This post is for all of the avid coffee drinkers. I don’t drink coffee, so I don’t have this issue, but if you drink and brew you own coffee every day that’s 365 coffee filters. I know they are relatively cheap, but that is a ton of unnecessary waste. Now what you could do is quit drinking coffee…this is an unreasonable request, I know. Most people would literally die without their daily cup.

All the coffee drinkers that I have come in contact with use paper filters. These paper filters have a few disadvantages. It is said that paper filters actually filter out some of the coffee flavor. Now why on earth would you want to drink coffee and not get the full flavor that is intended? If you use bleached paper on purpose or don’t realize the difference between bleached and not bleached, you could be drinking some chemicals that are very bad for you. Bleached paper gives off an unhealthy dose of dioxin. Yuck! And finally and most importantly, if you run out of paper filters, you CAN’T MAKE COFFEE!!! That would definitely put a damper on your day, if that is what gets you going in the morning.

Like some of the products I have discussed previously, the upfront cost is going to be more expensive, but if you drink coffee regularly, it will save you money shortly. And they aren’t that much more expensive, just a few dollars.

The first reusable coffee filter I found was Nubius Organics for $5.95. It is a filter made from hemp fabric. You can reuse it everyday, after use you rinse it with water or natural dish soap and let it dry. Once it is dry, you can use it again!!! You will never have to buy paper filters again.

The one you need may or may not be the brand of the coffee maker. If not, just search for reusable coffee filters along with the brand name and hopefully you can find one to fit.

I found a few more brands and they are listed below. Hope this helps.

Keurig My K-Cup Reusable Coffee Filter for $9.88.

Cuisinart Gold Tone Basket Filter GTFB for $6.68.

Mr. Coffee GTF2-1 Basket-style Gold Tone Permanent Filter for $8.34.

All of those prices are under $10 and will most definitely save you money in the long run.

If you need a new coffee maker or you are thinking about starting to drink coffee, remember to look for coffee pots with reusable filters included!

Everyone is plagued by junk mail. It is constantly there and constantly unwanted. So how do you get rid of it? Yesterday I signed our house up for a few different options to have our junk mail stopped!  This will save paper and the environment!!!

GreenDimes is the organization I want to mention first because it specifically relates to my theme with this blog. They stop 90% of your junk mail guaranteed and make sure that you only receive the mail you want. There is a free option as well as a premium option. The premium option is $20 a year. Not a bad price at all and with the $20 they plant 5 trees!! If you decide to sign up for either option, there is another plus. First, you get to choose how you want to redeem your dollar FROM (your not paying a dollar) GreenDimes, just for signing up. Do you want them to use your dollar to plant a tree on your behalf, keep your dollar and send you an issue of Plenty, the magazine for green living, or mail you a check for $1?

Check it out for yourself. https://www.greendimes.com/gw/chooser

After you verify your account and sign in, you have 3 steps.

1. Choose the catalogs you no longer wish to receive
2. Remove your name from common junk mail lists using the methods below
3. Track your progress toward a junk free mailbox

GreenDimes looks up the junk mail that typically comes to you house and gives you a list. Click on “read instructions” next to each direct marketer and it will tell you how to get off their list. Then on the pop up window click “take action”, it will immediately open a window to that site and you just fill out your address. Once you take the steps to one site, go back to GreenDimes and click that you did it. This will add it a completed list and help you keep track of what marketers you are blocking.

If you want to visit a couple more sites to get a rid of junk mail, they are below.

ValPak – According to their site, ValPak is mailed to 45 million houses in North America. Does that make anyone else cringe?? That pack they send out goes straight into my recycled paper pile and I’m sure it happens the same way with the majority of those 45 million households.

The DirectMail.com National Do Not Mail List – Uses their direct marketing expertise to get your name off of those lists for you. The mail-order companies don’t want to waste their money sending mail to people who don’t want to receive it. So they will take you off their list as long as you ask them too. Scoll down the page to fill out the form.

Opt Out – Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the opt-in and opt-out. Choose Opt-Out for 5 years or permanently.

Also, if you are getting mail from someone who previously lived there, instead of throwing it out, write “Return to Sender/Not at this address on the envelope and drop it in the mailbox.

I wanted to get rid of our junk mail and help the environment in the process, so I signed up for all of them. It only took me 15 minutes and they are all FREE!

Today I ran out of laundry detergent. Instead of running to the store to get more, I decided to do some research on eco-friendly detergent. It turns out there is a very easy recipe for environmentally conscious laundry detergent.

For powdered laundry detergent, you will need:

• 1 bar of soap (not antibacterial) Fels Naptha ($1.75), Ivory ($1.99), Zote ($1.95)
• ½ cup of 20 Mule Team Borax ($4.99)
• ½ cup of Arm & Hammer Washing Soda ($4.50)
• Grater
• Re-sealable container

To add a scent:

• 1 oz. of essential oil or fragrance oil to each load

To add a touch of softness:

• ½ Cup Distilled White Vinegar ($1.99)
• Downy Ball ($2.69)

First, grate bar of soap into container. Next, pour in the borax and washing soda. Finally, mix well. Add 2 tablespoons per load. Also, add essential oil if necessary. Finally, for softness, add ½ cup of white vinegar to a Downy ball and put in with the load of wash.

**Of course you can double or triple the batch, whatever you find necessary.

Click on the links to go to the sites where I found these prices. This will make it easier for you to get all the ingredients.

I will try the recipe out and get back to you with my review, cost comparisons, etc. If you decide to try it, let me know what you think.

I found this site and immediately thought of my boss and all the other people on the move. My boss just bought his first house and what do people that are moving almost always need? BOXES. I found a site called UsedCardboardBoxes.com that carries earth-friendly, quality used boxes for packing, moving, shipping and storage.

The unique aspect of this site is the moving kits. You can choose how many bedrooms/offices you will be moving, enter your zip code and they will tell you what is available. Since I am moving next year to who knows where, I tested it out. The smallest kit is the “Average Joe” which comes with 17 boxes. This package includes Medium boxes, Large boxes, X-Large boxes, 1 roll of packing tape, 3 pounds of packing paper, 1 permanent marker and 1 retractable blade box cutter. All that for $38.00!!! And if that isn’t good enough…the shipping is FREE. The same package at U-Haul would be $51.00 and $58.00 at BoxBros. Not including shipping of course.

You might be wondering where they get all these quality used boxes from? Well they contact large companies that come in contact with boxes that they recycle or simply throw them away. Want to know another way you can help? According to the site, if you are a business that collects at least 1,000 of the same size quality used boxes on a monthly basis, they can often purchase your boxes at a higher rate than your existing recycler. They have a form that you would fill out based on your company’s information and the owners of UsedCardboardBoxes would get back to you to let you know if you qualify and how much they would pay you for boxes you might otherwise just get rid of.

As with all of my posts so far, UsedCardboardBoxes is cheaper and recycled as opposed to the more recognized names of Uhaul and BoxBros.

Technology never ceases to amaze me. I knew we were capable of coming up with something like this, but you don’t really appreciate it until you see it. One of my new favorite products is definitely this one: USBCell by Moixa Energy. These batteries are rechargeable by USB port (laptop, PC, game console) and you can re-use them hundreds of times. The coolest feature is that the batteries have intelligent charging. This means that they have LED lights that indicate the charge status, a smart end-of-charge detection and a timed charge. Charging them for just a few minutes provides extra hours of instant use!!! Other rechargeable batteries definitely don’t have that luxury.

Fifteen billion batteries are made and sent to landfills each year. If each battery was lined up tip to end, the amount of batteries would reach the moon and back. The average American buys and tosses out about eight batteries a year. Four batteries average about $8, so you spend on average $16 a year on batteries. Those batteries die and are tossed out, money wasted. Wouldn’t you rather invest money into a battery that you could recharge?? Without a special charger?

The USBCell is $17.49 for two batteries. This seems expensive, but you have to think of it as an investment! Like the majority of green products, they cost more initially, but SAVE money in the short and long term. Think about it this way. Do you own wireless controllers for Wii or XBOX 360? Each of those controllers takes two AA batteries. For Wii, a Powerstation Charger and 2 Battery Packs cost $39. For XBOX 360, the play and charge kit ($18) and two rechargeable battery packs ($24) cost $42. I found both of these prices on Amazon. If you bought the USBCell battery you would get four rechargeable batteries for $34.98…for all you whose math is a little rusty…THIS IS CHEAPER!!

The AA batteries are the only ones available right now, but they have numerous future products. These include AAA, C, D, 9V, Phone and Device batteries. Even though the future products are currently unavailable, the website offers the chance to request an alert when they are available. Click here and then click learn more about a future product. Then there will be a button to register for product launch alert!

www.usbcell.com

As promised, I have a product review for the Preserve toothbrushes and tongue cleaners. I have been using them for a couple days now and they are great! The brush is a little smaller than usual, but gets the job done. You get to choose the brush toughness too, so there is a bit of variety offered. Also, the handle is bent a certain way that looks odd, but it works. With the bend in the handle it is definitely easier to reach my back teeth without feeling like I’m bending the brush. And a tongue cleaner is a tongue cleaner. There isn’t much to say about it except it does what it is supposed to do. I haven’t used a tongue cleaner before, but my mouth definitely feels a lot cleaner after I use it. But the biggest difference is of course the fact that it is recycled from yogurt cups and can be recycled after your done!!!

Click here to go to the Preserve website.

Just recently I found out that there were green search engines. So I started thinking, there must be green browsers out there as well. And I found Flock.

Flock is a web browser based on Firefox. For us Greenies, Flock has come out with an Eco-Edition browser that gives back 10% of their proceeds to help the environment. It is powered by green information, media and opinion. Not only is Flock free, but it comes pre-loaded with news, content and media relating to global matters that are affecting our planet. Flock is generated with the daily news from some of the top eco-friendly sites, including Treehugger, Grist, Sprig, Planetgreen, and the list goes on and on. Flock also integrates with social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. If you want to share with your friends, just drag and drop the sites to them.

I have only been using Flock for a few days now, but I’m loving it so far. It is fast and seems just as reliable as any of the others, so why not? Stay informed, stay up to date, and stay connected to the issues that matter the most.

Click here to download the Flock Browser: Eco-Edition.

Since I am only one year out of college, it is difficult for me to find ways to go green without spending the extra money. I am already on a tight budget with rent, utilities, car insurance, student loans, etc. Luckily, I have been doing enough research and digging that I have begun to find recycled and eco-friendly products that are the same price or cheaper than the name brand ones I usually use.

What I stumbled across this week was a great find. At www.recycline.com they make personal care items, tableware and kitchenware all from recycled material. The products that caught my eye the most were the toothbrushes, tongue cleaners and razors. Everyone needs those three things…well at least the toothbrush and razor, but I’m sure the tongue cleaner wouldn’t hurt.

The Preserve toothbrushes are made from recycled yogurt cups. Then once it is time to replace your toothbrush, you send the toothbrush and case back to Preserve and the old toothbrushes are recycled into plastic lumber for picnic tables, boardwalks and decks. You don’t even have to pay for postage. There is a place on the site where you print out a postage paid label! Depending on how often you change your toothbrush, Preserve allows you to choose when you will receive the next one. You can get one every 2,3,4,5 months or all four at once. And the best part about it is four toothbrushes only cost $11.00!! The name brand toothbrushes such as Reach, Oral B, and Colgate cost between $3.00 and $3.50 for one. So if you do the math you save $1.00 minimum depending on what brand you choose to use. Plus Preserve is recyclable.

If you find yourself needing a tongue cleaner, you can get four for $11.75. When I searched for other brands of tongue cleaners, they were somewhere between $4.00 and $6.50 for one. Again, using Preserve would save you money.

Preserve also offers double and triple blade razors. The double blade razor is $7.25 for one and five replacements are $5.25. The triple blade razor is $7.49 for one and four replacements are $7.49. To compare brands, both Schick and Venus seem to cost around $10.00 for one razor. This is a couple more dollars for a name brand than you would spend on Preserve. Razors seem to be one place where no one, men or women, want to bargain for cheaper. But, the kicker for me is in the replacements. For Schick razors, six replacements cost $23.42. For Venus Vibrance, four refill razors cost $15.65. There is just no comparison when it comes to price. Preserve is way, way cheaper.

Keep in mind all of these products are recycled from the yogurt cups and then collected and re-recycled.

So, as you can see, going green doesn’t always have to cost more. By the way, I am ordering the toothbrushes along with the tongue cleaner, so I will have a product review very soon! I want to make sure that you aren’t losing the effectiveness and quality while trying to go green.

Maybe global warming doesn’t have a direct correlation with us and our pollutants. Maybe the warming temperatures are due to the earth’s natural cycle. Somewhat like the Ice Age, but on the other end of the spectrum. Maybe we can’t do anything to prevent it, but we won’t know until we try. Wouldn’t you rather do something about it, than just sit back and watch your life, your children’s lives and your grandchildren’s lives be negatively affected because you could have done something. I don’t doubt that global warming was coming eventually. BUT I do think that with all of the people on the planet, the people we didn’t have during the Ice Age, it sped up the process with our ecological footsteps. We probably even made it worse than it would have been. Therefore in order to delay, minimalize, or completely bypass global warming all together, we should do all we can to help!

Click on the links below to check out the facts and myths.

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1011

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/index.jsp

Going green to me means doing all you possibly can to help preserve and protect the environment. But there are obviously some restrictions. At minimum do what you can in your normal day, with the same amount of money you are spending now and the same amount of time. No matter what your financial situation, there is always something that can be done. People think that they are going to spend more money and waste their valuable time trying to “go green.” Yes it sometimes does cost a little more and yes it does take time. But once you get the hang of it, it truly is easier. Just remember every little bit helps. Greener = happier!

Here are my top 10 favorite green sites as of now (in no particular order). I tried to find a site for everyone. Check them out! Read the rest of this entry