How To Go Green

"It's easy being green", we often hear these days.

This message is normally accompanied by a picture of our old friend Kermit the Frog, who of course is famous for singing the song "It's not easy being green."

So who is right?  Is it easy being green, or not?

Well, I submit that sometimes it is easy being green, and sometimes it is pretty darn hard. Let's just admit it.

Easy = turn off lights when you're not using them. Hard = live in a purely green home or find a dream eco-chic wedding dress, so far.

The hard part is not our fault, nor is it cast in stone. Our modern society was set up in a non-green way initially. The Industrial Revolution was built on coal, cheap oil, chemicals, non-natural industrial simplification, short-term economics, long-distance transportation, and a cradle-to-grave production and consumption mentality. Natural and ecological resources were assumed to be infinite or ignored or viewed as things to be conquered by man.

I should know, I studied industrial engineering and business at top schools, and we were told to maximize output and profit. Yikes. There wasn't a sustainable environmental cycle or an externality in sight. As a result of the industrial revolution, we are now facing peak oil and global warming, both of which could fundamentally change life as we know it today.

The good news is that a revolution got us into this predicament. And the emerging Green Revolution can save us and the planet for future generations. Everyday it is becoming easier to be eco-conscious, and not have to give up the style and lifestyle we desire.

In honor of Earth Day, here is the Heart of Green’s How To Go Green Guide. It is broken down into 2 categories. Easier and Eco-Challenging. Let’s get real. Sometimes we might relate more to Kermit The Frog and need to start small. Other times we might be ready to take on a major Eco-Challenge and become a Jolly Green Giant. Note that we are calling the first category Easier, not Easy. And we aren't starting with light bulbs.

Eco Footprint

Easier: Go to www.myfootprint.org and take the quiz. It is fun, really! I'll tell you my number of planets if you tell me yours.

Eco-Challenge: Take the challenge and run a carbon calculator. This will shed light on the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from driving, flying, energy use, and eating. Real men and women eat organic quiche and calculate their carbon footprint.

Eating & Drinking

Easier:  Eat organic. Ask for sustainable seafood. Shop at local farmer’s markets and greener grocery stores like Whole Foods. Eat real foods to get nutrients in their entirety as nature intended.

Eco-Challenge:  Buy only local. Ask for Fair Trade coffee, tea, and chocolate. Eat only grass-fed beef or go vegetarian more often. Challenge the restaurants you frequent to serve organic and sustainable cuisine. Sip an organic wine or try the new Square One organic vodka. Avoid all processed foods. Avoid coca-cola, diet soft drinks and nutrasweet at all costs. Coke can clean the rust off of engines and leaches calcium out of your bones, seriously. Aspartame is a neurotoxin. Read the groundbreaking book "An Omnivore's Dilemma "and be wowed.

Paper & Wood

Easier: Use recycled paper for printing and copying. Use recycled tissue and paper towels. Look for high post-consumer content. Switch to electronic billing and invitations. Let’s save those embattled forests before they are gone for good. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, generate rain clouds, and keep the planet cool. Old growth is out. Forest-friendly is in.

Eco-Challenge:  Buy wood from sustainable forests (FSC-certified). Seek out reclaimed wood and the amazingly renewable wonder-grass bamboo. Buy antiques. Avoid all furniture and wood from endangered forests. Ask where wood and paper come from in stores, and you will raise some eyebrows. Watch out for exciting new tree-free paper options coming soon from New Leaf Paper.

Junk Mail

Easier:  Save all the catalogs you get for 1-2 months and then go on a catalog list purge. Focus especially on catalogs not being printed on recycled paper. Call every number and ask to be taken off the list. Secret tip: then ask to be removed from the “sell my name to others” list. Apparently each catalog company has 2 boxes and you have to ask to be removed from each one. Sneaky.

Eco-Challenge:  Sick of the endless stream of credit card and insurance offers in the mail? Me too. Go to the OptOutPreScreen web site and remove your name for 5 years or forever. This is the official site of the consumer credit reporting companies Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion who sell our names. Nice, thanks.

Clothes

Easier:  Buy organic cotton t-shirts and jeans. Find hidden vintage treasures.

Eco-Challenge:  Sport the latest in eco-chic fashion and wear clothes made out of luxurious soft bamboo, organic wool, recycled cashmere, lyocell, tencil, hemp-silk, and reincarnated materials. Or tape leaves to your body.

Packaging

Easier:  Use old newspaper for padding. Buy recycled paper envelopes. Avoid Styrofoam at all costs. Try the biodegradable peanuts for stuffing. Break down cardboard boxes and recycle them.

Eco-Challenge:  Ask people who send you things to be more planet-friendly in their packaging. Buy local so that there is no mailing or packaging!

Recycling & Composting

Easier:  Recycle all the paper, plastic bottles, glass bottles, cans, milk cartons, yogurt cups and more that you can. Pick up random bottles on the street or at the beach and recycle them for good karma.

Eco-Challenge:  Compost your food scraps in a green bin or in your own compost pile if you have a backyard and so desire. Bring batteries to a local battery recycling station. Recycle e-waste at local events or drop-off centers. Donate old items to charity. Try to limit what you throw away and give your junk a new life!

Parties

Easier:  Serve goodies in ceramics, silverware, and glassware so that there is nothing to throw out at the end! Give messy guests linen or recycled paper napkins. Display organic flowers from Organic Bouquet that are free of pesticides. Hire an eco-friendly event planner like Sillapere, Organic Events, or Vibrant Events.

Eco-Challenge:  Amaze your guests with your greenness and use the new biodegradable compostable plates, cups and cutlery made from corn, sugarcane or even potatoes. Compost them when you’re done. Or eat them. Just kidding. Great sources are GreenHome, GreenWare, GreenIsGreen, and Excellent Packaging. Or really get the party started with Bambu.

Bags

Easier:  Bring your own bag to the store - a canvas bag or otherwise. Make sure you get your bag credit, very important, those 5 and 10 cents add up! Flash your bag around to the people behind you who didn’t bring a bag and hope that they notice.

Eco-Challenge:  Take an oath of no new bags in your life. Use compostable BioBags instead of dreaded plastic ones. Check out the super eco-chic Ecoist purses.

Cleaning Products

Easier:  Get those germs with green, natural, eco-friendly, people-friendly cleaning products. Throw all of that bleach and 409 away - it is poisonous to you and the environment. Chlorine contains toxic dioxins which are harmful to our immune and reproductive systems and have been shown to cause birth defects and cancer in animal tests. It is amazing that Clorox is still in business frankly.

Eco-Challenge:  Give anti-bacterial soaps the boot, because they actually make bacteria stronger in the end. Note how that doesn’t make it into the commercial. Hire a purely green cleaning service. Use a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter.

Babies & Toys

Easier:  Use organic or natural shampoos and lotions that are free of parabens. Dress your little one in organic cotton baby clothes. Strive to buy wooden toys or ones free of PVCs. Avoid plastic baby bottles and use glass bottles instead if you can hopefully find them.

Eco-Challenge:  Visit web sites such Mainstreet Moms or the EcoMom Challenge and follow their expert motherly earthly advice.

Bedroom

Easier:  Give conventional chemical-laden sheets the boot, and change to soft organic cotton sheets from Coyuchi or Anna Sova. Slumber under an organic wool comforter that stays the ideal temperature depending on the climate. Dry off with organic cotton towels in the bathroom.

Eco-Challenge:  Switch to a natural or organic mattress, and sleep completely toxin-free, zzzz.

Indoor Air Quality

Easier:  Buy an air filter to suck up the harmful particulates in your home. Switch to green cleaning products; no more poisonous dioxin-laden bleach. Use paints that are labeled as low or zero-VOC (volatile organic compounds). Keep plants around that filter the air.

Eco-Challenge:  Be brave and run an indoor air quality test in your home or workplace to determine just what is flying around unseen; then search and destroy the pollution sources. Live or work in a true LEED-certified green building. Send your children to a green school.

Water

Easier:  Turn off the water while you brush your teeth. Switch from bottled water to filtered tap water if that is an option in your area. Try to take shorter showers. Do large loads in the washing machine and dish washer. Grow native plants that consume less water, especially in dry climates. Learn to love the cactus.

Eco-Challenge:  Switch to a water-friendly, low-flow showerhead, faucet or toilet. They work well and make a big difference. Beat Ed Begley, Jr. at his own eco-game and install a rainwater cachement system. Who says we have to get all of our water from the melting and shrinking snowpack?

The Drain

Easier:  Throw away unused or expired medicines, household cleaners or cosmetics in the trash, never down the drain. Otherwise, they will end up in your local river or bay and eventually poison wildlife and your fellow humans.

Eco-Challenge:  If you own a fish tank, don’t ever throw any seaweed down the drain. See the caulerpa taxifolia seaweed disaster, killer algae that is destroying whole ocean ecosystems, all from one aquarium dumping. Yep.

Remodeling

Easier:  Proceed directly to an eco home design store and don’t pass go. Behold the cornucopia of beautiful, eco-friendly, and healthier zero-VOC paints, bamboo floors, eco-carpet tiles, organic and recycled materials, eco-insulation, non-toxic adhesives, radiant floors, sustainable furniture and much more. Examples are Green Fusion and Eco Home Improvement and ABC Home.

Eco-Challenge:  Be the green envy of your block by becoming officially LEED-certified. Build a true LivingHome.

Getting Around

Easier:  Try to walk when you can, instead of driving. It is great exercise too and you get to see cool things like birds. If possible, let someone else do the driving and take public transportation like the subway, bus or train. It’s fun and cheaper than paying for parking if you live in a city. Carpool and cruise in the HOV lane.

Drive a car with high fuel economy, such as the Prius. Ultimately, it is the gas mileage that matters. Oil is a precious, non-renewable fossil fuel resource. Some conventional cars like the Mini get higher gas mileage than some of the new eco-fraud hybrids. For all cars, keep tires inflated and fire up that cruise control to save gas.

Eco-Challenge:  Impress your neighbors with a new electric car, a plug-in hybrid, or a bio-diesel car. Don’t be seduced by corn-based ethanol which takes more energy to produce than it generates. Hold out hope for the energy-positive cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass. Hire an eco-limo or hybrid taxi service. Try to fly less, and encourage Richard Branson to hurry up with his carbon-free jet fuel. Encourage your favorite automaker to get its act together and give us the fuel economy that is technologically possible and deserved by the American people.

Energy

Easier:  Replace old appliances with Energy Star appliances that conserve energy all day long and while you sleep. Earn rebates from your local utility for doing so hopefully. Use programmable thermostats that heat/cool only when needed. Unplug chargers and electronics while you are not using them; otherwise, they keep drawing electric current and stay warm. Put everything on a power strip and switch to OFF. Turn off lights while you not using them of course. This includes all you retail stores which leave lights on to “advertise” all night long, lame.

Eco-Challenge:  Switch to green power if it is available in your area, lucky dog. Conduct a Home Energy Audit. Install solar panels or, even easier, a solar water heater. Move to Iceland which is geo-thermally powered.

Light Bulbs

Easier:  Replace old dinosaur incandescent light bulbs with new compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) to save energy and money long-term. CFLs use only 25-33% of the energy and can last up to 10 times as long. It apparently takes 18 seconds to change a bulb, or less if you are fast. See the excellent Home Depot Eco Options department and their eco-pleasing n:vision CFLs.

Eco-Challenge:  Explore LED lighting. Recycle mercury-filled compact fluorescents when they finally burn out. Try the new dimming and softer-light CFLs to create that perfect eco-mood.

Investing

Easier:  Hmmm...avoid the worst offenders like Exxon-Mobil which continues to fund anti-environmental "research". Seriously, have some respect for life on earth.

Eco-Challenge:  Ask your financial advisor about sustainable or socially responsible investing. Put your money in cleantech and greentech companies and funds. Whoever solves the carbon problem should reap large financial returns.

Shopping

Easier:  Use your green dollars to advance the green economy. Your purchasing power matters a lot. Vote for the planet with your wallet. Every dollar counts.

Eco-Challenge:  Strive to buy primarily when you need to replace something. Go vintage or antique shopping as a hobby.

Animals

Easier:  Have your pet spayed or neutered. Shun fur coats or frankly anything that glamorizes wearing endangered animal prints.

Eco-Challenge:  Help save endangered animals like the magnificent tigers, elephants, cheetahs and sea turtles. Do we really have to take these pending extinctions lying down? Be a modern day Noah and support the conservationists at WWF, Conservation International, and WCN. Consider vegan options. And encourage China to stop using tiger parts for recreation.

Carbon Neutral

Easier:  Once you've tackled some of the things above in the categories of energy, light bulbs, and getting around, consider becoming "carbon neutral". Counterbalance your remaining carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by helping to finance clean renewable wind & solar power (or methane capture) in other locations. Buy carbon offsets for your car, home, air travel, or next event through Native Energy or TerraPass for example.

Eco-Challenge:  Go to the next level and become carbon negative. Calculate your remaining carbon footprint and then buy double or triple the carbon credits. Seek out carbon offsets that are truly additional and incremental. If you are hosting an event, make it a carbon neutral/negative gathering through offsets and impress your friends with your eco-savvy. Encourage lawmakers to support a cap-and-trade carbon trading system with a low-enough cap to make true strides in reducing global warming pollution through economic incentives. 

Frolic in Nature

Easier:  Enjoy the beauty of nature. Go for a hike. Visit the beach. Play in your garden. This is probably the easiest and most important thing to do. Stay aware and open and connected to the planet upon which we all depend. Experience the miracle of nature and creation. Have fun while going green!

Eco-Challenge:  Vacation at an eco-resort in an exotic land. Send me a postcard.

Happy Earth Day

Earth Day was founded in 1970. Thirty-seven years later, the world’s attention has turned to green, and it is an exciting time to be alive. Great opportunities exist.

Start with the area you like best. By taking one small green step at a time, every day can be Earth Day. Our blue planet works for us 365 days a year. Let’s consider it with care and respect. Let's join together and be stewards of the planet we love and call home.

Cheer up Kermit, it is becoming easier to go green. Just wait until next year!