Go-Green-Blog

Here are seven easy tips to help you to go green and save money at the same time.

Buy locally produced food whenever possible. You will be boosting your neighborhood economy, and you will be helping to shrink the hidden costs involved in food production, shipping and distribution. The typical American meal travels some 1,500 miles before a knife or fork touches it. That means increased freight charges and fuel costs. You can help to save on these, and save your own funds too, by buying local products. Farmer’s Markets are perfect for this. The quality is great and the price is great too. And because it’s local, it doesn’t travel halfway across the nation to reach you! In fact, you can reduce the amount of traveling your food has to do by an impressive 80% at least! The other benefit is that not only does it improve your local economy, but you are supporting more people to begin farming. With so many people out of work now, many people are looking for alternatives to industrial work. Maybe we need to go back to work on small family farms.

Print less or not at all. Paper doesn’t grow on trees – it is trees! And we are killing them at an alarming rate with all our printing. If you genuinely have to print, then consider using duplex, or double-sided printing to cut your paper needs in half. You’ll also save a tree not to mention the resources needed to convert the wood pulp into paper.

Set up a rain barrel to catch rainwater from the roof. This is an old idea dating back for centuries, but a great one. The rain is free of charge after all and it is excellent for watering plants and flowers as it doesn’t contain pointless chemicals such as chlorine. You can save on water bills by utilizing this effortless idea and your plants will be much happier!

You can set up a composting bin for all the vegetable and plant material you might ordinarily throw away. Leaves from trees in autumn, as well as anything pruned or cut off can all be composted. Good compost will supply exceptional soil material for nourishing young plants next season. It’s a smart way of recycling. Look to the kitchen as well for decomposable materials. Food waste will compost without difficulty and it’s an ideal way to dispose of it. Composting food and vegetable substance turns it into nutrient-rich soil. You can buy composting bins and other things, but it’s much more gratifying and cheaper to make it yourself.

Plant drought-tolerant trees and shrubs in your garden. These include crepe myrtle, ash, or ginkgo, and shrubs from rosemary to barberry and juniper. Why? With global warming we might have drier conditions. If you have plants competing for increasingly drier soil, you will have problems. Drought-tolerant tree and shrub species will survive better and not demand as much water. You will save on the water bill and reduce your water usage.

Cook once and eat twice. This is a great way to save all round by cooking two meals at once. If your oven can hold two chickens, then why not roast two instead of one every time? In a conventional oven, two chickens will cook in about the same amount of time that one will. Now, do the math… You will cut your cooking time in half, saving electricity or cooking gas – and guess what happens to all the money saved! Yep, it stays right in your pocket. You also save a lot of time when you come to prepare your next meal. Remember, it doesn’t have to be just chickens. This will work with turkeys, roast beef, etc. And in summer you avoid heating the kitchen on the off days.

In summary, these eight items just scratch the surface. Brainstorm and try to think on ways that you can save energy and money. Together we can make a difference in our world today.

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