Day 93: Keeping Cool is Hard Work!

Refrigerators are one of the biggest energy consumers in our homes, especially older models. Older models use about 40% more electricity than the energy efficient models being sold today. So, if you are in the market for upgrading your fridge, keep that in mind.

However, even if you aren't thinking of upgrading your fridge there are some things you can do to increase it's efficiency:

1) Check if the door seals. Stick a piece of paper between the door and fridge body and see how hard it is to pull out. If it slips out easily, cold air is probably doing the same thing! A little silicon spray may improve the situation, or look into replacement seals.

2) Clean the coils on the back of your fridge twice a year. Dust builds up on these coils and adds and insulating layer thus making the heat transfer from the coils to the surrounding environment less efficient. Just unplug the fridge and vacuum if you notice dust building up.

3) If your fridge is in direct sunlight, near a heating vent or range/oven, find a cooler place for it to be. The warmer the fridge's environment, the harder it has to work to keep things inside cool.

4) Be sure there are a few inches of free space between the condenser coils, sides of the fridge  and the wall (this way the warm air has somewhere to go!).

5) Keep the freezer defrosted -  a centimeter is too much!

6) Set your fridge thermostat to realistic levels. 

7) Keeping the freezer full is a good thing, but the same is not true for the fridge part. Leave some room for air to circulate.

8) Quick in, quick out! This one is common sense - the longer your fridge door is open, the harder your fridge has to work!

Day 92: Use Up

I stumbled across this website today with 50 ways to never waste food again and it had some excellent ideas for how to use up food scraps in creative ways.

You can check it out here, but some of my favorite ones include:


2. Don't toss those trimmed ends from onions, carrots, celery, or peppers. Store them in your freezer, and once you have a good amount saved up, add them to a large pot with a few cups of water and make homemade vegetable broth. This is also a great use for cabbage cores and corn cobs.


13. Make smoothies with fruit before it goes bad. Berries, bananas, and melons are great candidates for this use-up idea.

18. Use up the fall bounty of apples by making applesauce or apple butter.


22. Turn old bread into homemade bread crumbs.


26. Add chopped bread to a soup. It will dissolve and thicken the soup.


27. Made too many pancakes for breakfast? Put them in the freezer, then toss in the toaster for a fast, tasty weekday breakfast. Ditto waffles.


36. If you've got a few chunks of different types of cheese sitting around after a party, make macaroni and cheese.


44. Dry herbs by hanging them by their stems in a cool, dry location. Once they're dry, remove them from the stems and store them in airtight containers.


45. Leftover coffee in the carafe? Freeze it in ice cube trays. Use the cubes for iced coffee or to cool down too-hot coffee without diluting it. You can do the same with leftover tea.




50. If you can't think of any way to use that food in the kitchen, compost it. Everything except for meat and dairy will work in a compost pile, and at least your extra food can be used for something useful. Such as growing more food!


Do you have any ideas on how to reduce food waste?

50 Ways to Never Waste Food Again (Colleen Vanderlinden)
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/ways-avoid-waste-food.html

Day 91: Re-Fashion!

Sorry about Day 90 being a late post - it has a been a super crazy week!

I participate in a lot of sporting events and such, and you always seem to get a boxy cotton t-shirt from these events. I literally have dozens of them laying around that I don't wear because they don't fit right, even if I like the design they are usually just too big.

I started wondering what the carbon cost of one single cotton t-shirt was, and what I found was shocking to say the least!

-1/3 of a pound of pesticides and herbicides are required to produce just one cotton t-shirt
- World wide, cotton growers account for 25% of the world's pesticide and herbicide use
- For the total life cycle of the t-shirt, about 2.34 kg of green house gases are emitted (52% of this comes from raw materials, manufacturing, packaging, transport, retail and disposal - of the 48% from consumer use, most can be eliminated through hang-drying and washing cold)
- it takes about 1500 L of water to grow the cotton and produce the t-shirt

The take-home lesson is to avoid purchasing or ordering these t-shirts if possible. Buying organic cotton helps to reduce some of the pesticides and herbicides, but it doesn't change many of the other impacts. However, we all probably have closets full of shirts that we don't wear.

It really bothered me that I have in my possession so many high-carbon cost shirts that I don't really even wear, so I pulled out my seam ripper, scissors and sewing machine and decided to re-fashion a few!
I am by no means a skilled sewer, but I was pretty happy with my results (I wish I had taken before and after pictures!):

There are tons of ideas out there on the internet about how you can re-fashion an old t-shirt.

Here is what I did for mine:

1) First, I took my seam ripper and I removed the crew-neck collar on the shirt. Then, I folded it in half down the center of the shirt so I could cut out a v-neck. I then using my sewing machine to turn the edge over and finish the seam.
2) Next, I made the shirt more form fitting. I took one of my favorite t-shirts and laid it out on top of my project. I then traced the form onto the shirt and cut away the excess fabric on the sides and sleeves, sewed and zig-zagged the edges. Voila!  Fantastic new shirt!

I was super pleased with the outcome, because not only did I make something cool, I saved $20 that I would have spent on a t-shirt (had I needed one) and I re-purposed something into something useful!

Day 90: Gift Wrap

So, I was going to save this one for the holiday season, but my idea bank is running dry!

Whether it be birthdays or a holiday, be conscientious about how you wrap your gifts - and be creative! Things like old newspapers, magazines, calenders, posters or dish towels/bandanas (which have another purpose!) make great gift wrap. Use shredded paper (like comics or magazines) instead of tissue paper and reuse any bags, paper or bows that you may have.

There are literally hundreds of ideas out there, just google "environmentally friendly gift wrapping" or some permutation thereof, and see what comes up!

Some of the things my family does is:

1) reuse gift wrap, bags and bows
2) cut up greeting cards to make gift tags
3) use natural accents (think of a nice bit of spruce around the holidays! it smells great, is 100% biodegradable and therefore won't sit in the landfill for decades to come!)
4) buy items that don't come in a lot of packaging
5) make gifts yourself (and their wrap, perhaps a nice cloth bag?)

... the possibilities are endless!