By now, I hope that most stores have restocked their toilet paper and you have been able to purchase a reasonable amount of TP. You’ve probably also seen a number of funny meme with TP alternatives like leaves or 3 sea shells (share your favorite TP memes in the comments below). Before you stockpile a years worth of the stuff, I want to share an alternative to TP,  a bidet. by SarahLoveland by LurkinFlerken Since our trip to Berlin last summer, when I got a chance to try a bidet at our friends apartment, I have been considering installing one in our bathroom. They had a totally separate b ..read more

Photo from Johns Hopkins Medical As most people in the world, I am carefully following the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and have made a number of changes to my daily life to help slow the spread.  I am an engineer, not a health care professional, so am interested in the system effects and exploring impact on green lifestyles. I’ve looked at a number of personal changes we’ve made to protect ourselves and community from the spread and noticed that several of them are in conflict with green living. For example, instead of air drying or using a powered hand dryer, I am using 2 disposable pa ..read more

As you try to live more sustainably, it is important to look at and consider the everyday products you use at home. Today we are going to share what we are currently using from toilet paper to laundry detergent. By changing out the things we use most often for more sustainable products, we can reduce our environmental impact. Toilet paper Paper towels Tissues Toothbrush Toothpaste Laundry detergent Fabric softener All purpose cleaner Dish soap Hand soap (liquid and bar) Deodorant Makeup Remover Some of the links below are Affiliate links which means if you click on the product and purc ..read more

Every environmentalist and eco-evangelists knows the three R’s of reduce, reuse, recycle, but I think the fourth R is equally, if not more important: Repair! I have always felt that it was better to invest in a quality item for more money, than the cheaper version for durability and performance. I usually regret when I slip from this path and buy the cheap item to save money at the time because they break or are not effective at the job I bought them to do and I have to go back and buy a new one.  Even the best products, eventually they wear out or break.  Instead of replacing the item, tr ..read more

I bought a Sony Discman in the mid 1980s and have been buying my music on CD ever since (i.e., the past 35 years).  I am finally ready to let go of physical media such as CDs and buy MP3s to reduce clutter and to save the planet. In the past, I have preferred to own CDs and rip the music into my library versus buying songs from iTunes, etc.  I own hundreds of CDs, most of which came in jewel cases that I still have with their inserts on a floor to ceiling storage cabinet even though most of my CDs live in binders.  I’m going green.  Going forward, my music purchases will be 100% digital downl ..read more

I’ve written about the energy saving advantages of multi-cookers/Instant Pots before, but now let’s dive into the health implications of cooking with gas. The best advice I can give you is to always use your exhaust vent, even in winter, to protect you and your family’s health. I have cooked with natural gas my entire life and appreciate the ability to see the intensity of the flame and adjust the temperature rapidly. As a kid, we had a range hood that just “filtered” the air and recirculated. Today we have an exhaust fan that blows the air above the stove outside, which up until now ..read more

In my previous blog post I hypothesized that multi-cookers, such as Instant Pots, were the most efficient method of cooking available for a home. In this article, I will run through one experiment that supports that hypothesis. I cooked 1 cup of white rice in my multi-cooker, a Zavor LUX LCD 8-QT, and measured the electricity consumption over the entire process using a kill-a-watt meter. I then cooked the same amount of rice on our gas stove and timed each step of the process to estimate the natural gas consumption. Multi-cooker – 113 Wh I followed the manual for cooking long gr ..read more

Multi-cookers such as Instant Pot DUO are the most efficient method of cooking todayPreparing food is a necessity of life and there are many options that impact your carbon footprint.  Before I go into those, I need to mention that changing what you eat will have a far bigger impact than changing how you cook it.  Choosing a vegetarian or very low meat diet is one of the biggest things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.  As a family we have reduced the amount of meat we consume, but only our daughter is peskitarian.   What I set out to discover was which method of cooking is the most ..read more

Alicia and I went for a walk in the woods around a local pond and heard this very loud sound coming from the side of trail opposite the pond. We followed the sound and found this vernal pool. Take a listen, can you help us identify the sounds in the video? Leave your responses in the comments. Happy Greening! Jon and Alicia If you liked what you just read, please signup below to receive our blog posts and tips via email ..read more