Precycling is becoming a buzz word amongst greenies like us and the Our Everyday Earth family wanted to share the following top 5 ways to boost your eco-friendliness with some waste stopping precycling….

Precycling is the practice of reducing waste by attempting to avoid bringing into the home or business items which will generate waste.

The practice of precycling includes buying essentials and groceries in bulk to reduce packaging, buying products that use recyclable packaging over non-recyclable packages, reducing or eliminating junk mail, and using the internet for reading instead of buying books, newspapers and magazines etc.

Method Number 1: Eliminate Junk Mail!

As a household we receive a lot of junk mail, advertising leaflets, promotional newspapers, credit card applications etc. and it all has to be recycled or shredded. Our favorite site for reducing or eliminating junk mail is DMA Choice;

Eliminate Junk Mail Being Sent to Your Address

(more…)

"The Painted Lady"

I have finally finished my painting “The Painted Lady”.  The focal point of this piece is of coarse, the Painted Lady Butterfly. This is one of the most familiar butterflies in North America, as well as around the world.  If you want to attract these pretty ladies to your yard, plant thistle, hollyhocks, common sunflowers, yarrow and mallows. The butterfly will lay their eggs on these plants and the larvae ie. caterpillars will feast on these when they hatch out.  The painted lady has to lay her eggs on or very near the right food plant for the eggs, otherwise the caterpillars will not survive. These babies have a ferocious appetite and begin eating as soon as they hatch. The sweet nectar plants for the painted beauties are thistles, asters, cosmos, blazing stars, iron-weed, and Joe-pye weed. Try planting a few of the host plants and nectar plants in your butterfly garden. For those plants that are invasive or less attractive, plant in containers, creating a smorgasbord for the painted ladies. Butterflies are threatened more and more everyday by loss of habitat, plant some host and nectar plants for butterfly conservation!

We have been using the Berkeley Institute of the Environment carbon footprint calculator to track our average ecological impact and our progress is shown below. When we started tracking our carbon footprint back in March 2009 we assessed that our household produced a shocking 68 tons of CO2 per year, this is equivalent to 158 barrels of oil in energy and would require managing 13 acres of forest to offset!

This was simply un-acceptable in our eyes. We purchased our current home 2 years ago, it is an older home and needed lots of upgrades to make it more energy efficient.

Our Carbon Footprint Back in March 2009 shown below…

Our Carbon Footprint in March 2009

Back in March when I saw these results I decided to really commit to reducing our household energy consumption and check our progress at the end of the year… (more…)

During the past months, there is no doubt that times have been tough, for many it has been, and continues to be a very difficult road. Forced or involuntary simplicity is seldom fun, but can be good for the soul. People tend to think that Simplicity is simple — that it means easy — But Simplicity isn’t simple — it’s a complex idea. Out of necessity, my family has had to make adjustments in our lifestyles. With a sense that simplicity is a better way to live, We have been researching  ways to simplify.

First, there is the practical level of Simplicity, the one we are all familiar with, cutting back on consumption. We can shop less, turn our heat down, our air up, drive less and be careful with the energy we use around the house. It is the process of restoring a sense of proportion and balance between the material and non-material aspects of living.

Simplify to Save

Second, when you do this, simplification on a practical level, you have more time on your hands, people who practice simplicity will tell you this is “time for the things that matter”. But what are those things? Each person has to decide for themselves, what brings us happiness and well being. I for one know it is not easy to exam your life, to figure out what really matters and then do those things. By taking away a lot of the “maintenance” in your life, you do have more time. Simone de Beauvoir stated the rationale for  self-realization when she said: “Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”

Third, you also begin to focus on the planet, ecological awareness prompts recognition that our earth is indeed limited, with all that implies for conservation of physical resources, reduction of environmental pollution, and maintenance of the beauty and integrity of the natural environment.  It’s very clear that excessive consumerism is not good for the planet, By recycling our waste, using things up, not replacing them with the latest and greatest and using things made from sustainable resources, we not only simplify our lives but contribute to the planets health!

A Healthy Planet

It is possible to turn this “recession” into an opportunity to make permanent changes in our lives and ultimately to do good for ourselves and the planet. What do you think?

Out for a walk the other day, I noticed a couple of old automobile tires leaning against the trash bins at a business. That got me to wondering, what do they do with all those tires? Apparently, discarded tires have long been considered a landfill pest. These tires are often under-recycled. They cannot be land-filled in their original form and are posing a problem for many states. Texas has an estimated 80 million recycled tires sitting in storage. Only 15 percent of the state’s discarded tires are recycled according to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation commission.

The North Texas municipal Water District, which provides regional water, waste-water and solid waste services to cities north and east of Dallas, turned its attention toward this tire supply when it began renovating and recycling a 30-year-old, 140-acre landfill northeast of Dallas. They determined that using the old tires , processed into chips and used in leachate collection systems as an alternative to gravel or sand presented many benefits in the landfill construction.

Shredded waste tires

1. Recycled tires have larger pore spaces than gravel or sand and do not have fine minerals that restrict flow through the collection system and prevent complete removal of landfill liquids.

2. Ease of transportation. The light-weight tire chips are easier to transport and maneuver than gravel or sand. One cubic yard of tire chips weighs approximately 900 pounds; a cubic yard of gravel weighs more than 3,000 pounds.

3.Readily available supply. To construct the first eight-acre section of the landfill, NTMWD used 1.2 million tires, or almost 11,000 tons. Over the next decade, 10 more sectors will be constructed. This project will help diminish Texas’ oversupply of used tires.

4. Cost-effectiveness. By using the tires, NTMWD saved approximately $400,000 in the first sector. The total cost of using tires on both the landfill bottom and side slopes was $812,765. In contrast, using gravel on the bottom and sand on the side slopes would have cost $1,256,025; gravel on the bottom and tires on the landfill’s side slopes would have cost $1,103,725; and sand on both the bottom and side slopes would have cost $1,138,060.

“This landfill now offers several protective barriers to separate the solid waste from the environment,” said Carl Riehn, NTMWD executive director. “We’re not only using recycled products to construct the landfill, but we’re also recycling the landfill itself.”

The NTMWD landfill reportedly is the first in Texas to use this type of leachate collection system. Across the state, other landfill operators are following the district’s lead and applying for permits for similar systems.

This is just one of the things that Texas along with other states are doing to recycle and reuse those old tires.

Working from home gives me the opportunity to run a green office. I went to Staples to get paper the other day and took stock of all the recycled products I could get. I have been buying Staples 100% recycled copy paper for a while. It is 20lb, 90 bright, made from 100% recycled paper without using chlorine or chlorine compounds. It serves my purpose as well as non recycled paper and helps me help the environment, that always feels good!

As I searched the shelves, I found that Staples offers more than 3,000 different environmentally friendly office products, not only recycled copy paper, but file folders, packing peanuts , recycled Post-it notes, light bulbs and even recycled storage boxes!
(more…)

I couldn’t believe it, I walked outside to take the dogs out and there was something different about my banana trees, well one of them. It had a bloom on it. A really big bloom!

This is the second year for this plant in our side-yard. I did not know that they produced fruit so soon. We started with three trees when the pond was put in. The largest did not survive the winter even after cutting back and covering with mulch and burlap as I did the others. The one that is blooming now is one of the original three. As you can see from the photo, there are now about seven plants. They multiply very fast when in the right location. Back to the bloom. (more…)