Good Nature

Shipping Shopping Guilt

Feeling guilty about internet shopping? Well don't! A February 2009 study from Scotland's Heriot-Watt University found that the average consumer shopping by car buys fewer than 19 items per trip, shopping on the internet using ground mail delivery will emit less CO2 per item. To even further your eco-friendly choice of internet shopping, choose the US Postal Service for your carrier. They come to your house everyday anyway, they use water-based inks for stamps, a third of all USPS deliveries are made on foot, and its delivery fleet includes electric, hybrid, and biodiesel vehicles.

Source: Green America's Real Green

Green Up Your Thanksgiving

Here are a few tips from Earth 911 on how to GREEN your Thanksgiving celebration:

• Buy your food from local producers and farmers. You will get fresh, great tasting food and support your local economy in the process. You can get everything you need for your dinner without sacrificing quality or taste.
• Cut down on the amount of food. At least 28 billion pounds of edible food is wasted each year – more than 100 pounds per person. One of the best ways to reduce your waste this Thanksgiving is to plan ahead for the meal and practicing portion control.

Use Less Stuff created a handy list of approximate per person food and drink portions:

• Turkey- 1 pound
• Stuffing- ¼ pound
• Sweet potato casserole- ¼ pound
• Green beans- ¼ pound
• Cranberry relish- 3 tablespoons
• Pumpkin pie- 1/8 of a 9 inch pie

·  After the meal, evaluate how many people were present and how much of each dish was consumed. By keeping track each year, you can make a more efficient, less wasteful Thanksgiving meal in the future.

·  Don't be afraid! Use you china, stemware, nice flatware, and cloth napkins. Thanksgiving could be that special occassion you are saving it for! If disposable place settings are your only choice because of family/crowd size, be sure to purchase biodegradable flatware, napkins, and plates. You can find them at many stores or at BiodegradableStore.com.

·  The average dishwasher uses between 7 and 15 gallons of water per cycle. After the meal, be sure to fill the dishwasher to capacity before running it to save water and energy. Try to run it after midnight to save more energy.

· Make sure your recycling bins are out and all guests know where they are.

Eat REALLY Local!

Spend time together

Learn about food

Fresh, fresh, fresh!

Get outdoors

Eat new things 

 

These are just a few reasons to install a family garden!

 

 

 Make your dream garden a reality

by contacting Good Nature Inc. for an appointment.

336-7200 or tracey@goodnatureinc.com

Just For Mom

Still looking for a perfect gift for Mother's Day? Try GreenGlass.com for an eco-friendly and original gift. Green Glass recycles bottles and makes them into really cool original glassware, vases, pitchers, and candlesticks. (You can even put a Good Nature Inc. gift certificate inside!).

Volunteering to Save The Planet

If the coming of Earth Day has you wondering what you can do to save the planet and you already recycle, carpool, eat locally, compost, and have changed your bulbs. Try this for something different, call a National or State Park and see if they need volunteers this season. These parks are wonderful places and receive tons of visitors each year. To keep them running and environmentally intact the parks services rely on its employees, interns, and volunteers. How cool would it be to “work” at the Grand Canyon? You can definitely find something to fit your outdoor interests by volunteering at a park. Volunteers help with trail repair, habitat restoration, animal monitoring, and other tasks. What are you waiting for call a park today!

Battling Aphids, Caterpillars, & Mites the Natural Way

One thing I have to deal with every year on my plants and in my garden are unwanted pests. You can purchase organic soaps, and I have, from the store but making an insect soap at home is just as effective and less expensive.

Ingredients

3 drops of nontoxic dishwashing soap

32 ounces of water

1 tablespoon cooking oil

Spray bottle (be sure to label as insect soap)

Mix all ingredients together in the spray bottle. When spraying on plants be sure to saturate them, but avoid the blossoms.

Cleaning Produce

Do you really need to buy an expensive fruit and vegetable wash? No, is the answer from Cook's Illustrated. In tests performed by Cooks Illustrated a mixture of 3 parts water and 1 part white vinegar was just as effective as expensive products. All you need to do is spray the produce and rinse with water. This method removed 98 percent of surface bacteria on smooth-surfaced produce, like apples and pears. For delicate fruit, like berries, fill a bowl with 3 parts water and 1 part vinegar. Drain, rinse with water, and then spin dry in a salad spinner lined with paper towels. It is also a good idea to wash produce that has inedible peels because your knife still cuts through the peel and spreads any contamination throughout the part of the fruit you will be eating.

Getting Ready to Garden: Peppers to Repel Bugs

Even if you don't use or like peppers, you should consider planting some in your garden this season to repel bugs. Another benefit, the colorful peppers look pretty!

A second way to use peppers to fight unwanted bugs is to grind whole dried hot peppers in your food processor, including the seeds. You want to grind the peppers until they turn into a dust. Sprinkle the dust around plants in your garden to repel ants, onion maggots, and other pests. Please remember not to touch your eyes!

Please Take My Stuff

If your New Year's resolution was to clean out your home of everything you don't need and you have done it successfully, you may have a gigantic pile in your garage. Here are a few online ideas for getting rid of your stuff. You can also find some great stuff on these sites. Just be careful not to get too much!

Shopgoodwill.com, part of the nonprofit Goodwill, allows you to sell your items through an online auction similar to eBay. Your sales and purchases benefit Goodwill's job training and employment programs for disadvantaged and disabled people.

The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,881 groups with 6,951,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.

Throwplace.com will let you list the items you want to give away to US and international charities and nonprofits, which will pick them up or pay for shipping. The site also includes a section that is similar to Freecycle, where you can get and give away your items free.

For a comprehensive list of independent free-sharing sites click on TheGreenUmbrella.org.

Improve Your Outdoor Living Space and Plant a Tree!

We are restoring trees and forests to degraded lands. By working with Trees for the Future, a tree (or several) will be planted in your name in a large-scale reforestation project that will help to reduce the effects of global climate change. 

 

When you purchase TraceyClean products, you will be given a card with the website and PIN number so you can plant your tree!

 

Tree Facts

 

1 tree makes on average 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333 sheets

The average U.S. office worker prints 10,000 pages per year

In 2004 the United States used 8 million tons of office paper (3.2 billion reams). That's the equivalent of 178 million trees!

A single mature tree can release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.

Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO2 each year.

Deforestation is one of the main causes of atmospheric carbon dioxide; burning and cutting millions of acres of trees each year, it is responsible for 20-25 per cent of all carbon emissions.

A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15 percent.

 

It only takes 30 trees to offset the C02 produced by one car annually.

 

Click here for more Tree Facts