How can you decrease this huge waste of water? Pledge to decrease your water footprint! The National Geographic came up with a water consumption calculator for people to take, then pledge at the end to decrease their water consumption by specific amounts.

How does it work? The calculator asks a number of questions pertaining to your home and lifestyle. Some of the questions include:

• What year was your home built?
• How many showers do you take a week, and for how long?
• How much pork, chicken, milk and coffee do you consume per day?
• What is the fuel efficiency of the car you drive, in miles per gallon?
• How much do you spend on clothes and shoes, including jeans, T-shirts and running shoes, suits and dress shoes?

To figure out how much water you consume, and to pledge to decrease, go to the National Geographic’s Water Footprint Calculator.

The problem that many “eco” hotels have is they advertise green living and green travel but in reality don’t have any sort of eco-friendly programs, were built decades ago (before flower power popularized) and produce tons of waste per week.

How do you pick through the greenwash posers and ensure your travels are in fact green? Read our checklist, and then pack your suitcase and head on to that green adventure!

1. Check out the organizations/hotels environmental policy. A key indicator that what you’re looking at is greenwashing? No environmental policy. The policy will generally be posted on an organization’s website, but are usually available in person in writing as well. These policies should cover the organization’s environmental impact, employment and cultural policies.
2. Ask questions! This is the key ingredient to finding out if a place is really green and not just putting the sign in the front window. Ask important environmental questions that a place that cares about the environment should be able to answer, even those who work the front desk. Some questions to ask include:
   1. How do they recycle?
   2. Do they employ local guides and leaders?
   3. Do they have a “green” purchasing policy?
   4. How do they minimize the effect on the environment by their walking tours in local towns and wilderness areas?
   5. What are their energy sources?
   6. What proportion of their revenue goes into helping the local communities or local environmental charities?
3. Lastly, get the goods! Generally, a company or organization that makes efforts to help the community takes great pride in it, and likes to brag. Ask the customer service reps what milestones they’ve recently reached, or what environmental programs they’ve recently initiated. Hearing the pride behind employees voices should be a clear indicator they are really there trying to make a difference.

1. Purchase or remember your reusable tote bags
2. Go the whole day without using your car. Take public transportation, walk or just stay home!
3. Eat a meal of locally sourced food and avoid beef. This will greatly reduce your carbon impact.
4. Have a picnic with your grandkids. To promote being outside, The Nature Conservancy is encouraging everyone to eat a meal on a park bench, picnic table or a bed sheet in a field.
5. Swap out your traditional light bulbs for CFLs

It’s a busy weekend with the holidays going on. If you take a couple of these easy steps to make a green home this weekend, you will be doing great work for the Earth! Remember, it’s the only one we have!

• Plant summer flowering bulbs

April is the month for green gardeners to plant flowering bulbs such as dahlias, gladiolas and lilies. If the danger of frost has past, it is safe to plant your Tuberous Begonias and Cannas as well.

• Spring Clean Your House Plants

Green gardening can take place inside as well! Keeping your indoor plants clean will retain their beauty and will help them fight off diseases. Remove any spent flowers, dead leaves or branches along with any yellowing leaves. Rinse the leaves off with some water to remove dust. Clean leaves help the plant breathe!

• It’s veggie time!

  A lot of vegetables can be planted during April, including (but not limited to):

  • Asparagus
  • Rhubarb
  • Horseradish
  • Peas
  • Carrots
  • Beets
  • Spinach
  • Cauliflower

Warmer weather crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and squash and peppers need to wait until next month before adding them to your organic garden.

• Celebrate Arbor Day

Arbor Day is April 29th, so plant a tree or take care of the ones you already have. April is a great time to prune evergreens, plant a fruit tree in your yard and is just one more excuse to spend your day with organic gardening instead of watching TV.

This is an exciting part of the year for green gardening. Taking these steps will assure a great start to this year’s gardening efforts. You’ll be harvesting vegetables, pruning flowers and weeding before you know it!

Veggie gardens are not only great for a green living lifestyle (growing your own food prevents pesticides and other harmful chemicals from entering your body) but is a great money saver. The work outside also provides a healthy yet calming physical activity to stay healthy through your golden years.

This early spring time is when you want to make sure to do a couple of things:

• Dig
• Weed
• Seed
• Prepare

Unfortunately, there’s no catchy acronym for this mantra, but dig, weed, seed and prepare should be going through your head during the warming month of April as you prepare your vegetable garden.

Remember: wherever you plan on placing your vegetable garden needs to have at least 6 hours of direct sunlight each day.

Dig

Clean up the winter gook from the area you’ve chosen for your garden and dig up the hardened earth to make the planting easier. Create a boundary around your garden so no one steps into the fresh soil, and add a few cups of wood ash and bone meal and a bag of powdered limestone on top of the soil before you begin digging so the tossing can turn in the nutrients.

Weed

Weeding is considered the most important part of an early spring clean up. Rip out those winter weeds like henbit, chickweed, bluegrass and hair bittercress. To make sure you are using an organic gardening approach to wedding simply pull or cut the weeds with a sharp hoe; no pesticide killers needed.

Seed

After laying down a nice layer of mulch (or straw, whichever you prefer), it is time to seed! Early spring is a crucial time for cool-season vegetables and plant transplants. Transplants refer to any plant that began blooming in the winter and need to be transferred to an outside garden. Some of these plants that can be seeded outdoors now include: onions, salad greens, peas, radish and collards.

Remember: warm-weathers plants like eggplant, tomatoes, basil and okra can be seeded in indoor planters and put under lights. These should not be transferred to the outside until early May.

Prepare

Prepare a spot in the rest of your garden for all the warm-weathered plants, like those mentioned above. You can also add an area for herbs like sweet bay, rosemary and Spanish lavender can be planted now, although sweet basil should only be started now if you are planting it indoors.

During his speech, held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he set up some items he thought the American public should address, or at least keep in mind.

1. American oil imports will be reduced by 30%
2. America does not have the oil supplies to fuel our country without outside help
3. Natural gas holds extreme potential… if used right
4. Battery production is key to promoting electric cars
5. Nuclear power is still a very real part of America

To read more, click here.

However, keeping it safe and charged is something I’ve had a problem with. Technology might not be the best at offering green alternatives, but I’ve found some great products that actually will assist in the problems I’m having with my iPad, as well as be environmentally friendly!

The Vers Shellcase

This hand-crafted bamboo stand has a metal foot to make the incline of your iPad at rest convenient and natural to how you work. There is also a hardwood option for those not into the bamboo look. As a bonus, Vers will plant 100 trees per every one tree it uses in producing its product!

The Audrey iPad Purse

Carrying multiple bags always strains my back, but I always feel like my regular purse isn’t safe for transporting my iPad places. This Audrey iPad Purse fixes those problems, being stylish, eco-friendly and safe for your iPad and all accessories. It’s made from recycled “suede and satin”, vegan leather and recycled zipper.

Solio Solar Charger

Although these small chargers cannot charge your iPad in the traditional sense, when fully charged it can power your iPad like an external battery. Although not cheap ($99.95), this charger can help save a lot of energy.

Scientists at São Paulo State University in Brazil and their colleagues wanted to see if banana peels could also act as water purifiers. This material already has a surprising number of potential uses, including polishing items like silver and leather shoes.

The researchers found that minced banana peel performed as well or better at removing copper and lead than many other filtering materials, quickly removing both from water in the Paraná River in Brazil.

They noted that a purifier made of layers of minced banana peel could be used up to 11 times without losing its metal-snagging properties. Synthetic materials can be reused more times, but natural materials are dramatically cheaper and do not require chemical processing to work.

The scientists detailed their findings online Feb. 16 in the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

This story originally published in: LiveScience.com

But what happens in between trips to the cleaner? Those hangers can take up a lot of space and make green living a bit cumbersome. Luckily, Hanger Hampers have great green living ideas and have come up with a solution.

Hanger Hampers fits nicely into a corner of a closet or bedroom and neatly holds any standard size hanger. It is made from post-consumer material so buying it alone promotes green living. Once it fills up, you can recycle your hangers back to the dry cleaners. Enjoy a nice discount or watch their eyes light up when they realize they don’t have to order more hangers for a month! Not only will you save space in your closet, but you help decrease the number of hangers floating around your area, and prevent landfill waste.

These diets are simple, easy to manage, and cost effective.

1. Real Food Diet – If grandma wouldn’t call it food, neither should you! The Real Food Diet consists of eating foods with little to no unpronounceable ingredients. Many food products in your local grocery store are packed with unnatural and processed ingredients which can retain fats in your body.
2. Locavore Diet – Stimulate your body and the local economy by buying foods produced within 100 miles of where you live. Farmer’s Markets are a great source of local fruits and vegetables, as are local bakeries and food co-ops for baked goods and other products. Local foods tend to be less processed, giving your body natural vitamins and proteins it needs to stay healthy and trim fat.
3. Eco Atkins Diet - The traditional Atkins Diet is packed with animal fats, far from green and only questionably healthy. But this eco twist follows the same carb-to-protein ratio using plant-based proteins like soy, beans and no-starch gluten instead. Researchers found dieters lost weight and reduced their bad (LDL) cholesterol levels at the same time.
4. Vegetarian Diet – Did you know that eating a veggie diet can reduce your carbon footprint by a ton? Your water footprint (as well as water weight) will significantly decrease as well. Keep in mind you can still have eggs and dairy. You also want to make sure to fill up on healthy produce and legumes so you don’t fill up on carbs.
5. Vegan Diet – This diet is not for the faint of heart. You need to be dedicated and strong-willed, willing to take the extra step from vegetarian to vegan. Vegan diets are like vegetarian, although they also take out any animal-based products like dairy and eggs.

If the vegetarian and vegan diets are too much for you to handle, try a flex diet. Flex diets designate certain times when you are allowed to eat meat, like the weekends, every other day, etc. It weans meat off your diet slowly but still allows you to indulge those burger cravings that everyone seems to have!