Are you ready for a weekend project that will save you money and be great for the environment?
I had a few broken and unused flower pots that I was going to throw away, but now that we have begun our quest to be more green, I decided to think of something to do with them besides throwing them in the land fill. While we were working in the yard, Carter noticed an open spot and I thought I would partially bury the pots (broken side down) and plant some plants in them. I think it turned out pretty good and we reused what would have ended up in the trash.

A new use for old planters

My wife and I had a very old and worn out outdoor coffee table in our sideyard. We love to sit in the side yard and enjoy a coffee or some breakfast but the tattered coffee table was becoming an eyesore. We decided to take action and re-use some old barn wood to resurface the wooden table and bring it back to life!

Our Old and Very Worn Outdoor Coffee Table

Peeling and Tattered Wooden Coffee Table

A quick look through our garage uncovered some old but very good quality barn wood which came from a relatives barn. This type of wood is perfect for outdoor use as it has already aged and settled. Old barn wood is almost guaranteed not to warp or twist when exposed to moisture and with good water sealant it should last a long time.

I ended up using four lengths of the barn wood which worked out to be a perfect width removing any need to rip one of the boards lengthwise. I picked out sections of the barn wood without any cracks or major marks and cut them down to size.

The Table Legs Removed For Measurements

Without any real experience in resurfacing a wooden coffee table I was scepticle as to whether I could achieve a good finish but I set to work measuring the approximate size for the table top using three large pieces of the barn wood.

I removed the legs from the old wooden coffee table and took measurements for the new wooden top. I planned to make the new table top with a five inch overhang on every side which was slightly larger than the old top.

I used my compound miter saw to cut the barn wood into the correct lengths and then cut two lengths of 3 by 3 to brace the barn wood together.

The "Unfinished" New Top

The new top was looking great but it needed something more. We took another look through our garage and found an old can of water based wood stain, a dark mahogany which we thought would match well with the old coffee table legs.

A couple of coats of clear sealant finished the table and we are very pleased with the results.

The Finished Coffee Table

It’s a simple idea with a potentially huge message, this Saturday – 28th March 2009, everyone on planet Earth is being asked to cast a vote for mother Earth by switching off every light in their house.

Switch Off Your Lights!

Here is a snippet from the Earth Hour website;

This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is the chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard.

Visit their site for more info;

http://www.earthhour.org/home/

We look forward to seeing, well… No Lights!!!

This post does not have any green message in particular but it does highlight the beauty of nature and how it can present us with unexpected and rewarding finds everyday!

My wife and I are currently putting a long winding path into our front yard and my last few days off work have been spent digging and tilling and shoveling and digging some more!

Our New Path - A Work In Progress!

As I was digging and shoveling the top soil into a wheel barrow I noticed a particularly green looking stone, on closer inspection I found that my find was in fact a very small turtle! I quickly washed the soil covered turtle under our outside faucet and a shiny green turtle slowly emerged. My wife was in the back yard so I ran to show her the unexpected find. The sunny day quickly roused the little feller and he was keen on climbing across my leather glove and onto freedom.

We Found a Turtle!

The Family of Seven Turtles

On returning to the pile of freshly turned dirt I found another, and another, and another until finally we had a family of seven baby turtles! We placed a small pile of the dirt into an old cooler and set a dish of water and some lettuce in their for the family of lively turtles to feast on.

The family of seven quickly set to exploring their temporary home and some of the more adventurous turtles actually climbed the walls!

We quickly did some research online to find out what we should do with these wonderful little things and my wife found that we actually had found seven little Red-Eared Sliders also known as “pseudemys scripta elegans”.
Apparently the red-eared slider is perhaps the best known and most recognizable of turtles. The young red-eared slider turtles are marked with yellow, green legs with thin yellow stripes and a green head with a red stripe behind each eye.
We found out that the red-eared sliders are Texas’s most common aquatic turtles.

The Red Eared Slider Turtle

The article we read said that these Texas Turtles can live more than 30 years. Sliders are cold-blooded and spend hours sunning themselves on rocks and logs. If there are not enough rocks or logs for all of them they will often stack themselves one on top of the other! They bury themselves in loose soil or mud during the winter to escape the cold. They eat aquatic plants, small fish, and decaying material.

The female turtles lay their eggs in holes that they dig in the ground and leave and one of those female Red Eared Sliders must have decided that our front yard was the best place for her brood. Our home is fairly close to a stream and small lake so we figured that’s where they originated.

The story has a happy ending, we took the family down to the local lake and set them on a quiet bank in the shade, they all happily made their way into the water and proceeded to swim off in different directions! Who knows, maybe we will see one of them coming back to nest in our yard again in the next 30 years…

You can find out more about the Texas Red Eared Slider on the Texas State website listed below;

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/slider/

We managed to find a new and improved household energy usage calculator courtesy of The Berkeley Institute of the Environment. The calculator is a very easy to use and shockingly accurate tool which guides the user through several easy steps before providing a detailed breakdown of your energy consumption and environmental impact.

Try the Impact Calculator here;

We calculated our household and personal energy usage and the results showed us that our home energy consumption accounts for the majority of our impact and if we can halve just this aspect we will be well below the average for a similar household here in Texas, we would even be close to the U.S. Average. My suspicion is that we consume most of our energy through air conditioning providing heating and cooling for our home. Cooling systems are a must have here in Texas but we clearly need to focus more on improving house sealing and air conditioning efficiency.

Initiatives such as Google.org’s powermeterare starting to make actively monitoring and reducing our impact alot easier.  We have already signed up with Google to receive the latest information on the very intriguing powermeter program.

Google.org's Powermeter Program

Studies show that access to our household’s personal energy information would likely save between 5–15% on monthly bills. Also for every six households that save 10% on electricity, for instance, we would reduce carbon emissions by as much as taking one conventional car off the road!

We plan to start using the Google Powermeter as soon as it becomes available to the public and will try to find other ways to monitor and reduce our power usage in the meantime.

We finally found a local store that sells biodegradable trash bags. The discovery came from a tip off that our best shot at finding some biobags would be at a natural foods store. A visit to our local “Sprouts” farmers market turned up some biodegradable tall kitchen bags which we snapped up immediately.
http://sprouts.com/home.php

Perf Go Green Biodegradable Trash Bags

They are made by “Perf” and are named “Go Green” trash bags. The large trash bags, 26″ by 28″ (66cm by 71.1cm), are made from post consumer recycled plastics with plastic additives which conform to the ASTM D6954 standard. After researching the standards I believe the mechanism by which the bags completely biodegrade is as follows;

(Let’s put our scientist brains in…)

Total degradation of “green” plastics is a two stage process which happens as a result of exposure to heat, UV light, mechanical stress, or a combination of all three. Firstly the plastic is converted, by reaction with oxygen, to molecular fragments which are able to absorb water. Secondly these smaller oxidized molecules degrade by bio-degradation. The microbial growth on the molecular fragments leads to the formation of Carbon Dioxide, Water and biomass. There is no harmful residue left over.

Perf guarantee that the plastic will totally degrade in 2 years. The box is even made from 100% recycled paperboard. Perf produces a whole range of biodegradable plastic bags, you can view the full range here;

http://www.perfgogreen.com/products.html

We enjoyed getting home and finally putting some biodegradable garbage bags to use. The green tall kitchen bags fitted our pull out trash can perfectly and the bag handles make them super easy to tie off and throw away.

Our search for biodegradable plastics isn’t over yet though, we are going to continue to “vote with our wallets” and seek out more earth friendly plastic alternatives. Watch this space!

Even Our Dogs Approved!