.htm

In comparison, the average American produces 4.6 pounds of garbage daily, three pounds of which goes to a landfill. We recycle only 32% of our total waste, and we trash 99% of everything we buy within six months. So, according to these estimates and averages, the Korsts saved about 2,190 pounds of waste from the landfill, which is over a ton.

How did they do it?

Green Challenge: Repurpose Your Plastic

20-25% of landfill weight is from plastics. An average plastic container takes about 500 years just to begin the decomposition process. The timing varies depending on environmental conditions and the chemical makeup of the plastic.

Picture courtesy of: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/29/japan-leads-field-plastic-recycling

I wanted to come up with a way to make people understand how many plastic products we go through. I don’t think we always realize it, myself included, because we view plastic bottles and containers and the like as disposable. They hold no true value to us.

So, this week, as an eye opener, you’re not allowed to throw out (even into the recycling bin) plastic products. With every plastic product you use, you must either reuse it or repurpose it throughout this week. This will probably be a little cumbersome and obnoxious, but hopefully, that will help you understand how much you really go through and motivate you to avoid or reduce plastic use in the future.

Guest Writer: Sustainable Living and Business

Today I'd like to welcome a wonderful and caring person onto my blog; Beth Aust. Beth and my grandmother are both small business owners, and when they met each other at an event, my grandmother told her about Viridorari and she was immediately interested in becoming a Guest Writer. (To read grandma's post about owning a Hybrid Prius, go here.)

After working in the nursing field for twenty years, Beth Aust RN was divinely guided to follow a more holistic path. She studied nutrition through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and became a Holistic Health Coach. Drawing on her nursing background and nutrition knowledge, Beth provides one on one programs, group programs, workshops and cooking demonstrations to show others how to cook healthy, shop savvy and live freely through a creative approach. In an effort to provide the community healthier options, she also is opening a natural foods shop in Oneida, NY June of 2013. The shop will focus on non-GMO and organic products as well as providing gluten free, vegan, RAW, and nut-free foods. A member of the National Association of Professional Woman, Board certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioner’s, supporter of the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association), Young Living essential oil distributor, and board member of the Madison County Habitat for Humanity, she is passionate about health, wellness and community.

Beth strives to combine her desire to help people lead healthier lives with sustainability. With greenhouse gas levels rising in our atmosphere all the time and the constant loss of natural areas around the globe, environmentally-conscious business owners who see beyond their wallet, like Beth, are needed more and more. 

In her guest writing piece, Beth will discuss what she does to be sustainable, keeping the future in mind. Business owners and average Joes alike: I hope you are all inspired by her determination and mindfulness. In order to secure a better future for this planet, we must take action now.

Ecofriendly Economics, Harsh Facts & May's Animal

Harsh Facts of the Week

The average American uses about the equivalent of one Douglas fir tree 100 feet tall in paper and wood products each year.

More than 2 billion books, 350 million magazines, and 24 billion newspapers are published annually.

A typical United States office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year, which equates to four million tons of paper used annually.

Approximately 2.6 billion holiday cards are sold yearly in America. Collectively, they could fill a football field ten stories high.

In 2008, paper and paperboard made up 31% of municipal waste, compared to 12% for plastics.

How much paper do you use? Would you consider yourself wasteful?
Most importantly: how can you reduce your paper usage? Read today’s Ecofriendly Economics to get some tips.

Source:
http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html

Ecofriendly Economics & Harsh Facts: Plastic Bottles

Happy Earth Day!

  I'm going to purchase myself a stainless steel bottle, and cut plastic bottles out of my life for good!

What's your commitment to the Earth today? Leave a comment below!

To go along with my plastic bottle boycott, I'll make today's "Harsh Facts" centered around plastic bottles.

Also, keep reading to find out 17 ways you can make your car more fuel efficient! 

Picture courtesy of: http://www.wildchina.com/blog/2012/02/seeking-your-advice-how-to-solve-wildchinas-waterbottle-problem/

Harsh Facts of the Week

 In 1976 Americans drank, on average, 1.6 gallons of bottled water each year. Thirty years later, the average consumption had increased to thirty gallons per person. This is despite the fact that bottled water can be anywhere between 240 to 10,000 times more expensive than tap water.

Americans drink more bottled water than any other nation in the world: 29 billion bottles every year. To make the plastic for those bottles, 17 million barrels of crude oil must be used. That is equal to the fuel needed for 1 million vehicles to be on the road for a year.

The recycling rate for those 29 billion bottles is low. About 13% go into the recycling process. In 2005, approximately 2 million tons of water bottles entered U.S. landfills.

In 2006, Fiji shipped 18 million gallons of bottled water to California, releasing about 2,500 tons of pollution in order to transport them. That same year, Western Europe's shipment of bottled water to New York City released 3,800 tons of pollution.

The best part? Contrary to popular belief, water from bottles is not always cleaner or safer than water from the tap.

To solidify the information you just learned, watch this awesome video on storyofstuff.org! The video is fun and easy to understand, and it explains how, for years, corporations have been tricking us into thinking bottled water is better. It's only eight minutes long, and I promise it will be worth your time.

So, now that you've read the Harsh Facts and watched a cool video, what do you think? Is it starting to sound like a smart idea to ditch the water bottle for good?

Weekly Green Challenge: Boycott Wasteful Products

Before I reveal Viridorari’s fifth challenge, I’d like to share the results of my driving log from last week's challenge. I’m not particularly proud of how my driving went this week. There were several wasteful trips and I think it will be interesting to see how much gas and money I would have saved had the week gone better. In total, I drove 149.80 miles, used 6.27 gallons of gas, and spent $23.96.

Suggested Reading, Activism Spotlight: Living on $14,000/year

Suggested Reading

This week’s “Suggested Reading” will be a two-page article in the Rolling Stone by Bill McKibben, called “The Fossil Fuel Resistance.” You can find the article here.

Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, journalist, and author who has and continues to write extensively about global warming. He leads 350.org, an international environmental organization that raises awareness about global climate change, confronts global warming denial, and works to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. 350.org, since 2011, has been leading a major protest against the prospect of creating the Keystone XL Pipeline. If built, this pipeline would run from Canada to Texas for the purpose of transporting petroleum products, and if any spills were to occur, it has the potential to wreak monumental damage on its surrounding environments. Protests against the pipeline have already found success in delaying its approval. With hard work and perseverance, the pipeline project could be stopped completely.

 McKibben’s article, “The Fossil Fuel Resistance,” highlights the growing numbers and success of the environmental movement, or as he calls it, the Resistance (against fuel companies and the control they exert over governments). McKibben says now that 80% of Arctic sea ice has disappeared, people are finally recognizing the importance of preserving the global environment and are taking action.

Harsh Facts & Ecofriendly Economics: Tube-Free Toilet Paper

Harsh Facts of the Week

The average American office worker uses 500 disposable cups annually. 

Every year, Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times. 

During the International Coastal Cleanup of 2009, the Ocean Conservancy found that plastic bags were the 2nd most common item found, or one out of every ten items picked up. 

Each year, California spends about 25 million dollars sending plastic bags to landfills, and another 8.5 million dollars to remove littered bags from streets. 

In comparison, recycling one ton of plastic bags costs $4,000, and the recycled product can be sold for $32, yet less than one percent of plastic bags are recycled each year.

No matter where you live, you can make simple changes in your life to reduce your waste output. You can exclude disposable dining ware, plastic bags, paper bags, disposable lighters, razors, and many other wasteful products without creating a noticeable difference or discomfort in your day to day life. It’s so easy, and often cheaper, so really, what’s holding you back? 

Weekly Green Challenge: Take the Bus

This first Green Challenge is based off of a commitment I made recently: I am no longer driving to school, even when I stay after for clubs and extra help. As much of a luxury as commuting in my own car is, it’s wasteful. There’s a bus for me in the morning, a bus when school is over, and an after school bus if I need it. Whether or not I drive, the buses continue on the same routes every day, using the same amount of gas. By driving in a separate vehicle, I’m just adding to gas usage and emissions.