It's Easy Being Green
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Earth Day is soon approaching, and hundreds of events are popping up all over the globe to promote a greener environment for all.   

There’s a new survey by DisneyFamily.com that found out that 80% of parents believe that protecting the environment is very important to them.  And their top issues were -- clean water, recycling and air pollution. This is because moms and dads said they are looking out for the future of their children -- and also because the health of their family was very important.

So at their website they have developed a “Going Green” feature to help parents take action – you can take an “How Green Am I?” quiz -- or find out steps to creating a greener home.  And parents are even offering their own tips on their site – so you can learn from each other too.

It’s important to remember that living green is more about how you do things – not about adding more onto your plate.  And to do that you make one change at a time.

For example – we all know that fresh clean water is a limited resource that we have.  And according to the Environmental Protection Agency, a family of four can use upwards of 400 gallons of water each day. 

So you can save water by adding more water-efficient fixtures in your bathroom – these can also be called “low-flow”.  Water-efficient faucets and showerheads use less water but don’t change your water pressure – so they feel the same.

To give you an example, I installed an EcoFlow showerhead from Waterpik in less than 10 minutes – and now it’s saving me about one gallon of water a minute.  That’s a lot.  And that water savings translates into money savings for me – a water-efficient showerhead will end up saving me about $90 on my water and heating bill in the coming year.

Another thing you can do is recycle.  But a new trend is to look for less to recycle.  For example, you can look for products with less packaging.

So let’s get practical – it would be better for me to buy laundry detergent that is concentrated.  For example, you’ll notice a lot of detergents have been converted to a 2x formula, like Tide.   And this means you get the same amount of loads in a bottle that’s half the size of the original, which means less packaging – there’s also less water in the formula, and less fuel used to transport the smaller bottles. 

Another tip is to try to avoid bottled water use -- instead use a reusable water bottle.  This reduces your waste.

And how you do this is by filtering your own water at home – like with a PUR water faucet or pitcher -- and then you pour it into a reusable water bottle.  The PUR manufacturer says that by doing this method "each person can eliminate up to 3,200 plastic water bottles from ending up in landfills and in the process save themselves up to $600 a year."

The bottled water problem is very real.  Last year Americans went through 50 billion plastic water bottles and then pitched 38 billion of them into landfills without recycling them – that means more than 1 billion dollars worth of plastic went to waste. 

Plastic is virtually non-biodegradable – so if it isn’t turned into another usable product, then it just sits in the landfill.

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