Alternative Beauty Products??

I know, I know, this is a blog about green building and products right?  Well, along the subject of all things green; saving energy, saving money, saving consumption...I stumbled upon the following information and I couldn't help but think how many women would love to know this stuff!  Well, more than that, actually have the time to apply it to their lives, but in any case it is an incredible source of information I have now "favorited" on my desktop for that time in my life when I will have time.  But, I'll encourage you in this venture much like I do any other area of my own life, just start with one.  Start recycling one thing.  Start reading one book on 'green living'.  Start making one beauty product. Start implementing ONE change in your life at a time and discipline yourself (your kids, your family, etc) to master just that one before moving on. 

(The following is a blog from Planet Green and if you'd like to see the article in its entirity feel free to follow the link below, we have simply put the information below for your own convenience, but in no way claim the article as our own, but a great source of information!)

50 All Natural Beauty Products You Can Make Yourself

Natural, easy, and cheap -- simply beautiful!

"I looked at my bathroom counter this morning and realized that I buy very few commercially-manufactured beauty products anymore. Mixed up in baby food jars and other reused containers, my daily arsenal consists of homemade shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, toothpaste/tooth whitener, lip balm, lip gloss, dry skin salve, and solid perfume. The goats milk soap I buy is locally made by a non-profit goat rescue farm. And my kids use a lot of the same stuff I do.

I started making my own beauty products because I'm cheap, and I couldn't stand the idea of paying retail prices for things that I could easily make, and make better, for much less. But I've expanded the items I make because, like many of you, I'm concerned about what the chemicals in all of those commercially produced products are doing to my body.

The items below are easy and fairly inexpensive to make. You can customize many of these to your own preferences. And you'll have the peace of mind of knowing that you aren't putting anything harmful on your body."

Hair Care

1. Dry Shampoo

2. Use Vegetable Oil to Condition Your Hair

3. Add Lasting Shine to Your Hair With Vodka

4. Chamomile Shampoo

5. Avocado Mayonnaise Deep Conditioner
6. Rosemary Hair Conditioner
7. Home Remedies for Shiny Hair
8. Blonde Hair Dye Recipe with Lemon and Chamomile
9. Brunette Hair Dye Recipe with Coffee or Tea
10. How to Henna Your Hair
11. Go 'Poo Free: Baking Soda Shampoo, Apple Cider Vinegar Conditioner

Skin Care

12. Spoil Your Face with Spoiled Yogurt
13. Make Your Own Shaving Cream
14. Yogurt and Honey: Two Key Ingredients in Your DIY Facial
15. Blueberry Facial Mask
16. DIY Hand Softener
17. Exfoliate with Strawberries
18. Make Your Own Egg White Facial Mask to Fight Acne
19. Five Natural Blemish Busters
20. Easy Homemade Facial Masks
21. Make Your Own Lotion
22. Gentle Oatmeal and Yogurt Facial Cleanser
23. Cucumber-Honey Toner
24. Rose Facial Toner
25. All-Natural Salve for Dry Skin
26. Get Gorgeous Summer Skin with Homemade Body Scrubs
27. Chocolate-Orange Lip Balm
28. Green Tea Facial Toner
29. 5 Skin Care Recipes from Common Ingredients
30. Olive Oil Moisturizer

Makeup

31. Make Your Own All-Natural Lip Gloss
32. DIY Bronzer Compact
33. DIY Lipgloss Tinted with Beets
34. Enhance Your Eyelashes Naturally
35. DIY Beeswax Lip Gloss

Perfume and Colognes

36. Make Your Own Perfume from Flowers in Your Garden
37. Make Your Own Solid Perfume
38. Soothing Summer Body Spray
39. Sandalwood/Bergamot Perfume
40. Passionflower and Ylang Ylang Perfume
41. Aftershave for Men

 

Hygiene

42. Lemon and Salt Tooth Whitener
43. Homemade Natural Stick Deodorant
44. Use Baking Soda as Deodorant
45. Easy Homemade Soap

Foot Care

46. DIY Pumpkin Foot Scrub
47. End-of-Day Foot Spa
48. Strawberry Food Scrub

Nail Care

49. Cuticle Cream
50. Nail Strengthener

16 Ways to Green Your Home: Part 1

Change. 

It is one of the hardest things for us as human beings to master.  Even those of us who thrive on change and claim to embrace it have our areas that are still hard to change.  Sometimes it just takes a change in mindset, a little education or some practical tools and steps to get the ball rolling.  Well below is some key information we gathered from the US Green Building Council. It's a great way to kick start making some changes in your home and family to save money, energy, preserve the planet, and live healthier lives. 

Let us know if and how this was helpful for you.

Here are the first 7 on Lowering Your Utility Bills! 

1. Switch to Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) can be a huge energy saver. Replace some (or all) of your incandescent fluorescents and enjoy reductions in heat production, energy use, and electric bills!

Savings: Five of the most frequently used light bulbs in your home can save you $100 per year!


2. Program Your Thermostat
When you are at home, keep the thermostat at 78°F or higher in the summer and 62°F or lower in the winter eficiently. Programmable thermostats allow you to program the systems to reduce output when they are not needed (e.g., when no one is home during the day, or in the evening when everyone is sleeping).

Savings: Reduce your energy bill by $100 per year or more!

3. Plug Air Leaks
This simple step can go a long way toward keeping your home at the temperature you desire, saving

money on heating and air conditioning bills and more. Common leaks occur around windows, doors, and

other wall penetrations. Plugging those leaks with weather stripping and caulk can be a simple task for

anyone!

Savings: Reduce your energy bill by $100 per year or more!

4. Tune Up Your Heating and Cooling (HVAC) System
Have a checkup for your HVAC system every 2 years to make sure it is running efficiently. Be sure to clean filters monthly during times of peak usage; a dirty filter can significantly reduce the efficiency of your HVAC.

Savings: Reduce your energy bill by $100 per year or more!

5. Choose ENERGY STAR Appliances, their qualified products meet a high level of energy efficiency, which can translate into savings on electric bills. When considering the price of a new appliance, take into account not only the purchase price, but also the long-term savings associated with an energy-efficient appliance!

Savings: Reduce your energy bill by $50 per appliance per year or more!

6. Reduce Water Use


• Indoor: Use less water by adding aerators (available for a few dollars at your local home supply
store) to your sink faucets and changing to low
• Outdoor: Incorporate native plants in your landscape plan and minimize high-maintenance landscaping such as turf grass to conserve water, while still maintaining a beautiful lawn.



Savings:Reduce your water bill by as much as $100 per year!



7. Switch to Green Power

Green Power is an optional utility service for customers who want to help expand the production and

distribution of renewable energy technologies. With green power, you do not have to change your electricity

provider. Instead, customers choose to pay a premium on their electricity bill to cover the extra cost

of purchasing clean, sustainable energy.

More info on green power can be found at: http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/markets/index.shtml..gov/greenpower/markets/index.shtml

(The last 9 Ways focus on products and greening your yard...stay tuned)

Alternative Toys!

It's Wednesday and with that we'd like to showcase a product that you probably haven't heard of up to this point, but your children will thank you for reading on!  We've all heard and, for most of us, played with Play-doh at some point in our lives, but did you know what's actually in the stuff?  Here's just a short recap:

 

Play-Doh contains water, salt, and wheat flour, a starch-based binder, a retrogradation inhibitor, salt, lubricant, surfactant, preservative, hardener, humectant, fragrance, and color.  A petroleum additive gives the compound a smooth feel, and borax prevents mold from developing.

Exactly what I want my children playing with and yes, on occasion putting in their mouth (let's be real, we all did it!)! So, today we'd like to give you a great alternative for that creative time with your kids! 

A winner of Dr. Toy’s Best Classic Toys in 2009, Happy Fun Dough is a natural alternative to popular Play-Doh products. The dough is made by For My Kids from flour, water, salt, vegetable oil, cream of tartar and citric acid, and each individual jar of dough gets its color (brown, green, natural, orange, pink or yellow) from plant extracts. There’s even a gluten-free variety. What’s more, Happy Fun Dough packaging is completely recyclable, and discarded dough can be safely composted.

A sample pack—2-oz. tins of each of the colors in a reusable cotton drawstring bag—costs $23.49.

The Super Mega Fun Pack—4-oz. tins of each of the colors—is $35.99.

Let us know what you think of it! 

Training Your Kids to Go Green

I recently read an article on the importance of training your children on living green and there were opposing views  that one should just let their children choose so that they truely value it later in life.  Personally I think you must train a child and show them how to live green or else how will they know.  Yes, they will always be able to choose as they grow up, but isn't that the job of a parent, to show and train your children in the way they should go.  Yes, I pulled that last part straight out of the Bible, but it's quite simple, watch a young child very long and you'll know that you don't have to teach a child to be bad, it's just in them.  But you MUST teach a child to be good and show them what is right.  I believe this overflows into many other areas of their little lives. 

So with that said, here are 10 things you can do as a family to train your children to go green! 

1) Get green school supplies. Going back to school and going green can go hand in hand! Kids can get green school supplies that will make a big difference in price. Your green school supplies also provide an opportunity to share your thoughts on the environment with other students and teachers who notice that they are a little different.
 *This could include reusing old supplies, using passed down supplies from others, using recylcled paper and pencils, etc.
2) Walk, carpool, or have them take the bus to school. Less carbon emissions and less smog comes from less burned fuel. We have to use gasoline to run most of today's cars - so, let's use as little of it as we can! When you share a ride with others, it means fewer people have to use gas, and when you walk or bike there is no fuel burned at all...except maybe your breakfast.

3) Teach them to turn off the water while showering and brushing teeth. Most people let the water run while soaping up or brushing, but that wastes water. Run the water to get your towel and body or toothbrush wet, and then wash or brush with the water off. It saves water AND time because you end up focusing on getting clean and getting out of there!

4) Start an organic garden at home or school and create compost for it. It's a large undertaking, but if you can get the teachers behind you, it's very likely that the principal will allow you to start an organic garden of some kind and a compost heap to fertilize it.  Also a possible area of extra credit!

5) Turn off lights and appliances/electronics when not in use. Kids who aren't environmentally conscious don't usually think about turning off lights and appliances because kids in general aren't cost conscious. That means kids waste stuff. Kids who reduce, reuse, and recycle know that wastefulness is not good, and one thing they do not waste is energy. Although cleaner energy is becoming more common, no energy should be wasted. When you're not using lights or appliances/electronics (TV, computer, video games, etc.) TURN THEM OFF!

6) If parents recycle, allow the kids to sort.  Going green is a lifestyle, so get in on the day-today activities by doing your part. Find out about recylcing centers that pay you to recycle!

7) Volunteer with community organizations that plant trees. Trees help us enjoy cleaner air and more beautiful landscapes. Find organizations where you live who plant trees, and then volunteer to help! The Arbor Day Foundation is a good place to start if you need help locating a group in your local area.

8) Hand-wash dishes or only run the dishwasher for full loads. Most people don't realize it, but dishwashers use considerably more water to wash a load of dishes than the traditional sink method does. A LOT MORE. So, to conserve water, it's best not to use the dishwasher at all. If you do, use eco-friendly dishwashing detergent and only run the washer when it is completely full. If it's not full or if you can, choose to wash dishes in the sink instead, of course, with eco-friendly dishwashing liquid.

9) Reduce waste by curbing use of disposables. It's easy to use throwaway cups, plates, wrappers, and utensils, but it only creates more waste for landfills. Also, disposable paper products like facial and bathroom tissue and paper towels and napkins also end up in the trash. We can save more trees by using less paper products, and we can keep more plastics and styrofoam out of the landfills by using less throwaway utensils and containers. Also, eating less often at fast-food restaurants cuts down on your useage of these items, too.
When you have to use them, use less. When you don't have to use them, DON'T.

10) Teach your children to ease up on the video games. Playing video cames on both computers and systems uses a LOT of energy! That's why your system or computer feels hot afterwards! They can save on energy by simply doing homework or going outside to play instead of posting up in front of the TV or computer screen. This activity uses more electricity than regular TV or computer useage, so it should be kept to a minimum

Looking to Tile Your Home?

If you haven't heard, we have joined with A Splash of Green product lines.  We believe in all of these products and want to make them readily available to all of our clients.  Their slogan hits it dead on, "Design Your Home Fresh and Eco-friendly".  When you see the many options of fresh and stylish products you'll be blown away!  We get asked questions all of the time what products we recommend and why, so directing you there would be simple, but once a week we're going to tell you a little more about them and what's so great about them to us!

So, today we'd like to tell you about Terra Green Ceramics.  We recommend their tiles to many of our clients, because they offer tiles ranging in styles from contemporary to antiqued and...they're handcrafted! With a minimum of 55% recycled content, Terra Green offers many different sizes and colors in field tiles, and the trim pieces to match any tile design. Each product line has its own unique appearance, characteristics, and color choices. Terra Classic is available in 22 beautiful colors in a variety of sizes, while Terra Traffic is available in 21 designer colors, both with embossed/debossed decos and decorative mosaic listelli available to compliment any floor or wall design.

Terra Green Ceramics, Inc. has been manufacturing ceramic tile with recycled- content since the late 1970’s. Over the years their product development has created a full line of floor and wall ceramic tiles, all manufactured with recycled glass – and certified by Scientific Certification Systems (http://www.scscertified.com/). Terra Green is an excellent choice for both commercial and residential installations. Whether you are designing a LEED® project, or simply desire a beautiful product, selecting Terra Green Ceramics is a good sustainable choice                                           

  

 So whether you're doing a remodel project or starting on the plans for your first home, shoot an email over to A Splash of Green to see the very comparable prices and options!  We promise you won't be disappointed! 

Recycling:Glass, Plastic and Others

GLASS

Americans throw away enough glass bottles and jars every two weeks to fill the 1.350-foot towers of the former World Trade Center.

Most bottles and jars contain at least 25% recycled glass.

Glass never wears out -- it can be recycled forever. We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled -- 1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar.

States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

If all the glass bottles and jars collected through recycling in the U.S. in 94 were laid end to end, they'd reach the moon and half way back to earth.

PLASTIC

Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap Texas.

Americans go through 25 billion plastic bottles every year.

26 recycled PET bottles equals a polyester suit. 5 recycled PET bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.

In 1988 we used 2 billion pounds of HDPE just to make bottles for household products. That’s about the weight of 90,000 Honda Civics.

If every American household recycled just one out of every ten HDPE bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year.

STYROFOAM/POLYSTYRENE

It is un-recyclable- you can't make it into new Styrofoam. The industry wants you to assume it is- don't BUY it!

Each year American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam cups, enough every year to circle the earth 436 times.

JUNK MAIL

If only 100,000 people stopped their junk, mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees annually. If a million people did this, we could save up to a million and a half trees.

The junk mail Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat 250,000 homes.

The average American still spends 8 full months of his/her life opening junk mail.

GENERAL GARBAGE

In 1865, an estimated 10,000 hogs roamed New York City, eating garbage. Now, one of every six U.S. trucks is a garbage truck.

In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his/her adult weight in garbage. If you add it up, this means that a 150-lb. adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs of trash for his/her children.

The average baby generates a ton of garbage every year.

The landfill gas produced daily at Fresh Kills Landfill is enough fuel to heat 50,000 homes.

TIRES/RUBBER

It takes half a barrel of crude oil to produce the rubber for just one truck tire.

Every two weeks, Americans wear almost 50 million pounds of rubber off their tires. That’s enough to make 3 1/4 million new tires from scratch.

Producting one pound of recycled rubber versus one pound of new rubber requires only 29% of the energy.

FOOD AND PACKAGING

$1 out of every $11 Americans spend for food goes for packaging.

Americans dump the equivalent of more than 21 million shopping bags full of food into landfills every year.

OTHER

One gallon of used motor oil can contaminate 1 million gallons of water.

Most cars on U.S. roads carry only one person. We have so much extra room in our 140 million cars that everyone in Western Europe could ride with us.

If today is a typical day on planet earth, humans will add fifteen million tons of carbon to the atmosphere, destroy 115 square mils of tropical rainforest, create seventy-two square miles of desert, eliminate between forty to one hundred species, erode seventy-one million tons of topsoil, add twenty-seven hundred tons of CFCs to the stratosphere, and increase their population by 263,000.

Almost four million computer diskettes are thrown away every day, which equals over on and a half billion disks per year or a stack of disks as tall as the Sears Tower in Chicago every 21 seconds. It will take nearly 500 years for the disks to degrade.

Summer Grilling and Staying Green!

I recently ran across a product that I wanted to tell you all about, especially since it is the grilling time of year! Spring weather, Father’s Day (don’t forget June 20th!!) and lots of outside pool parties! Most of us are use to grabbing the charcoal and lighter fluid, pumping up the grill and not thinking twice, but if you only knew what was in those products that are smoking into your meats!

So we wanted to take a second tell you about it and give you a great green alternative!

Lighting your barbecue is one of the most eco-unfriendly aspects of the whole outdoor grilling process. Lighter-fluid contributes to ground-level ozone pollution by releasing toxic fumes, also known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air. The problem occurs when the VOCs mix with other air pollutants and are exposed to sunlight. The resulting ground-level ozone can be detrimental to the health of particular individuals such as those with lung and heart disease, active children and the outdoor athletic type. Even if you don't fall into one of those categories you could still be a victim, as the fluid may leave a toxic chemical residue on your food!

So here’s a product we suggest you take a look at and try out this summer! It’s made by Frontier Brand. (They also have all natural charcoal as well)

Below is a testimonial by a couple who tried it out and were quite honest on the difference and their love for grilling!

I heard some mind-blowing statistic about how much beef is grilled annually on Father's Day. I don't remember what the number was, but you get the point: We love to grill.
We were OK with our grilling rituals. We use the old-standby, tried-and-true brands.
Or we did, until we were walking through Meijer in Plainfield and saw something new. Eco-Start Natural Lighter Fluid.
It's a clearish, green gel and it works differently than standard lighter fluid. That's because it's not petroleum-based. Petroleum is the nonrenewable resource used to make gas. You can see two major red flags in that sentence that signal why it's bad that we use so, so many petroleum-based products.
Want to help cut our oil dependence? Ride your bike over to Meijer for some Eco-Start for your Father's Day cookout.
You're going to need to actually read the packaging because this really does work differently. It may take a little practice, as we found out.
My husband: This stuff doesn't work at all.
Me: Oh crap.
5 minutes later
My husband: I take it back. It works great. It's just different.
Think about it in a similar way to the learning curve for driving a hybrid car. The first couple trips, you're going to be a little confused, then ... zen.
My husband, my grill guru, has found he needs to almost make an Eco-Start sandwich, with briquettes on the top and bottom and the gel in the middle. He also said it took a few tries to figure out the right amount for our grill. It didn't affect the taste of our steaks one bit.
It was also cheaper than regular lighter fluid and boasts more starts per bottle. Win, win, win!.

Recycling: Water

Between 1950 and 2000, the U.S. population nearly doubled. However, in that same period, public demand for water more than tripled! Americans now use an average of 100 gallons of water each day — enough to fill 1,600 drinking glasses! (EPA, 2008)

A recent government survey showed that at least 36 states are anticipating local, regional, or statewide water shortages by 2013. (EPA, 2008)

Most people realize that hot water uses up energy, but supplying and treating cold water requires a significant amount of energy too. American public water supply and treatment facilities consume about 56 billion kilowatt-hours per year — enough electricity to power more than 5 million homes for an entire year. (EPA, 2008)

Appliances and Fixtures in General

If all U.S. households installed water-efficient appliances, the country would save more than 3 trillion gallons of water and more than $18 billion dollars per year! (EPA, 2008)

If one out of every 100 American homes was retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, we could save about 100 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year — avoiding 80,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. The greenhouse gas savings would be equivalent to removing nearly 15,000 automobiles from the road for one year! (EPA, 2008)

Bathroom: Sink, Toilet, Bath, Shower

About 75 percent of the water we use in our homes is used in the bathroom. (California Energy Commission, 2006)

If your toilet is from 1992 or earlier, you probably have an inefficient model that uses between 3.5 to 7 gallons per flush. Newer, high-efficiency toilets use less than 1.3 gallons per flush — that's at least 60 percent less water per flush! (EPA, 2008)

If just 1 percent of American homes replaced an older toilet with a new WaterSense labeled toilet, the country would save more than 38 million kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough electricity to supply more than 43,000 households for one month. (EPA, 2008)

The average bathroom faucet flows at a rate of two gallons per minute. Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth in the morning and at bedtime can save up to 8 gallons of water per day, which equals 240 gallons a month. (EPA, 2008)

Letting your faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours. (EPA, 2008)

Leaky faucets that drip at the rate of one drip per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons of water each year; A leaky toilet can waste about 200 gallons of water every day. If your fixtures have leaks, you should get them repaired! (EPA, 2008)

A full bath tub requires about 70 gallons of water, while taking a five-minute shower uses only 10 to 25 gallons. (EPA, 2008)

Other Household Water Needs

The average washing machine uses about 41 gallons of water per load, whereas newer, high-efficiency washing machine models use less than 28 gallons of water per load. (EPA, 2008)

The typical single-family suburban household uses at least 30 percent of their water outdoors for irrigation. Some experts estimate that more than 50 percent of landscape water use goes to waste due to evaporation or runoff caused by overwatering!
Consider installing a drip irrigation system to water your lawn and garden. These systems use between 20 to 50 percent less water than conventional in-ground sprinkler systems. They are also much more efficient than conventional sprinklers because no water is lost to wind, runoff, and evaporation. (EPA, 2008)