Hand Soap Refills

January 27, 2011 By greengirlinc Leave a Comment

Image courtesy of Mrs. Meyer's

A simple step to save money and reduce waste is to refill your hand soap bottles from refill bottles or pouches.  Mrs. Meyers, Method, EO, Dr. Bronner’s and Kiss My Face are five that I know carry refill sizes.  I’ve used them all, but my two favorites are Mrs. Meyers and EO.  I’ve got the Mrs. Meyer’s basil scent at my kitchen sink right now.

Ask your favorite local store to carry the refill size, if they don’t already.  If you can’t find the refill size locally, you can get them online at stores like Amazon, Mother Nature, and Pristine Planet.

The best part about refilling is that you are not throwing the pump out each time.  The bottles are usually easily recyclable, but the pumps are not.  Refills are less money per ounce (about 7 cents) than the pump bottles.  You will also have fewer trips to the store for soap.  I cannot think of a downside to using refill sizes.

Filed Under: Reduce and Reuse Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Dehydrators to Go Green?

July 21, 2010 By greengirlinc 7 Comments

Sure!  What better way to take advantage of local, seasonal food than by dehydrating the bounty of the season.  That is what I recently decided to do.  Our family LOVES dried blueberries all year.  We put organic blueberries on sunbutter and toast.  Oh so yummy, and healthy too.  The downside is that organic dried blueberries are very pricey.  We have a number of local growers who don’t use a bunch of nasty pesticides.  Even better, to save money, you can go and pick your own.  That’s what we did the last weekend.  The blueberry recipes are flowing out of my kitchen.

I decided to invest in a dehydrator.  Well, I can’t just go buy a dehydrator, I need to research.  I started thinking about the material used in dehydrators.  With all the buzz about BPA, I decided a dehydrator made from polycarbonate might not be the best health or eco choice.  As a matter of fact, I decided to avoid plastic dehydrators all together.  I’ve gone with a stainless steel case, and stainless steel racks.  It is the closest to an inert material next to glass.  Stainless is as close to leach-free as you can get, again, next to glass.  The stainless is more expensive, but there is a long warranty, so I hope it will be the last dehydrator I buy.    I also figure it will pay for itself in dried blueberry savings alone: wink, wink. Much of the stainless steel on the market is recycled, plus stainless is infinitely recyclable.  There are a number of stainless dehydrators on the market.  I did  find one dehydrator where the case was BPA, but the trays were polypropylene.  Polypropylene is considered a food safe plastic.   The dehydrator I decided on is rectangular with the drying element in the back.  The research and reading I did convinced me this is the most efficient shape and process.  I also ran across non-electric dehydrators, which would be the greenest, but some of the reviews moved me to an electric one.  I expect the dehydrator by the end of this week.  Once I get it, and try it out, I will write a review.

Here are some of the websites I looked at:

Sausage Maker-Dehydrators

Harvest Essentials

Plastic vs. Stainless

Dehydration Nation-Hanging Dehydrator

National Center for Home Food Preservation

Filed Under: Food, Plastic, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Do You Sofishare

July 5, 2010 By greengirlinc Leave a Comment

Sofishare is an interesting and creative solution for traveling, and having access to cars and bicycles.  It is the brain child of Eric Spaeth from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Have you heard of people swapping houses for vacations?  It is a bit like that.  There is a network of people who sign up and agree to share their cars and bicycles.  The difference is that you can also share you mode of transportation in your own town and there are fees.  When you’re not using your vehicle or bike you can rent it out to other participating members.  The member with the cars or bikes set their own rates and can make them hourly, daily or weekly.  I think at this time it is better suited for larger metropolitan areas, but as it grows it may be workable for mid-sized cities.  It is an especially clever idea when it comes to trucks.  I know a number of people who have trucks just for hauling stuff like their boats and RVs.  What if they rented out the truck to people who needed to haul things, but only once-in-a-while?  That would be great!  Please take a look at Eric’s site.  There is much more information about the program listed on the Sofishare site.

Filed Under: Environment, Local, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Be Green: Ban the Penny?

May 28, 2010 By greengirlinc 1 Comment

It sounds mean doesn’t it?  Banning the penny seem so Scrooge-like, but after reading the statistics on how much this single cent coin is costing us, it seems like the prudent thing to do.  According to the website for Ban the Penny, Green Education states:

“The One-cent Coin Costs 1.26 Cents to Make, Wasting Resources, Costing Taxpayers Millions! It costs more than one cent in energy, metal and labor to mine and process the ores, combine the metals, and then produce and transport a penny. CNN.com and the U.S. Mint reported in December of 2008 that a penny with an assigned value of $0.01 actually cost $0.0126 to make. Over 7 billion pennies and 1 billion nickels were produced in 2007. The cost of producing them rises with the cost of energy and the metals used. Congressman Luis Gutierrez, whose House subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint, said that producing the coins adds to our national debt and set the U.S. Treasury and taxpayers back about $100 million in 2007 alone.”

That is a powerful argument to stop penny production.  We can’t be sentimental about this.  Mining is a very damaging process; there is always an environmental impact.  To keep mining, and losing money on the penny, just doesn’t make sense anymore.  I hope some of you will take advantage of this chance to raise money for your schools, save the American people money, and make an environmental impact.  Pass this along to your local schools or bring it to the attention of your local PTO.

Green Education Network

Filed Under: Environment, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,