Bridget's Green Living: February 2014

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Green living lessons from the 2013 Christmas ice storm

How to use less water and electricity for a more eco-friendly home

The ice storm taught us that we can get by with less water and less electricity.

Challenging times have a way of teaching us life lessons. Although I wouldn’t wish another outage on anyone I’m happy to admit that I learned a lot during our two (half) days in the dark.

For most it was an exhausting reminder of our dependence on power, it exposed how self-sufficient we are (or aren’t) and proved how we can call get by with less.

How to avoid toxic food colouring

Avoid toxic food colouring buy using natural, plant basedl food colouring

Food colouring is toxic. Instead, choose natural, plant-based food colouring. http://www.indiatree.com

Christmas is the season of candy and colour. Brightly tinted cookies and colourful holiday candies seem to suit the season. They’re fun and festive. But if you do a little research on food colouring you start to wonder about how healthy it really is to be eating foods that are so unnaturally vibrant.

Wrap rage - how to reduce packaging for a more eco-friendly home

Choosing products with less packaging is a way to support companies that are more eco-minded.

Have you ever experienced “wrap rage”, that feeling of extreme frustration when trying to open a new purchase that is secured in the Fort Knox of packaging? It isn’t limited to those of us challenged to open the packages on children’s toys, all manner of products, edible and otherwise are heavily packaged – over packaged some might say – and it takes a good pair of kitchen scissors and a dose of patience to open them.

Tips: cellphone safety

-Buy a low-radiation phone. Look up your phone, or search for a new phone, in this handy guide. (Check under your battery for the model number.)

-Use a headset or speaker. A headset emits much less radiation than your phone and using speaker phone mode keeps that radiation away from your head.

-Less radiation is emitted when you're texting compared to talking, and texting keeps the radiation away from your head.

-Stay off the phone if you don’t have a strong signal. Your phone will emit even more radiation when it’s working hard to get the signal to the tower.

-Limit children’s phone use. Young children’s brains absorb twice the cell phone radiation as an adult’s.

Tips: Steer clear of bottled water

Fill water bottles at home before you head out on a road trip. Even if you’re just out and about for the afternoon.
Make sure you have enough bottles for everyone in your family (and maybe a couple of extras).
Bring an empty bottle with you when you travel. Fill it from the bathroom tap in your hotel room (so you’re not buying the expensive bottle of water in the room and can steer clear of plastic.)
Buy a carbon filter for your kitchen tap if you don’t like the taste of your tap water. Or buy a filter jug to keep in your fridge.
At restaurants ask for tap water if they offer bottled water.

Tips: Packing eco-friendly lunches:

- Reduce (or eliminate) prepackaged foods.

- Pack food in reusable containers.

- Pack stainless-steel spoons and forks. (Plastic utensils can’t be recycled).

- Use stainless steel water bottles.

- Only use plastics with 1, 2, 4 or 5 on them (inside the recycling symbol). These are food-safe numbers & recyclable.

- Don’t put food items in any containers marked #7. (It contains Bisphenol A, a hormone disruptor banned from baby bottles.)

- Don’t heat food in plastic containers, no matter what number is stamped on it.

- Reuse plastic sandwich bags & then recycle them.

- Better yet, use plastic containers and fabric snack bags instead.