Tips for Church and Community

GREENGRACING TIPS

GreenGracer Ellen Hoitsma offers 10 Green Tips for Home – beyond recycling and composting.

To keep your lunch waste to a minimum, assemble a lunch kit for work. Mine includes a water bottle, an insulated cup with a stainless steel straw, a glass dish with a tight-fitting lid, utensils, cloth napkin, and cloth sandwich wrapper. You may want to add a plate, too. Adjust my list to work for you.
Purchase felted wool dryer balls to reduce the amount of time your dryer needs to do its job. Add a folding clothing rack so you can dry your clothing naturally. These small investments will repay themselves quickly.
Keep a reusable bag handy–in your car, your purse, your backpack. They’re easy to sew, too, out of an old t-shirt.
Skip the plastic bags in the produce section of your grocery store or farmer’s market. Sew simple muslin bags in various sizes–or purchase. They’ll last a lifetime, or until you wish to compost them (check with your DPW to verify compostability).
Plant a native tree, particularly those which are highly attractive to butterflies and moths, such as oaks, cherries, willows, birches and maples. Be sure the trees you have aren’t burdened by invasives.
Use FreeCycle or another community listserv to find a home for things you no longer need. And you might find something you really need.
Use curtains in your house to reduce your cooling/heating bills, closing the south-facing windows in summer and opening them wide in the winter. Trying closing them during both heating and cooling season for higher efficiency, even if your windows are thermopane.
When your incandescent lightbulbs die, replace with LED lights for long-term life and big-time savings too.
Crayola recycles tired or dried-up markers for free. Urge your school to join, or find a neighborhood school that has a collection already in place.
TerraCycle is a terrific resource for recycling hard-to-recycle waste like energy bar wrappers, deodorant containers, and toothbrushes.

GREENGRACING TIPS

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