5 Ways to Improve Your Health by Going Green

I spend a fair amount of time on Living Green and Saving Energy describing how to go green and save money as a result. But as important as saving money is for most people, perhaps it is not the most important benefit of a greener lifestyle.  Green living can improve your health as well.

Here are 5 health benefits you can realize from creating a greener lifestyle.

1. A healthier heart: regular exercise has obvious health benefits. By walking or riding a bike to replace your car for short trips, you get some cardio-exercise and save gas and reduce carbon emissions all at once. Even taking the bus or train will help since you can walk or bike to and from the bus stop or train station.

2. A healthier diet: buying locally-produced food saves on fuel for transporting that food to the market, and smaller local growers are more likely to offer organically-grown produce that is fresher, as well. Shopping at farmers’ markets is a good way to find these items, making sure your food is pesticide-free. Continue reading “5 Ways to Improve Your Health by Going Green”

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Saving Money and the “3 R’s” of Green Living

Composting is one of those rare things that is very easy to do and offers multiple important benefits.

How easy is composting? All you need is a location in your yard and some kind of containment for the compost that develops. Ideally, the compost sits on the ground, allowing worms access to it from below ground.

Your compost bin can be a specialized compost container custom-built for the purpose, a trash can with the bottom cut out of it, or an area about 3 feet square bounded on three sides by wooden walls. The cost is minimal, even if you buy a compost bin. It turns out that my town gives compost bins to residents for free, so you should check availability where you live.

What goes into compost? Kitchen scraps, yard waste, and a lot of similar items that would otherwise go to trash and landfill. By putting biodegradable items like coffee grounds, egg shells, fruit and vegetable peelings, grass clippings, and leaves into your compost bin, you are not just reducing the amount of waste you send to the landfill each week. You are also creating a nutrient-rich addition to the soil that will enhance your lawn and garden. Continue reading “Saving Money and the “3 R’s” of Green Living”

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Don’t Get Bamboozled by Bamboo

Green living is supported by your actions. Saving energy and conserving water and other natural resources are key parts of a greener lifestyle. Another important contribution to going green comes from the items you buy. Organic foods, chemical-free fertilizers and low-VOC paints are all considered green products.

Bamboo is another material frequently found on lists of green products.  As a green, renewable building material, bamboo has major advantages. It grows very quickly and can be harvested in 5 to 6 years. Compared to a hardwood tree, which may take 50-100 years to mature, bamboo provides 10 to 20 times as much building material in the same amount of time. Bamboo is surprisingly durable, as well. Bamboo also does not need to be replanted when cut, as it naturally grows back. For these reasons, bamboo has been used increasingly as a material for flooring and paneling. For these uses, bamboo is an excellent renewable raw material.

But be careful about letting clever marketers oversell you on the benefits of bamboo as a green raw material. Continue reading “Don’t Get Bamboozled by Bamboo”

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Green Travel: The Ultimate Green Vacation

Green living is becoming a way of life for many of us. Cutting energy consumption, conserving water, and recycling are all well established in the consciousness of a growing number of people.

This means that people are increasingly living a greener lifestyle at home. But what about when they leave home? How well established is green travel?

Having a green vacation can take various forms, from roughing it in a remote camp site to relaxing in luxury at a five-star resort that recycles everything and generates its own solar power. But what about getting both the feeling of being in the middle of a natural wilderness and the full luxury treatment? These two experiences don’t often come together in the same place. Now there are a few vacation spots that are attempting to bring vacationers the best of both of these seemingly dichotomous worlds.

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Continue reading “Green Travel: The Ultimate Green Vacation”

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Traveling Green: Limit Phantom Energy Loss At Home

Summer vacation time is approaching, and as you plan your travels it is also worthwhile to think about how you can minimize your negative environmental impact as well.

One simple step to take: buy power strips, plug your electronics into them, and switch the devices off while you are away from home.

Amazingly, your television will use more energy while turned off then while turned on. You read that right.

This is due to the wonderful invention of “instant-on” technology, which keeps your TV in a constantly warmed -up mode (by drawing a little power constantly) so that that when you switch it on you get instant gratification. The same phenomenon applies to most electronic devices, such as computers and printers in sleep mode, radios, CD and DVD players, VCRs, and the like. Chargers of all kinds also draw a little power constantly (you can feel the warmth in a cell phone charger, for example). This low, constant energy use is known as “phantom energy.”

When away from home for an extended period of time, you can save a lot of energy – and money – by limiting the phantom energy. Just make sure that your TV and other electronic devices and chargers are either unplugged – not just switched off – or connected to a power strip that can be switched off to cut power.

Stopping phantom power loss is part of taking a greener vacation, and you may be surprised by how much money you save.

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  • Paula Gallagher
    Paula Gallagher
    Paula is a highly qualified and experienced nutrition counselor on the staff at Village Green.
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