GLC Green Tips: How to Reduce Junk Mail

Did you know that approximately 4 million tons of junk mail are sent every year? The U.S. spends 340 million dollars to dispose of that junk mail, often with it going straight from the mailbox to the trash. That’s a true waste on a lot of different levels.

Here are some simple steps you can take to reduce junk mail:

1) Catalogs - call number on catalog and ask to remove your name. This can be time consuming, especially when you account for holding times and navigating the automated voice messaging systems of most businesses today. But it’s a start and if you don’t have that many then an easy fix.

2) For first class mail - cross out your name and address, circle and write Refuse, Return to Sender.

3) Credit offers – call 1-888-5 OPTOUT  (1-888-567-8688) or go to https://www.optoutprescreen.com

4) Coupons – Val-Pak or Velassis, call and ask to be taken off list. There is usually a number on the packet (you may have to hunt a bit).

5) Hire someone to do the dirty work for you! There are various organizations/companies that you can pay to remove you from lists and help you manage unwanted mail. One we recommend is Precycle. Formerly Green Dimes, Planet Green and Tonic.com partnered to form Precycle (better than recycle because you stop it before it hits the bin). There is a one-time fee of $36 + shipping and handling. You receive a kit for stopping unwanted mail. They plant 5 trees. Sign up at http://precycle.tonic.com.  You might also check out DMA Choice – an organization that will also help you manage which marketing lists you want to be on versus those you don’t. It also helps you with email subscriptions.  Call  888-567-8688 or visit www.dmachoice.org

Check out Green Living Consulting’s West Coast Partners on Bakersfield news giving Junk Mail tips!!

http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/mornings/64015477.html?video=YHI&t=a

Plastic vs. Paper: Which is the Eco-Friendly Choice?

The Plastic vs. Paper has been an on-going debate in the environmental world, and one that Everyday Health recently decided to talk to us about. Find out which one we said is the more eco-friendly choice in Diana Rodriguez’s article:

Paper vs. Plastic: Making an Environmentally Friendly Choice

One of our favorite analyses of this issue was done by the Washington Post. Click on image below to link to the original source so you can actually read the report – you might be surprised by what you find out! I also find this to be one of those  debates where you really have to get to the bottom of both sides of the issue, and even consider something you didn’t think of before to make the choice that is best for the environment.

~ be well. live green.

Adrienne

Achieving Nirvana through Vegetarian Indian Food and Green Operations

Nirvana Indian restaurant, one of Green Living Consulting’s newest clients, recently achieved a SILVER certification for its green operations. As a lunch and dinner service in the heart of DC’s downtown area, Nirvana’s vegetarian-only menu is the perfect option for lowering your carbon footprint (see below for how going veggie one day a week can reduce your environmental impact). Combining a wide range of Indian flavors that change daily, the Shah family owners present their take on the eight-fold path to Nirvana through their delicious food.

Nirvana will be participating in the Washington DC Green Festival, October 10-11, as one of the select food vendors at the event.

Stay tuned for more information about Nirvana and their green efforts!

Now, here are some stats I recently read in article posted by a Huffington Post writer on the Startling Effects of Going Vegetarian for One Day:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

● 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;

● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;

● 70 million gallons of gas — enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;

● 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;

● 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

● Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;

● 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;

● 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;

● Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

be well. live green.

A Greener Ripe featured in Business Week

photos by Brad Trent

Business Week’s new feature “When Going Green Isn’t About Marketing“, by Amy Barrett, gets at the heart of what Green Living Consulting preaches daily – it’s possible to green your business in a way that saves money and reduces your impact on the environment. Our client Ripe has demonstrated how you weather a tough economy in both a fiscally and environmentally responsible way by greening up your operations.

Ripe, a DC-based web and graphic design studio, has been in the creative world for many years and continues to be a leader in innovative design practices, increasingly incorporating sustainable design into their products and services. But that’s not all. They have embraced sustainability as not just something they should consider when designing, but in every aspect of their business – from how they get to work (see Maryam’s bicycle below right), to how they light, cool, and heat their office, and even what they use to clean it.

Ripe also looks for opportunities to giveback, for example by donating laptops to the One Laptop per Child Foundation, whose mission is to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. Tomas, owner of Ripe, even subsidizes alternative transportation for his employees – something not unusual for DC given the number of federal employees that receive transit benefits, but for this 5-person design firm, that’s a major commitment.

The studio’s design also incorporates sustainable materials: bamboo floors, low-VOC paints, and recently added Sansevieria plants, which are a big favorite of ours for cleaning the air naturally indoors. This plant is great because it is low-light tolerant, requires little water, and absorbs many of the toxins in the air that we don’t even know are there (See NASA study excerpts on how house plants absorb potentially harmful gases indoors).

Ripe was also the first design firm in Washington DC to adopt the Design Accord – a global coalition of designers, educators, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact. Adopters of the Designers Accord commit to five guidelines that provide collective and individual ways to take action.

Ripe also recently received its Green Living Consulting certification, in which they rated SILVER in our Scorecard Assessment for their green actions across our 8 pillars of sustainability. We can’t wait to help them reach GOLD and keeping climbing the green ratings from there.

be well. live green.

Green Living Consulting client Taylor Gourmet featured in Dwell

If you are not a design enthusiast, you may not be a subscriber of Dwell – the at home in the modern world magazine. But if you are a green enthusiast that also enjoys modern, sustainable design then Dwell will have plenty of reading and viewing pleasure for you. The current issue – September – features one of Green Living Consulting’s clients: Taylor Gourmet, a Philadelphia hoagie deli and Italian market in Washington D.C. Owners David Mazza and Casey Patten are featured because they live above the deli, having converted a former beauty parlor on H Street NE into a mixed-use live/work space that embodies urban, and green living (click here for the online feature).

GLC couldn’t be happier to see them featured (pages 92- 99) for multiple reasons:

a) We love when our clients get good press for their business successes, which often include their green initiatives, or are at least due in part to their efforts to lessen their impact on the environment while also delivering top-notch products and services.

b) Casey and Dave chose the H Street NE district to build their home and Italian deli. The H street NE corridor – which starts roughly at the boundary of North Capitol (near D.C.’s Union Station) and extends to 15th street NE – used to be a thriving commercial district prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, which sparked riots that caused destruction from which the corridor has not since recovered.  A transition is underway, however. New restaurants and bars have invigorated parts of the H Street corridor, often referred to by DC residents as the Atlas District (the streets from about 11th – 14th NE) because of the historic Atlas theater, a former movie theater that now houses a Performing Arts Center. The Rock-n-Roll hotel also reels in young, hipsters who want to spend their evenings in a grungy bar listening to bands that they didn’t have to spend a paycheck on to hear.With a trolley car scheduled to be installed and other redevelopment efforts planned by D.C.’s Office of Planning, whispers of this corridor becoming a once-again thriving district are not unrealistic, and probably not too far off.

c) H Street is near and dear to our heart. Green Living Consulting not only has shared office space along the corridor, we are also part of a major initiative with DC Greenworks and H Street Main Street organization to Grow H Street NE Green – starting with educating the local business community on the benefits of greening their operations and taking advantage of government grant programs to add green roofs. Our hope is that if other businesses along the corridor witness the benefits that implementing green practices has both for their pocketbooks and reputation as well as the environment, as Taylor has demonstrated, then they will be motivated to make even small changes that collectively will serve to have a big impact.

d) We would be lying if we weren’t also thrilled at getting a name mention on page 98 of the feature article, given our love for Dwell and almost all things both modern and green!

be well. live green.

Green Living Consulting speaks with Athletic Business magazine

For health clubs, integrating green practices is a way to cut operating costs as well as create a healthy environment good for people and the planet.

Even Environmentalists Can Be Lazy

Josh Dorfman, friend of Green Living Consulting, is reaching green stardom on his new show that aired on the Sundance Channel this evening based on his blog and book The Lazy Environmentalist. Why we like this show:

1. it shows real people getting a first-time introduction to green;
2. it starts with simple, practical solutions to integrating green practices into daily home and work life (if you are already a greenie, this may not be the show for you but one you can recommend to friends and family you’ve had a hard time getting to jump on the green band wagon);
3. it puts things in perspective – one person or family’s reduction in trash, multiplied by many families, over many days, weeks, etc can have a big impact.

Get some insider views on Josh’s take on environmentalism in his recent interview with Reuter’s. One point he makes is that green doesn’t have to be expensive and that environmentalists shouldn’t make people feel bad for their lifestyle choices. We couldn’t agree more. Green living should be a choice people make because they feel good about it, both for the planet and themselves. We aim to join Josh and others in inspringing people to adopt eco-practices that easily integrate into their every day life and that are affordable and purposeful.

be well. live green.

flip and tumble eco-chic reuseable bags

imagine my delight when a friend forwarded me the Daily Candy Weekend Guide (Everywhere) today and I saw resusable bags that are practical and eco-chic. you know that pang of guilt every time you end up at the grocery store and you’ve forgotten your own bags, again. have that feeling no more.  with flip and tumble’s reusable bags in their cool colors and unique designs, you’ll find it hard not to take these everywhere. here’s to living green, the eco-fabulous way. 

 be well. live green.

Another reason to promote green living – your lungs need you to!

The Associated Press released an article last week that says “60 percent of Americans live in areas with unhealthy air pollution levels despite a growing green movement and more stringent laws aimed at improving air quality”. That’s according to the American Lung Association, which ranked the pollution levels of U.S. cities and counties based on air quality measurements that state and local agencies reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency between 2005 and 2007.  

Why should you care? The article reports that health effects from air pollution include changes in lung function, coughing, heart attacks, lung cancer and premature death.  While some cities have seen improvements in their air quality, that does not mean they are enough to elimate the risks from current pollution levels.

One the biggest contributors to air pollution is carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is also a green house gas and a major contributor to global warming. CO2 is released when humans breathe – which is not harmful, but also as result of our daily life activity – which can be harmful. So how can we help curb CO2 emissions and improve our air quality? 

Here are a few simple green actions you can take to lessen your impact and help clean the air:

• Replace 5 regular light bulbs with compact fluorecents (CFLs)
• Carpool, walk or ride your bike – good for the air and your lungs
• Patch leaks in your home – reports show that an esimated 1600 pounds of CO2 are released every year due to holes and crask in doors and windows, leading to wasted electricity
• Recycle! Recycled materials use less energy to manufacture  that products made from virgin materials.  You save roughly 4 pounds of carbon for every 10 cans recycled. 
• Use low or zero-VOC paints (helps both indoor and outdoor air pollution)
• After you read this and get up from your computer, put it into hibernation, turn of f your screen, or just shut down altogether! 

be well! live green!

Green Cleaning Products That Work Great and are Good for the Planet

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When talking with people about green cleaning products, I am oftern asked “do they really work?”.  With all the reports on greenwashing and skepticism about true green products (See recent MSN article on greenwashing), it’s hard to know what products to trust, and which ones will do the job. If you are not up to the task of making your own (baking soad, vinegar, and lemon juice will go a long way for a good green clean), then join me in deighting over my recent discovery of Better Life’s green cleaning product line. Started by two dads, these cleaning products not only work great, you also feel great by using them since they are completely safe for anyone in your house – 0ver 99% of the ingredients they use are natural or derived from natural, renewable resources, and the formulas have no aquatic or terrestrial toxicity.  And, their creative packaging makes cleaning fun! (Well, at least for people like me who really enjoy a good green clean.)

The all-purpose cleaner what-EVER has a fresh scent and cleaned everything from my granite kitchen counter tops to my dining room tabletop to my bathroom sink. Even the Kitch Sink left my stainless steel kitchen sink looking shiny and clean.  And I mopped my floors in about 10 minutes using Simply FLOORED, which you can just squirt on the floor and then mop. I also used the I Can See Clearly – WOW! on my glass shower doors and a week later they are still free of soap residue. Quick – clean – green! A winning recipe for getting the job done without spending all day cleaning. I truly feel my life is better with Better Life.

These products are available at Ace Hardware stores in D.C. or online at Drugstore.com. You can be super green by ordering your product online, in bulk, with ground delivery.

Laundry and dish detergents are in the making so look out for those in 2010.

For information on our green home services, go to Green Living Consulting.