It's So Easy Being Green

I have been working on bettering myself in the area of being green. To the right, you will find some of my favorite green things. I will be adding some items if I try them and like them or just maybe think they are a darn clever idea. Here are the ones I like so far.

Sigg Water Bottles
My favorite! On top of introducing plastic that will be with us forever in to our garbage, I started wondering how much water was tossed inside of those water bottles every year. I figure it can't be pretty. The Sigg water bottle eliminates all need for plastic bottles and is safe to drink out of. There aren't any dangers with BPA or other contaminants. It has a handy finger hook on top, so I can easily carry it to meetings at work, underneath the pile of laptop and papers. Santa also brought me the comfort top so that I can drink out of it with as much comfort as a plastic water bottle. The Easter Bunny is bringing a small one for each of the kiddies.

Zum Clean Laundry Detergent
I have been using the Frankincense and Myrrh type for the length of about a half a bottle. It smells great, works great and we need to use only very little. We figure that the cost is not very different than more commercial laundry detergents. It is good for the environment, good for our souls and we reap even more of a good feeling, because it was bought locally in the town I grew up in.

Nature Mill Electric Composter
I really dislike putting something in a plastic bag and then in to a landfill that would normally biodrade and return to the soil. A few reasons I selected the Nature Mill Electric Composter over other styles, such as a drum composter;

1. We don't have enough lawn waste, typically, to fill up a large drum. We were mostly looking for a better way to handle our kitchen waste.
2. We wanted a continuous composter, rather than batch, so that we didn't have to purchase two, or keep our garbage stink around for days, waiting for the current batch to finish.
3. We can keep this composter in our garage, for use all winter long. Because it maintains its own temperature, there's no threat of frozen compost ruining our composter. While they say that you can keep it right in your house, we have had our share of funky smells out of it that would prevent us from doing so.
4. It turns itself. No manual intervention required. It even tells us when the compost is ready and all we need to do is push a button to transfer it to the bottom hopper for drying.
   

While we have had our challenges with composting; mildew, slime; it is no fault of Nature Made and the issues are typically easily corrected by an adjustment of the contents. We are crossing our fingers for when we re-plant our front bed this year, hoping that our new compost will make for some beautiful flowers.

Perf Go Green Garbage Bags
I picked these up at Walgreens and we are extremely happy with them. As I mentioned above, I don't feel right ensconcing anything in a plastic bag that might have a chance of eventually biodegrading. These not only will do so, but also seem to hold up well to my family's abuse and nicely hug the top of our kitchen garbage can. Garbage bags that slip in to the garbage can is a major pet-peeve of my husbands, so if these didn't perform well in that area, they would be out, green or no.

The Green Glass Company
I haven't tried these yet, but aren't they beautiful and so smart?