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If you must buy, then please, by all means, buy green. BioBag
manufactures biodegradable household products and buying green will help
invigorate economic cycles and infrastructure. The garden bio-film is an
excellent alternative to pesticide use, leading to healthier groundwater and
streams. “[It] is designed to protect your plantings from weeds and pests and
stimulate warmth for uniform growth, then return itself naturally to the earth
after the plantings reach maturation. The film also serves as a plant protector
during frost and wind warnings.”
BioBag’s complete line of products includes kitchen bags,
composting systems, pet products, lawn & leaf, toilet systems, and shopping
bags. The company’s various products are ideal for practicing sustainability and
water-conscience behaviors.
A Lawn You Can Love. McCausland, J. September 1998. Sunset.
pp. 59-63. (Magazine article)
If you have to have a lawn please look up this issue of
Sunset. The second page contains one of the niftiest guides to selecting grasses
for the Pacific Northwest, and specifically for our home routines, that we’ve
ever seen. Whether you are selecting a lawn for shade, low-to-no mowing, low
water use or for resilience to dog urine, the table is a “down and dirty” guide
to buying the right grass for your situation. Sunset endorses fifteen grass
choices with good cultivating information as well as photos. The accompanying
text discusses buying sprigs versus plugs and seed versus sod. If you’ve got to
have a lawn, choose with knowledge of what’s compatible for your family routine
whether it’s commitment to water, pets, or high traffic.
Green Culture: Products for an Enlightened Planet. 2007.
www.eco-gardening.com
Often being sustainable is not so much a matter of making
appropriate decisions about environmentally safe products as it is a matter of
where to find them. Responding to this need, the “Green Culture” website sells
green products at affordable prices. You can find basic things such as raised
planter beds, composters (including worms), and weed killers/fertilizers made of
natural plant oils. Fascinating and unique projects are on the site such as
shitake mushroom kits for the garden. Look for facts about the most effective of
natural pest controllers such as bats and ladybugs.
Green Pages is an educational association of builders,
designers, homeowners, trades people, manufacturers, suppliers and others that
are all interested in ecologically sustainable building. Some of the articles
included are “Hydronic Radiant Floor Heat” and “Dive in With Denim Insulation.”
This is one of the more exhaustive resources a website can provide. Remember it
when you are short on time or are looking for specific, knowledgeable help on a
project. You can search by service, keyword, or location. The green pages are
also available for downloading, printing, or filing. The Ecobuilding Guild site
also gives information on monthly meetings, so get on their emailing list to
hear what they have to say.
Green Home Environmental Store Website. 2007.
www.greenhome.com
Green Home Environmental Store is a practical website for
researching and purchasing green products for the home. Green Home claims their
products are not only alternatives to existing products but at the same cost,
same convenience, and same quality as their traditional counterparts, with less
of a toxic impact on the environment.
Green Home offers products from apparel to pest control. They
offer green products for hoses and drip systems, compost bins, biological pest
control, kitchen and bath cleaning products, personal accessories, and a lot
more.
The Northwest Green Directory website is a registry of green
businesses where products and services can be searched by region or keyword. A
search results in a supplier’s phone number, address, and website information
along with a brief description of the company. Sustainability criteria such as
labor relations and corporate environmental policies for each company are
available as well.
As an independent online magazine, Natural Home provides
readers with the inspiration and information for making the best choices in
creating an eco-friendly home. The magazine highlights innovative ideas on home
building, design, remodeling, and decorating, with additional tips for the
kitchen, garden, yard, and personal health. Natural Home magazine also has a
radio show called Natural Home Show with a more interactive approach to
discussing sustainable living techniques.
Metro, Portland’s regional government agency, instructs us
where to dump garbage and hazardous wastes. If you’ve never visited the Metro
waste facility on NW 61st St., it’s pretty cool. It’s a drive-through; you never
leave your car and a team of folks come out to the car in hazmat suits, take
your wastes, and organize it in to bins for reuse, remix, or disposal. The
website details what hazardous household products they will dispose of, at no
charge. This is a wonderful resource. Their site also tells us which products
are not to go in the regular garbage.
Why is this mentioned in the processes section? Ultimately,
our wastes can impact our local rivers, streams, and waterways so if we can get
you to drive out to the facility to dispose of your toxics properly then we’ve
succeeded in engaging you in a process that saves at least one element of our
environment.
Environmental Building Supply. 2006.
www.ecohaus.com
To keep you in synchrony with processes and natural cycles
while tackling construction projects, Environmental Building Supply (EBS)
promotes natural and renewable materials, such as FSC-certified wood products,
wool carpets, cork, and environmentally-safe paints. They also offer low toxic,
energy-efficient, solar, and recycled content products. This is an excellent
source for finding the products you might be reading about, and is an ideal
place to get your questions answered online by their knowledgeable staff.
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. Tides Foundation &
Funders Work Group for Sustainable Production and Consumption.
www.storyofstuff.com/
The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute video about all the stuff in
our lives, its production and consumption, and how it affects our communities at
home and around the world. It’s a great look at the big picture. Leonard gives a
list of 10 big and little things we can all do to reduce the pressure on a
linear system and foster a more cyclical system. Included are: powering down
energy, wasting less, talking with others, inspiring others, detoxing our homes,
body, economy, unplugging the TV, parking our cars to walk more, changing our
light bulbs, recycling more trash, buying green, fair, local, used, and by all
means, buying less stuff. An awesome video, check it out!
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