Green Remodeling

With the amount of lumber, concrete, and steel it takes to build a new home; it only makes sense to simply remodel your existing home. Provided your home is architecturally sound and has the potential to meet all of your needs, remodeling - instead of rebuilding - is one of the greenest things you can do. A thoroughly well-planned renovation can transform an ordinary home into your green dream home.

If your home is more than 20 years old, it is probably missing important features such as water saving fixtures, energy efficient windows, and insulation. A green remodel will not only fix these issues, it will also save you money on your monthly utility bills.

Any remodeling project can be overwhelming, especially when you don't know where to start. Some of the things to consider are:

• removing moldy carpets (leading casue of respitory problems)
• installing dual-flush toilets (saves you at least 20% on your monthly water bill)
• insulate your water heater (25% of every dollar you spend on energy goes to heat your water)
• efficient windows (the average home loses 30% of it's heat/air conditioning energy through it's windows)
• energy efficient appliances (energy star appliances can save you a good percentage on your energy bills)
• solar panels (pays for itself in 4-7 years.....think about it, no electric bill! Plus, it generates pollution and maintanence free electricity)
• Low-flow shower heads (reduce water and energy consumption by as much as 50%)

These are just a few of the things you can do to remodel your home in a responsible and green manner. Feel free to contact me for more ways that you can be green in remodeling your home.

Betterlivingenterprises@gmail.com

Green Building

With the green fever that has been sweeping the nation, why not also have that apply to building and remodling homes?

GREEN BUILDING is a way of building homes that allows people to be more responsible with our natural resources and energy. Whether building or simply remodling your home, green has become the most logical and economical choice.

The air quality inside our homes is worse than the air quality outside! This is due to formaldehyde in compressed wood counter tops and furniture, toxins in paints and common household cleaners; there are also the chemicals used to make our upholstry, linens and clothing. Just because you can't smell it does not mean it isn't lingering. This is why green matters!

A healthier way of building is to build green. In traditional construction, indoor air quality is polluted due to poor choice in building materials and inadequate lighting. A green home is designed, constructed and operated to enhance the well being of the occupants. Green homes also minimize the negative impacts on the community and environment.

A green home will:

• be easier to maintain and is built to last


• bring a higher resale value


• provide a healthier and more comfortable environment


• improve the indoor air quality


• provide occupant satisfaction


• incorporates energy and water efficient technologies


• include renewable energy technologies


• reduce construction and demolition waste

When you factor in the benefits I have listed, building a green home can save you money in both the construction and operation of your home.

Many people will tell you that building green will cost you more than a traditionally built home. In reality, with a clear budget, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to build a green home for the same price, or possibly less than, a traditional home.

If you are interested in building green, one such company that can help you is FIVE EAGLES DESIGN, LLC (http://www.5eaglesdesign.com/index.html) located in Charlestown, NH.

Five Eagles Design, LLC is a group of general contractors and designers specializing in the construction of energy efficient homes. It is the goal of Five Eagles Design, LLC to provide customized energy star quality homes for an affordable cost. Their business will guide you through all aspects of the home building process. They are partnered with Preferred Building Systems, who manufacture high quality modular homes that are energy efficient, built green and offer a comfortable lifestyle for the owners.

So if you're in the market for a new home, why not buy into something that will help the planet and help you save money.

Shop Green, Save Green (Spend Less)

By now I think I have stated it enough times.......going green does not have to be costly, and in fact it can save you hundreds of dollars on your overhead expenses!

If you shop around you will notice that due to everyone shopping green and demanding environmentally friendly products and services, we are all becoming more earth and health savvy, and therefore stores are going along with it. Where and how you spend your money shapes the world we live in. If we all started eating in moderation and bought more organic foods, we would have to be catered to. Remember that whole supply and demand thing you learned about in your early years of school? Well this is exactly what happens and what I am talking about.

Due to alot of people being more health conscious the stores have to stand up to the competition. For example, Whole Foods has their own line of organic products called 365. Not only is the 365 line cheaper than the name brand organics out there, they are also often cheaper than their non-organic alternatives.

Another way to cut back on expenses is buying in bulk. This does not mean buying large cases at your local price club. Buying in bulk simply means buying the largest size of a product that you were going to purchase anyway. Buying a 64 ounce bottle of laundry detergent is better for our planet than buying a 32 ounce bottle,. It not only uses the smallest amount of packaging per ounce, it also saves you some money per ounce, and that means there is less waste going into our landfills.

BYOB! Bring Your Own Bags! Almost every supermarket I have been to offers some sort of "bag credit." I have received discounts between 2 and 10 cents per bag for bringing my own. There are huge positive impacts to skipping out on the plastic bags. Too many plastic bags have ended up as litter making their way into oceans, killing marine animals, sea creatures and birds by the millions. Man made plastics don't biodegrade and stick around for thousands of years!

And although paper may be recyclable, they can be worse. According to the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment (www.ilea.org), although nearly 20% of paper bags are recycled, it takes more energy and creates more waste to make one paper bag than it does to make 2 plastic bags.

The U.S. has begun to follow in the footsteps of countries that have banned or heavily tax the use of plastic bags. Australia, South Africa, Ireland, and some U.S. cities have begun to take a stand. San Francisco has banned plastic bags since March 2007. There are various other cities, such as New York, considering the same eco-friendly move. Read more about plastic bag bans at www.treehugger.com
Search "plastic bag ban"

You probably already know that eating less meat is better for your health. It is also better for the environment! Here's the rundown: Methane from captive livestock is responsible for 1/5th of all greenhouse gas emmissions caused by humans.

Eating less meat will also result in saving for you! Like in any health conscious diet, moderation is key! A "normal" serving of meat should be no bigger than the palm of your hand. And half of your plate should be filled with greens/vegetable. The last small part left can be a carb of some sort or can just be left empty.

You can also save money by substituting your meat for another source of protein. A pound of organic lentils might cost you about $2 and will yield you around 13 servings! Cheaper and serves more than a pound of ground meat would. Lentils are packed with nearly as much protein as the beef! So why not give it a try? You don't have to become a vegetarian, but consider cutting out meat once a week to start with.

You can save money on vegetables by buying locally and in season. Local farmers are more likely to sell you produce a little bit cheaper since they are selling it to you directly. There is no middle man or shipping involved.

Another way to save on produce is to grow your own! A packet of tomatoe seeds might cost you $3 (about the price of a pound of tomatoes at a supermarket). The seeds will produce fresh, tasty tomatoes that will last all summer long.

GREEN CLEAN = SAFE CLEAN

What is the meaning of clean? The ammonia smell that lingers after you've cleaned using a toxic cleaner? That is really chemicals lingering behind in your home that you are inhaling.....not my definition of clean. But there is nothing to fear! There are options out there for cleaning that are safe and effective!

The first thing I will address is all of these companies that for years have been producing toxic cleaning products are now providing us with "green" and "eco-friendly" products. They think they are doing us a favor by saturating the market and making it readily available......the only problem is that "green" and eco-friendly" or even "Earth Smart!" mean nothing! The reason for this is that many companies out there are claiming to be green without any support to their claims and still contain toxic chemicals. Some of the "all natural" ingredients/chemicals are naturally occuring such as formaldehyde. Formaldehyde has been known to be toxic.

General All-Purpose cleaners contain an array of chemicals that can be harmful on their own, forget about the toxic fumes they produced when combined with other chemicals! The basic ones like chlorine bleach and ammonia produce fumes that can be dangerous for people with respitory and heart problems. PLEASE NEVER EVER CONSIDER COMBINING these two as they become MORE TOXIC!

Many cleaners contain petroleum based surfactants (can mimic the hormone estrogen) or other chemicals that can easily be absorbed through the skin and damage nerves. Do these ingredients sound like "clean" to you now?

Here's an important thing to remember and I hope many people start to understand....CLEAN HAS NO SMELL! All those "clean" scents you smell are really synthetic frangrances meaning, you guessed it, more chemicals that linger around for us to inhale.

If you are truely trying to be green, you should also be looking to lower you carbon footprint through buying and using less plastic. True green cleaners will come in a superconcentrated form meaning you end up spending less money and putting less plastic into our landfills.

A simple rule to keep in mind when shopping is the less packaging, the better. When I have a choice, I buy the largest size available. Less packaging is more green.

As I write this, I think back to the days when I would lock myself in my bathroom to clean because I did not want my children exposed to the nasty fumes released by the bathroom cleaner I used at the time. My youngest was diagnosed with asthma and I did not need a trip to the emergency room or a rushed nebulizer treatment. But locking myself in would only cause more harm to me as there was no fresh air circulating nor did I realize that the fumes linger and my children would be exposed to them, even if at a lower levels. Since switching to green cleaners, I have not had to lock myself in the bathroom and can even clean with my children in the same room. I have even begun to let them help me when they want to and they are only 3 and 4 years old! I don't have to worry about any toxins they maybe being exposed to!

I personally use the line of cleaners Shaklee has to offer for my family. I have had the same bottle of BASIC H2 concentrate for over a year now and I might be half way done with it. This has significantly saved me lots of money and trips to the supermarket just for cleaning products. This solution in different concentrations makes my all purpose cleaner, windows/mirrors cleaner, and my degreaser. I also keep reusing the same plastic bottles, significantly reducing both my carbon footprint and my contribution to our local landfill.

Just imagine this for one second, 5,824 spraybottles piled up in your backyard. Now transfer them over to your local landfill. This is not what I want to leave behind for my children! And I know you are asking yourself why the number 5,824? Because that is the number of bottles of window cleaner you get from ONE bottle of the BASIC H2 concentrate!

I have done some thorough research to make sure that all of the company's claims hold up to what they promise and that they are all natural. There are other options out there, and I would gladly discuss the best options for each individual, personally. Feel free to contact me through email at betterlivingenterprises@gmail.com

There is so much more that could be said about the cleaners that are commonly used around the house, and I have not even begun to touch on laundry, hand soaps, drain cleaners, dishwashing detergents, etc. It may all sound scary, but there is still hope. Clean Green...

Book Review on FOOD MATTERS

FOOD MATTERS: A Guide to Conscious Eating
by Mark Bittman


This book confirms what I have already mentioned: the lifestyle choice you make not only makes you healthier by reducing your risk of many long term and chronic diseases, it can also help you to loose weight if you need to, save you REAL money, and help stop global warming!

No change comes without effort, but the changes are not as hard as you think and take less time than your average workout routine. Knowing this can intrigue anyone. Don't take it from me, read this book for yourself and confirm what I am talking about.

The book is divided into two basic sections. The first section will make you rethink about your food consumption. You will learn how we tend to overindulge and how we have come to considering these outrageous portions we eat to be "normal." Bittman does an amazing job with a brief history of our over consumption of food. Think you're doing good following the food pyramid guidelines? Ever think that the government would want to help or hurt when it comes to our food consumption? Think again.

The second section offers tons of recipes that are good for you, the earth, and they're yummy too!

I really enjoyed reading Bittman's book, FOOD MATTERS: A Guide to Conscious Eating, and I think you will too. It really fortifies the old adage, "You are what you eat."

Eating Green

One easy way to improve your health, the health of your family, and the health of the planet is to EAT GREEN!

I LOVE FOOD! Who doesn't?!?! Our love for food has contributed to increased rates of obesity and many other health issues. Unfortunately, it has also made a HUGE impact on our planet!

Food is so much more that the fuel that keeps us going. It involves choosing, cooking, eating and sharing with the family and friends. Over the centuries we have gone from being primitive and foraging to only a handful of us being farmers and the rest of us getting our food at a supermarket. This is where things get a little sticky....something that was meant to be simple and stressfree has become a health concern.

Most of what we buy, cook, and eat has been tainted with synthetic chemicals at almost every stage of its existence. There are chemicals to kills things (pesticides), Chemicals to make things grow faster (fertilizers, growth hormones, anitbiobtics), and chemicals that make things look better than they would and last longer than they should.

Yes, the government does set limits on just how much of each chemical is used, and they claim that the levels they approve are safe. Yet, they do not conduct rigorous testing to make sure that none of those limits are exceeded.

How can we know that we are not putting these chemicals into our bodies? Buy organic!
Not even 100 years ago, all farming was organic!
The organic food market has grown drastically over the past decade. It used to be that you could only find organic foods in specialty stores, but it is now available almost everywhere. Even Wal-Mart is getting on the trend. Organic foods are even becoming an important part of restaurants and school cafeterias!

So what stops everyone from buying organic? Habit and cost. It really is not ignorance anymore. Shoppers understand that organic foods are better for them and their families. And yes, organic is a tad bit pricier than conventionally grown foods. But I have to ask, what is more important, buying more less expensive food or getting used to eating just a little less and eating organic healthier food?

Let me break down the reasons why organically grown food is more expensive. The first reason is because it's more expensive for farmers to produce. Organic seeds cost more money. Then, there is also a lot of manual labor involved without the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. People cost much more than chemicals. There are also stricter requirements and inspections, which obviously cost more. And because of the labor and laws, most organic farms aren't as big as conventional farms. Organic farmers do not achieve what economists call "economies of scale," which means the more you produce, the lower the cost of each item.

Aside from mentioning what isn't in organic foods, I should also mention what IS in them. Researchers have found that organic foods contain higher levels of essential nutrients and more cancer-fighting antioxidants than conventionally grown foods. Here's an example, organic ketchup was found to have 5 times the amount of the antioxidant lycopene than conventional ketchup. This fact makes it even more worth the price!

Now here's a tip, YOU CAN BE ORGANIC ON A BUDGET!
Be smart about what you buy. The FDA found you can reduce your pesticide intake by 90% if you ate only organic versions of 12 produce items.

peaches

apples

sweet bell peppers

celery

nectarines

strawberries

cherries

pears

imported grapes

spinach

lettuce

potatoes

To top it off, if you buy Organic items when they are IN SEASON, they will be priced slightly lower and produced more locally, which contributes to lowering your carbon footprint!

You can also shop around. With the increasing popularity of organic foods, you can bet that every grocery store wants your buisness, therefore they are more inclined to try and compete through everyday values and sales. And when you do find a deal, buy lots of it if you can freeze it or if it isn't perishable.

BUY LOCAL!!!! Buying locally grown fruits, vegetables and meats has become easier. Many supermarkets feature them in season and there is always your local farmers market. If you buy foods in season they will be cheaper because they are abundant. Fuel costs (part of your carbon footprint) are not incorporated into the price. And I can pretty much guarantee that locally grown food will taste better.

Being that the major chains in supermarkets have caught on, there's a pretty good chance that the stores own brand will offer you organic choices cheaper than the big-name brands. Choose it!

There is always the option of growing your own produce! This is something to seriously consider. You'd be surprised at how much you can grow in a small amount of space. Don't have a garden or a back yard? Consider container gardening! With roughly two square feet, you can grow greens that will keep you satisfied for months!

There is also the meat factor. There are various reasons beyond concern for the environment to change the way we look at meat. The qaulity of life for livestock can be an influential factor. It has caused many people to become vegetarian. Instead of allowing cows and other animals to graze and roam naturally, they are confined and fed grain and corn grown using pesticides. Simply reducing meat consumption would make a HUGE impact in lowering you carbon footprint. And health wise, lowering meat consumption can help with lowering cholesterol and limit the intake of unnecessary chemicals such as hormones and antibiotics.

I will be honest, I love meat! But I do not need to have meat at every meal to survive! I try to limit my meat intake to a small portion at dinner time. I also have the family eat a vegetrian meal one night a week. My kids look foward to "veggie night" weekly.

Eating green alone is not the answer, it is a cummulative effort. And that has been the point to my blog. To present tons of small steps we can take to slowly become greener and live more in harmony with nature. We only have one planet Earth, lets try to preserve it for our current health and the health of future generations.

Green Cleaning.....better and safer!

Cleaning is basically a fact of life and has become a necessity. How you clean is entirely up to you. But what does "clean" mean? We all grow up with the over powering stench of amonia meaning that our homes are "clean." I grew up associating "clean" with the chemical stench of the many cleaning products that were assumed to be cleaning and sanitizing. Associating chemicals with clean is a common yet dangerous mistake.

Have you ever stopped to think about the WARNING labels on any product containing amonia or bleach? Why would there be a WARNING on a product that is suppossed to be helping me maintain a CLEAN AND SAFE environment for me and my family? Yes the government allows the use of potentially hazardous ingredients in these products, but we are warned that we should not have long exposure to nor inhale the products. We are also told that they could cause irritations, blindness, and potentially even death! Were you aware that companies do not have to list ALL of the ingredients in their hazardous products? They are only legally required to list the products that have already been found to be hazardous to our health. Honestly, the government has no clue as to what ingredients in common household cleaners are safe because they do not require manufacturers to test them.

There has not been sufficient testing done to determine the long term effects of exposure to commercial cleaning products. Many ingredients in common household cleaners have been linked to various childhood health problems, such as asthma or even some cancers. Is it your fault? NO! The manufactures do not inform us of the potential carcinogens, hormone dusrupters, neurotoxins, etc...Why should they inform us? They know that if we, the consumers, were aware that the products we depend on contained dangerous chemicals, we'd stop buying them!

Despite the warnings, consumers continue to buy hazardous cleaning products. So to help clarify things a bit, here are a few of the WARNINGS used on product labels:

DANGER: products with this word on it must be used with EXTREME care. If used incorrectly, you could get sick, hurt, go blind or die! This label is also applied to products that can explode if heated.

WARNING: less of a warning than DANGER, but still means that you get become sick or get hurt. This could also mean that the product can easily catch fire.

CAUTION: used on products that can irritate your skin, make you sick if you inhale the fumes, or hurt you if it were to get in your eyes.

Here's a little challenge for you. Go grab on of your conventional household cleaners. Examine the label. Think about what I've told you about the WARNINGS. Next look at the ingredients, I bet you can't even pronounce half of them! Go to the Household Products Database at the National Institutes of Health (hpd.nlm.nih.gov), and look up two or three of your favorite cleaning products. You can even try looking up one of the ingredients commonly in cleaners such as butylcellosolve. Believe me, you will be shocked, I sure was!

Knowing what you have just read, take it upon yourself to expose your family and yourself to less chemicals!

Over cleaning is one of the reasons why so many of use have developed allergies, we do not allow our bodies to develop an immunity to many things in our environment because we are always killing through over sanitizing. Sanitizing is needed for extreme cases, such as a cancer patient that might be undergoing a bonemarrow transplant and will not have an immune system for some time.

Choose or make effective green cleaners and clean kindly! Most green cleaners are plant-based so that soaps and detergents are biodegradable. Biodegradable means that they break down easily instead of creating more garbage. Use cleaners that contain plant based solvents and ammonia-free glass cleaners. Get rid of any cleaning products that contain any potentially harmful ingredients. As mom always says, it's better to be safe than sorry.

When getting rid of household cleaners, please dispose of them properly. Do not empty the cleaners into your sinks. The chemicals will up affecting the planet. Look up a local "CLEAN UP DAY." Workers take all of you potentially hazardous cleaners and chemicals to properly dispose of them. Take a close look at how these workers are dressed. You will notice that they look like astronauts, covered from head to toe. They wear protective gear so that they do no absorb any of the chemicals through their skin or inhale any of the fumes. Now how many times have you locked yourself in the bathroom with the same cleaners that these workers don't even want to be exposed to?